The CEA Forum
Summer 2001
Volume 31.2 
"MURDER" MOST FUN AT NYCEA CONFERENCE

A Model for Increasing Participation in Regional CEAs
 
 

By Charles A. S. Ernst

Executive Director of the NYCEA
Professor of English, Chair A&S
Hilbert College 
Photo of NYCEA Conference
Photo Credit Nancy J. Parisi
Pictured (l-r): Kathleen R. Pierino, asst. professor in Criminal Justice at Hilbert College; guest speaker Donna Stuccio of Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, NY; and Charles A. S. Ernst, NYCEA conference coordinator for fall 2000
Imagine yourself in a nightclub mysteriously transporting you back to the 1930s! While you are dining, a murder most foul takes place, and you find yourself wondering who, among the seated patrons, might be the diabolical perpetrator.

This was the scene on a Friday evening in late September last fall when the New York College English Association hosted its Fall 2000 Conference at Hilbert College in Hamburg, New York (September 29–30). The theme?  “Literature and Criminal Justice.”

Mystery Dinner Theatre:
Sponsored by the college’s English and Criminal Justice Departments, the Friday–Saturday conference began with a Mystery Dinner Theater performance (6:30–9 p.m.) of Joseph Milton’s The 1939 Nightclub Murders by the Repertory Theater of America.

The student center cafeteria was stylishly transformed into a nightclub milieu for the benefit of the more than one hundred patrons in attendance, comprising conference-goers, students, and members of the Western New York community.

In this form of interactive theater, the lines were humorously blurred between actors and audience, as virtually everyone in the “nightclub” became part of the performance—with several conference-goers in particular having the opportunity to assume on-the-spot roles as part of the production.

Since 1967, the Repertory Theater of America has offered more than 14,000 performances of more than 50 different plays on college campuses, at performing arts centers, and in other venues.

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Getting the Word Out:
As one of the several regional organizations of the CEA, the New York College English Association has worked to improve and enrich local conference life by adopting conference themes appealing to its membership, while also attracting colleagues in other disciplines to particular conferences.

The “Literature and Criminal Justice” theme enabled conference planners to enlist on-campus support from two separate departments (English, CJ) and to expand promotional activities to major colleges and universities throughout the continental United States, both by bulk mailing and by e-mail, including CJ-related constituencies throughout the country.

In addition, scholars writing on aspects of literature and criminal justice within the previous three years (1997–99) were identified by combing relevant theme-related topics in MLA bibliographies. These individuals were traced (if they were MLA members) to their mailing or e-mail addresses in the PMLA directory issue.

The intent of matching colleagues’ academic interests with the conference theme proved rewarding. Along with loyal membership support from upstate and downstate New York, participants were also drawn from Pennsylvania, Maine, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, and California.

Aside from the usual deadline date for receipt of abstracts, we also established an “early-bird” submission date, with an accompanying early acceptance date, to encourage and secure prompt responses to facilitate travel and hotel reservations for such conference-goers.

Even before bulk and e-mailings, initial promotion began with a comprehensive flyer made available at the NYCEA’s previous Spring 2000 Conference at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.

In addition, flyer postings on campus promoted all aspects of the conference to any interested Hilbert faculty and students. Timely articles in local papers, along with the student newspaper The H-Files, marketed the conference to the surrounding community, through the support of Hilbert’s director of public relations, a branch of the college’s Office of Institutional Advancement.

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Controlling Costs:
Collaboration among various on-campus stakeholders helped to distribute conference costs among different constituencies and even resulted in a profit for the NYCEA.
Initial funds contributed by the English Department covered pre-conference costs for promotional materials and their distribution, so there was no need to make use of the “seed money” loan of $200 made available on request by the NYCEA to conference hosts.

Because the Mystery Dinner Theatre event was open to students as well as to conference-goers, the cost of the repertory company players and their lodgings for one night was funded completely by the Office of Student Life, with the support of the college’s Student Government Association.

