Students Travel to Boston for English Conference: Photogallery

Three English students, accompanied by Dr. Mark Jones, professor of English, recently flew to Boston, Massachusetts, to participate in the Literatures and Linguistics Undergraduate Colloquium at Gordon College.

Ethan Holmes ’16 of Blue Island, Illinois; Sara Henreckson ’16 of Hillpoint, Wisconsin; and Jaclyn Feddes ’15 of Frankfort, Illinois, presented papers, the content of which varied.

Feddes presented “The Ghosts in the Governess,” an exploration of the ghosts in the novella The Turn of the Screw. The paper was written in her Narrative in Society course this past fall. Holmes shared an argument formulated against basic assumptions within the field of linguistics, starting with the theories of Ferdinand de Saussure. In the paper, he asserts that language is more than an arbitrary social creation.

Henreckson presented “Powerful Meditation: How the Narrator Affects the Experience of the Reader in Jane Eyre and Turn of the Screw.”

While each experienced the conference in a unique way, all three students were equally affected by its benefits. Holmes said that he found gaining familiarity with other parts of the country built a sense of being able to do his work anywhere –an experience that “instilled confidence for future opportunities.”

Feddes said, “The whole experience of traveling to Boston was amazing.”