Theme: Bring your best.

This year's event will feature talks by students, alumni, and faculty members on a variety of topics, including heartbreak, radical gamification, social media, and the concept of home explored through art.

100 West College Street
Granville, Ohio, 43023
United States

Diana Mafe

Diana Adesola Mafe is an associate professor of English at Denison University, where she teaches courses in postcolonial, gender, and black studies. Her work tracks the literary and cinematic roles of and for women of color in African and American discourses. Her current research focuses on representations of race and gender in speculative fiction and video games. She has published articles in African American Review, The Journal of Popular Culture, Research in African Literatures, American Drama, English Academy Review, Frontiers, Safundi, Camera Obscura, and African Women Writing Resistance. Her book Mixed Race Stereotypes in South African and American Literature: Coloring Outside the (Black and White) Lines (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) examines the trope of the “tragic mulatto” from a transnational perspective.

Doty Steven

Steven Doty is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Denison University. He teaches courses at all levels of physics and astronomy. His research centers on understanding the processes and environments of stellar birth and death. He also does work on understanding everyday phenomena.

Emily Schultz

Emily Schultz is a senior Educational Studies major here at Denison and has had numerous international study experiences. This past fall, she studied abroad at Oxford University, where she will soon return to complete a master's degree in Education. Her time outside of the United States allowed her to disconnect from and analyze her inner rejection of social media usage and her compulsion to stay ‘connected.’ This led Emily to question: Why are we so compelled to use social media sites when we know that using them has incited problematic social tendencies and behavioral norms? Emily began doing research and interviewing academic professionals in the field of social media marketing. Her distaste for the performativity and self-marketing aspects of social media was met with critique. Emily’s main objective was to learn about why we feel obligated to engage with social media platforms and how we might partake in social media more responsibly.

Jenny Kim

Jenny Kim is a Studio Art major at Denison University, where she graduated in May 2016. She’s currently living in Granville, Ohio, but was born and raised in the city of Seoul in South Korea where her family lives. For one reason or the other, she has moved around quite frequently during her life.

Omar Vargas

Omar Vargas is a Sociology/Anthropology major from East Los Angeles, California. His talk will challenge our established notions of identity and culture in modern society.

Quentin Duroy

Quentin Duroy is an associate professor of economics and has been a faculty member at Denison University since 2004. He also serves on the Environmental Studies and International Studies program committees

Sam Heyman

Sam Heyman graduated from Denison University in 2014 and is an educator in training based out of Nashville, TN. He studied creative writing and Queer Studies in his time at Denison, and in his time away from the hill he’s served as a corps member for City Year Columbus and an instructor at Mathnasium of Green Hills. He is passionate about helping young people unlock their full potential and engaging in the pursuit of a good story. He is also deeply reverent of the power of games.

Sarah Curtin

Sarah Curtin is double majoring in Religion and English Literature as a member of the Denison University class of 2018. She loves flamin' hot cheetos and laughing at her own jokes. She nervously picks off her nail polish and can't sleep with socks on. On campus, she is a Doobie DJ, tour guide, Tri Delt, and editor of Exile. Off campus, she lives in a yellow bungalow with a teal door on the northwest side of Chicago. She loves to meddle in a good way and can nod her head and smile so that everyone feels listened to.

Yangsun Kim

Yangsun Kim is a senior Political Science and International Studies double major and Spanish minor at Denison University. She is from Gwangju, South Korea. She did an exchange student program for five months in Iowa in 2010, and moved to Virginia near Washington D.C., and graduated from Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington. Then, she came to Denison! During the summers of her college years, Yangsun stayed in Kunming, China for two months and taught Korean to Chinese students there, and also did an internship at Network in Solidarity with the people of Guatemala (NISGUA) in San Francisco, California, where she worked for the indigenous rights of Guatemalans. Then, she studied abroad in Alicante, Spain for her entire junior year.