English student Morgan Henderson presented their paper as the only undergraduate at the 2026 annual conference held by the Tennessee Philological Association. Hosted by Freed-Hardeman University from February 26-28, 2026, Morgan was part of the panel of “Power // Identity // Ecologies” that focused largely on postcolonial identity. Her paper is titled “Protective Nonbinary Performance within the Rape Class: The Gendered Ethnocultural Logic of Capitalism and Exploitation.” Based off of Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and the theories of Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak, Frederic Jameson, and Michel Foucault, this paper incorporates the liminal positions of citizenship, gender, ethnocultural identity, and power dynamics extending from education and wealth. Many thanks to Dr. Jennifer Gray and Dr. Mari Ramler for the support in the writing, editing, and expansion of this paper and proposal!