Global Visual Cultures

8th Annual DLLC GSA Conference

Global Visual Cultures Program

April 3–4, 2026

Hamilton College
1512 Pendleton St, Columbia, SC 29208


Conference keynote by: Prof. Mercedes Lopez Rodriguez

Friday, April 3

Breakfast — 8:30 a.m.

Welcome — 9:00 a.m.

Panel 1 — 9:30–10:45 a.m. (Room 227)

Identity Narratives in Children/YA Fiction
Panel Chair: Delaney Sullivan

Jordan Frederick, “Graphic Novel Autopathologies as Feminist Texts” (USC)
Allie Moore, “I Was Destined to Have an Identity Crisis: Utilizing Narrative Structure and Aesthetic Techniques in Comics to Analyze Halfway There” (USC)
Delaney Sullivan, “Food as Other: Touristic Multiculturalism in Contemporary American Picturebooks” (USC)

Coffee Break — 10:45–11:00 a.m.

Panel 2 — 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m. (Room 227)

Visual Linguistics from the Global South (Hybrid)
Panel Chair: Hind Ashraf Hosny

Keri Sanchez Sandoval, “Lenguas indígenas y el español en México, Chile y la zona andina: identidad, influencia y contacto lingüístico” (USC)
Shana Scucchi, “Negotiating Meaning and Visual Metaphor in Spanish Product Advertisements” (USC)
Faten ElKafrawy, “Cartoons Translate Cultures and Ideologies: Qatar Football World Cup 2022 Cartoons Translate the Unsaid” (Modern Sciences and Arts University; Fulbright Scholar) [Virtual]

Lunch Break — 12:30–2:00 p.m.

Panel 3 — 2:00–3:15 p.m. (Room 226)

Depicting National History in a Postcolonial World
Panel Chair: Rume Kpadamrophe

Arunav Das, “Can the Subaltern be Screened? Visual Counter-archive in Garos of 71” (USC)
Babila Samuel, “Images and Nationhood: Sembene Ousmane’s Postcolonial Cinema” (USC)
Hannah Frimpomaa Nhyira, “A Visual History of Colonial and Postcolonial Ghana: Power, Cartography, and Visual Discourse” (USC)

Refreshments — 3:15–4:00 p.m.

Keynote — 4:00–5:00 p.m. (Room 226)

Mercedes Lopez Rodriguez, CPLT and Spanish Program (USC)

“Disgust as Cultural Critique: Video Activism, Visual Arts, and What Makes Us Human in a Post-Human World.”

Introduced by Agnes Mueller, CPLT Program Director (USC)

CPLT Reception — 5:15–7:00 p.m. (Gambrell 429)

Saturday, April 4

Breakfast — 8:30–9:00 a.m.

Panel 4 — 9:00–10:15 a.m. (Room 227)

Institutional Resistance in Mexican Films
Panel Chair: Carter Frahm

Cris Tengono Garcia, “Identidades extraídas: estéticas cuir y violencias de género en Temporada de Huracanes” (USC)
Wari Gálvez Rivas, “Los ecos del indígena muerto: la voz indígena en Roma de Alfonso Cuarón” (USC)
Perla Richerson, “Contained Transgression: Power, Coloniality, and Subaltern Agency in Herod’s Law and The Crime of Father Amaro” (USC)

Coffee Break — 10:15–10:30 a.m.

Panel 5 — 10:30–11:45 a.m. (Room 227)

Political Resistance and Memory (Hybrid)
Panel Chair: Arunav Das

Agostina Mercado, “That-May-Still-Be: Photographs of the Disappeared as Vehicles of Resistance in (Post-)Dictatorship Argentina” (USC) [Virtual]
Sarah Aly, “The Visual as Battleground: Graffiti of the Egyptian Revolution, 2011 and Beyond” (USC)
Hao Sun, “Ethical Witnessing Beyond Spectacle: Everyday Life and Historical Trauma in Snow in Midsummer” (USC)

Lunch — 12:30–2:00 p.m.

Panel 6 — 2:00–3:15 p.m. (Room 226)

Technologies of the Visual Across Time
Panel Chair: Jenna Parks

Liv Murray, “Beyond the Art: Identity Expression, Communication, and Interpretation through Visual Cues” (USC)
Jack Dedmondt, “Eternal Memory: Symbolist Cosmology in Leon Bakst’s Painting Terror Antiquus” (USC)
Leah Burney, “Streaming Sermons for Local Community Churches” (GSU)
Litong Zhu, “Nationalistic Visual Youth Culture in Contemporary China through BiliBili Country Humans Animatics” (University of Georgia)

Refreshments — 3:15–3:30 p.m.

Panel 7 — 3:30–4:45 p.m. (Room 226)

Capturing Lived Experiences
Panel Chair: Gisselle Lopez

Rume Kpadamrophe, “Wearing the World: La Sape and Vernacular Cosmopolitanism in Mabanckou’s Bleu-Blanc-Rouge” (USC)
Hind Ashraf Hosny, “The Grime of Egypt: Countervisuality in the Photography of Denis Dailleux” (USC)

Reception — 5:15–7:00 p.m. (Gambrell 429)

This conference is sponsored by the USC CPLT Program and the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures