History of SASCOL

Our hopes in establishing the Southern Appalachian Student Conference on Literature were to provide students an affordable, accessible means to begin one of the more difficult aspects of a career in literary study--to participate in a live forum of ideas.

Studying text in a private place with a comfortable chair differs from receiving the initial, immediate feedback about one's work when presenting to one's peers. Our conference, we hope, will help students into that transition.

Our inaugural conference took place on October 6, 2007, on the East Tennessee State University campus. Participants included students from East Tennessee State University, The University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and Emory & Henry College. Students from the disciplines of history and political science were among the English students in attendance.

From SASCOL 2007:

Achievement in Essay Award winner Jesse Graves, keynote speaker Urmila Seshagiri, and SASCOL sponsors Katherine Weiss and Thomas Alan Holmes (photo by David Wood)

Our Keynote Speakers

2019: Dr. Emily Dotson, Assistant Professor English and Director of Wise Writes at The University of Virginia's College at Wise, "Strong Angels of Comfort: Fictorian Daughters and Domestic Care Labor"

2018: Dr. Erin Kingsley, Assistant Professor of English at King University, "Bodies in Excess: A (Re)Consideration of Gestational Modernism"

2017: Dr. Daniel Helbert, Adjunct Professor of English at University of Virginia-Wise, "Premodern Environmental Humanities: Or, How Literary Studies Can Save the World."

2016: Dr. Nicole Drewitz-Crockett, Assistant Professor of English at Emory & Henry College, "Out of the Library: The Benefits of Field Research in Literary Studies."

2015: Dr. Colleen Glenn, Assistant Professor at the College of Charleston (SC), "Beauty to Beast: The Rebirth of Mickey Rourke."

2010: Dr. Mark Noble, Assistant Professor of American Literature at Georgia State University.

2009: Dr. Amy Kaufman, Assistant Professor of English and Women's Studies at Wesleyan College, "Gender in the Middle Ages: Beyond Binaries."

2008: Dr. Doug Reichert Powell, Assistant Professor of English at Columbia College, Chicago, "Appalachia Upside Down: Real and the Imaginary Geographies."

2007: Dr. Urmila Seshagiri, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Tennessee-Knowxville, "Atoning for Modernism: Ian McEwan, Virginia Woolf, and the Limits of Fiction."