The $35 registration fee ($30 for graduate students, $40 for walk-ins) covered all panel sessions, the guest speaker’s plenary address, and a continental breakfast Saturday morning. To conserve costs for conference-goers, this fee was kept separate from the $20 fee for the dinner theatre on Friday ($12 for Hilbert students) and the $10 fee for the buffet luncheon on Saturday.

Similarly, the monies collected through the registration fee paid for the guest speaker’s honorarium and her hotel accommodations; continental breakfast costs; stipends to English and CJ Department student clubs for members serving at the registration tables; and for miscellaneous costs.

Even so, after all expenses were accounted for, the conference enjoyed a surplus of over $1,200, which was submitted to the NYCEA treasurer for deposit.

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Guest Speaker at NYCEA Conference:
Attending the performance was Saturday’s plenary speaker, Donna Stuccio, a teacher, actress, former police officer, and more recently the creator of a police drama entitled Blue Moon.

Preceding the Saturday luncheon, Stuccio entertained an appreciative audience with an informative account of her ten-year experience as a police officer in Syracuse. She related her background to the creation and development of her play, which dramatizes the relationships of six policewomen awaiting word of a male officer shot on duty.

Currently an associate professor of Criminal Justice at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York, Stuccio has been involved for 25 years in Central New York theater as dancer, choreographer, stage manager, and actress.

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Panel Sessions:
Just as stimulating for the 70+ attendees on Saturday were the approximately 30 presentations held during five multiple-panel sessions on topics ranging from serial killers to hard-boiled detectives, from police to penitentiaries, with titles such as the following:
  • “Monks and Nuns as Amateur Sleuths” by Carolyn Leslie Grossman;
  • “‘To Save Innocence’:  The Life and Writing of Agatha Christie” by Mary Ann Janda;
  • “Murder Most American: The Troublesome Cases of Clyde Griffiths and Bigger Thomas” by Gertrude Hamilton;
  • “Popular Crime Fiction and Actual Crime: The ‘Hard-Boiled’ Novelists” by Richard R. E. Kania;
  • “When the Political Become the Criminal—the Prison Writings of Angela Davis” by Joseph Swatski;
  • “Puritan Captivity Narratives: Imprisonment or Opportunity” by Monica Weis;
  • “Cheap Literature, Crime, and the Construction of Juvenile Delinquency” by Larry Sullivan;
  • “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?: A Cinematic Narrative of Noir?” by Adriana Tomasino.
These and other papers were selected by a conference committee equally composed of faculty from Hilbert’s English and Criminal Justice Departments.
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 Sample Comments from Students:
Several Hilbert students assisting with the conference shared their thoughts in post-conference articles appearing in the student newspaper:
 
“The spirit of the conference was energetic: participants were rushing from the coffee breaks back to designated conference rooms in an effort to avoid missing out on a single word.” (Cheyenne Jumanah)

“As a full-time student here at Hilbert and the president of the Criminal Justice/Economic Crime Investigation Association, I felt it was important to show my support. This was a wonderful opportunity for me to get a glimpse of the professionalism of such brilliant scholars.” (Lisa Bott)

NYCEA Conference—The Sequel:
As a follow-up to the Fall 2000 conference theme, the Spring 2001 NYCEA Conference at St. John’s University in Jamaica, NY (April 28), under the direction of Angela Belli, offered as its theme “Literature and the Law,” creating a conceptual sequence for the school year between fall and spring conferences.

It is hoped that, in the future, careful planning and promotion will continue to find the right marriage of conference theme and participants to provide a rich and sustaining conference life under NYCEA auspices.
 

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Note

Charles A. S. Ernst is the Executive Director of the NYCEA, having served as conference coordinator for the Fall 2000 NYCEA Conference at Hilbert College. The on-site NYCEA conference committee consisted of the following Hilbert faculty: Y. Downes, C. Ernst, A. Hughes, K. Pierino, A. Smith, and J. Sobol.

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