English Undergraduate Conference

I went to Panel 1, "A Research Identity: Four Fictional Females" and Panel 4, "Blackberry Picking", "Fan Fiction Ruined My Life", and "Depictions of the American Woman in Desperate Housewives". For Panel 1, four undergraduate English Education/English majors talked about papers they wrote that dealt with fictional female characters in different pieces of literature. The Color Purple, Beauty and the Beast, The Awakening, and Howl's Moving Castle were the four pieces of literature. Each student talked about why they chose the characters they did and how they went about analyzing them. They walked us through the steps they took to write their papers--first they chose their topics, then they went to the library to find sources, then they wrote their first drafts and had them peer edited, and so on. They also talked about the difficulties they had writing the papers. I liked how they all said that they had fun writing their papers because they wrote them about topics that interested them--they got to choose their own topics and theses. It is hard to write a lengthy paper about something you hate or are not interested in.

For Panel 4, three undergraduate students also talked about papers they had written. One student talked about how women are portrayed in the show Desperate Housewives. This show makes being a housewife seem better than many people think it is. The show makes being a housewife seem like a respectable job, which it is. Another girl talked about how she pretty much became addicted to "Fan Fiction"--writing fan-based fictional stories on a website for viewers and other writers to read. She wrote about pirates, telling us that Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies encouraged her to write. She became so busy with writing Fan Fiction that she did not practice enough for an audition to be accepted into IUP's music education program, so she was not accepted. She then wrote about how Fan Fiction ruined her life. She is an English major now. Another girl wrote about the poem "Blackberry Picking". She described how it is dangerous to give in to temptations. I liked "Fan Fiction Ruined My Life". Her narrative was moderately entertaining and well written.