Student Presentations

English & Creative Writing Majors Presenting Papers at National Conferences

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2023

Sigma Tau Delta Convention
Denver, CO: March 29 - April 1

          Parker Schwartz (ENG/SEC EDU '23)
          "Is Maus Appropriate for Young Readers?"

          Sydney Lauer (ENG/SEC EDU  '23)
          "Not Your Cookie-Cutter Fairy Tale: Breaking the Rescuer Paradigm in Shrek


2022

Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Humanities Research Symposium 
Online: April 8 - 10

          Shannon Gribbins (CW '22)
          "The LGBTQ Subtext of Surf's Up: Progressive Understanding in Children's Animation"

          Sydney Lauer (ENG/SEC EDU  '23)
          "What a Girl Wants: Using the Sonnet to Discuss Female Sexuality and Desire"

          Parker Schwartz (ENG/SEC EDU '23)
          "Transphobia in Shrek: an Anti-Feminist Attack"


2017

Popular Culture Association Conference (PCA)
San Diego, CA: April 12 - 16

PANEL TITLE: Social Media, Deconstruction and Education

          Caroline Conroy (ENG/SEC EDU '17)
          "Updating Waverley:  Colonial Deconstruction in Outlander"

          Kaitlin Garcia (ENG/SEC EDU  '18)
          "Perpetuating the Inferiority of Native Hawaiians:  A Postcolonial Interpretation of Lilo and Stitch"

PANEL TITLE: Representations and Remembrances from The Hunger Games to the Holocaust

          Nicole Elleni Andreson (CW/ENG  '19)
          "The Hunger Games:  A "Marxist" Film for the Capitalist Agenda

          Courtney Dell'Agnese (CW  '19)
          "Exposing False Hope in The Hunger Games"


2016

Popular Culture Association Conference (PCA)
Seattle, WA: March 22 - 25

PANEL TITLE: Sex, Gender, Class and Revolution

          Jacquelyn Voghel (ENG '18)
          "Sinking Capitalist and Classist Values: James Cameron's Titanic"


2015

Popular Culture Association Conference (PCA)
New Orleans, LA: April 1 - 4

PANEL TITLE: "Does Fantasy Literature of Popular Culture Define Our Reality? An Examination of Realism, Women, and Evil in J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter'"

  • Tess Schuster ('15)
    "'Books! And cleverness... friendship and bravery': J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Makes Way for a New Kind of Female Hero"
  • Cayla McCarthy ('15)
    "Identifying the Evil Within"
  • Hannah Evans ('15)
    "Reality within Fantasy: The Purpose of Storytelling"

Sigma Tau Delta International Convention
Albuquerque, NM: March 18 - 21

PANEL TITLE: "Imperialism, Colonialism and Beyond"

  • Amy Starvish ('16)
    "Colonial Discourse in A Bug's Life"
  • Abigail DeVeuve ('16)
    "Anti-imperialism in A Bug's Life"

2013

48th Annual Comparative Literature Conference (CSULB)
Long Beach, CA: April 25 - 26

PANEL TITLE: Examing the Popular and its Popularity/Literary and Popular

  • Kathrine Torres ('13)
    "Finding Beauty and Wonder in Imperfection: An Analysis of Wabi in Howl's Moving Castle"

Popular Culture and American Culture Associations Conference
Washington DC: March 27 - 30

PANEL TITLE: "Deconstructing the Popular"

  • Kaleigh Wilson ('13) (Panel Chair)
    "'How Do You Like Them Apples?': Good Will Hunting's Alternative Path to Success"
  • Danielle Reagan ('13)
    "Once Upon a Time: Psychological Benefits of Fiction and the Narrative Effect on the Depiction of Reality"
  • Kathrine Torres ('13)
    "Nausica's Transnational Resonance"
  • Stephanie Coyle ('14)
    "'We Should Totally Just Stab Caesar!': Marxism in Mean Girls"

2012

Popular Culture and American Culture Associations Conference
Boston: April 11 - 14

PANEL TITLE: "Deconstructing Ideological Tension in Wall-E, Drive, There Will Be Blood and The X-files."

  • Ashley Aliengena ('12) (Panel Chair)
    “’Believe to Understand’: Exploding the Binary between Science and Religion in The X-Files”
  • Alexandra Artiano ('12)
    "Drive: The Deconstruction of the Modern Hero"
  • Elizabeth Perreca ('12)
    "Revealing the Negative Ramifications of Capitalism: WALL-E as an ideological foil for Capitalism"
  • Caitlin Studley ('12)
    “I’m Finished!”: The Collapsing Battle between Religion and Captialism in There Will Be Blood."

2011

Popular Culture and American Culture Associations Conference
San Antonio: April 20 - 23

PANEL TITLE "We Need to Talk: A Study in Relationships and Contemporary Popular Culture"

  • Cory Alix ('11) (Panel Chair)
    "We’re All Real Emotional: Destructive Male Bonding in Reservoir Dogs"
  • Nicole Foti ('11)
    "Pain, Adversity, and Le Plaisir du Texte: A Study of Female Suffering as a Rhetorical Device in Pop Culture"
  • Daniel Hoskins ('11)
    "Deconstructing Nothing: Finding Meaning in ‘Seinfeld’"
  • Lisa Pellecchia ('11)
    "I'm Flesh and Blood, But not Human: Social Ostracism in The Vampire Chronicles"

2010

9th Annual Undergraduate Shakespeare Conference
Worcester, MA: April 24

PANEL TITLE: "Truth, Troth, and Brothel"

  • Heather Berkeley ('11)
    "Humanizing Shylock: The Ring Motif in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice"

Popular Culture and American Culture Associations Conference
St. Louis, MO: March 31 - April 3

PANEL TITLE: "Literature, Rhetoric, Architecture and Urban Space"

  • Nicole Foti ('11)
    "Obsessive Romance and Fatal Attraction: Bella Swan as a Symbol of Patriarchy"
  • Kurt Schlagenhauf ('10)
    "Rhetorical Analysis of the Beta Male"

Sigma Tau Delta International Convention
St. Louis, MO: March 17-20

PANEL TITLE: "Romanticism and/or Early 19th Century British Literature"

  • Nicole Foti ('11)
    "The Rejection of Stoicism in Jane Eyre"

PANEL TITLE: "20th/21st Century American Literature"

  • Ashley Lago ('10)
    "Miles Davis Meets Toni Morrison in a "'Round Midnight" Beloved"

PANEL TITLE: "Popular Culture"

  • Kurt Schlagenhauf ('10)
    "Rhetorical Analysis of the Beta Male"

Ashley Lago ('10)
"Literary Publishing and the Creative Student Mind"
Susquehanna University Undergraduate Conference
Selinsgrove, PA
February 15, 2010

Logan Tarr ('11)
"Constructivism for the Creative Student Mind"
Susquehanna University Undergraduate Conference
Selinsgrove, PA
February 15, 2010