Sunday, September 25, 2016

George "Honey Boy" Evans Symposium

We've just kicked off our fourth year of the George "Honey Boy" Evans Symposium at Champlain College, and for almost that entire time I've been meaning to include a post about it here on the blog.  It's about time I put something up, and I'll do my best to go back and update it.  One of our traditions (and my friend Cinse Bonino says that one of the things I do best is create traditions) is snapping pictures of that evening's presenter receiving the prestigious "Honey Boy" cup, filled with their favorite adult beverage, from the previous presenter.  Presenters get the keep the "Honey Boy" cup, which the excellent Mike Lange found, purchased, polished and had inscribed, in their office until the next presentation.  Mike and I started the HB series because we felt that although Champlain is a teaching school there are still folks who are doing serious research, and that our disciplinary identity is a key part of who we are, of living the life of the mind.  If you go to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York you will see a very large trophy which the Vaudevillian George "Honey Boy" Evans (he wrote "In the Good Old Summertime") presented every year to the best player in baseball (which was determined by highest batting average).  In the age before the advent of the Most Valuable Player Award, Evans, like all right-thinking individuals a baseball fan, felt it was a shame to not recognize the best player, so he just took it upon himself to give the designation, and the trophy, himself.  Not surprisingly, it routinely went to Honus Wagner or Ty Cobb.  Mike and I felt that since the college didn't provide the opportunity to present on your own research that we would set something up ourselves, and thus the perverse logic of entitling it the "Honey Boy."  Anyway, I think I have pictures of all the presenters, with the exception of me, from the inception of the HB, and now I just need to get them all up on the website.  The long absence is a reflection of my general incompetence, and not a lack of appreciation for the folks who presented.

The original "Honey Boy," George Evans.

Dr.. Brian Murphy, receiving the HB from Kerry Noonan, presented on "We the Dead: Media Preservation and the Future of Memory in America" in September 2016.

Dr. Kerry Noonan, receiving the HB from Erik Shonstrom, presented on "Dates with Jesus and Yoga with Mary: Pushing the Boundary of Catholic Practice" in April 2016.
Kelly Thomas, who presented on "Devising Intersections: My Year of Writing and Performing for Social Change" in November 2015, presenting the cup to Dr. Dave Mills, who presented on "Double Bind: Abraham, Isaac, and Derrida in the Ashes of the Holocaust" in February 2016.

Brian Murphy handing over the Honey Boy to Cheryl Casey, who presented on "In This Boat Together: Dragon Boating and the Language of Survivorship" in October 2016.

Cheryl Casey handing over the Honey Boy to Steve Wehmeyer, who became the first professor to present twice in the series.

"Honey Boy" Presentations

Dr. Steve Wehmeyer, "Saints Who Cast Shadows: Ethnohagiography in New Orleans," March 2014.

Dr. Katheryn Wright, "Violence on the Second Screen: A Case Study of AMC's Story Sync," April 2014.

Dr. Michael Lange, "Terroir and the Culinary Meaning of Maple," September 2014.

Dr. Kristin Wolf, "APIStemology, Pedagogy, Outreach and Entrepreneurship with the Bees," October 2014.

Dr. Adam Rosenblatt, "Early Voting: The Case for Children's Suffrage," November 2014.

Dr. Megan Munson-Warnken, "What Makes a Reader?: Understanding the Role of Identity in Readership," November 2014.

Dr. Gary Scudder, "Monsters - Both External and Internal - in The Journey to the West," February 2015.

Dr. Betsy Allen-Pennebaker, "I Didn't Do Any Field Work for the Lecture: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and the Dawn of Masochism," March 2015.

Dr. Matt La Rocca, "Music from the Arctic Circle: How to Make a Concrete Statement in an Abstract Art Form," April 2015.

Dr. Sanford Zale, "Robert Joliet, the Dual Monarchy, and the Future of French History in the Early Fifteenth Century," September 2015.

Dr. Eric Ronis, "Performing Authenticity and Virtue in the Face of Islamophobia: A Rhetorical Analysis of Mahmoud Jabari's Champlain College Graduation Speech," October 2015.

Kelly Thomas, "Devising Intersections: My Year of Writing and Performing for Social Change," November 2015.

Dr. Dave Mills, "Double Bind: Abraham, Isaac, and Derrida in the Ashes of the Holocaust," February 2016.

Dr. Eric Shonstrom, "The Incendiary Spark: Curiosity as the Fire of Imagination and Scourge of Institutional Expectation," March 2016.

Dr. Kerry Noonan, "Dates with Jesus and Yoga with Mary: Pushing the Boundary of Catholic Practice," April 2016.

Dr. Brian Murphy, "We the Dead: Media Preservation and the Future of Memory in America," September 2016.

Dr. Cheryl Casey, "In This Boat Together: Dragon Boating and the Language of Survivorship," October 2016.

Dr. Steve Wehmeyer, "Black Magic Matters: Tinfoil Sorcery, Conjurational Contraptions, and Other Conversations about Race in Vernacular Esotericism." February 2017.



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