James May
Chief Copy Editor
For nearly a decade, the English department has hosted an annual series of I.S. presentation panels, showcasing a selection of theses in progress and forcing seniors to a point of comprehension with their projects. This year’s series kicked off yesterday with “Literature Against Erudition,” featuring presentations by seniors Leah Zavaleta, Tess Henthorne and Brittany Previte. The presenters, though stressed about encroaching deadlines and nightmarish visions of Tootsie Rolls, welcomed the opportunity to put their I.S.s on critical display (note: no presenter actually confessed to visions of Tootsie Rolls, but we can pretty much assume it’s happening). “Within the context of the editing and revising process, presenting helps to facilitate the project as a whole,” said Henthorne. “It allowed me to synthesize the project’s content and structure in a succinct way.”
The panels give seniors the chance to receive comments and criticism outside of their weekly I.S. meetings, a helpful way to tackle final questions about project clarity.
Zavaleta, an English and anthropology double major, was particularly grateful for this, adding, “It helped me think of how to concisely say what my project is because I’m combining two disciplines, but am only speaking to one of them right now.”
Unsurprisingly, the panels showcase the extreme diversity of topics in the department. For example, Zavaleta’s project takes a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding how Basque folklore maintains cultural identity, while Previte’s discusses the influence of late Victorian children’s serial literature on Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.
“The panels really capture the scope of different projects in the department, particularly for underclassmen,” said Henthorne. “They display the kinds of close-reading people make, especially in non-traditional ways, and how people deliver that information in a presentation.”
“Plus,” she added, “it helps me prepare for a potential I.S. symposium presentation, which I may or may not have been thinking about for the last three and a half years.”
Haven’t we all, Tess. Haven’t we all.
The department has two more panels scheduled before spring break, both of which will be held in Kauke 244 and are open to the public. On Feb. 25 at 4 p.m., seniors Michael Hatchett, Tori Horvath and Ananya Shrestha will present their creative writing projects. Hatchett is composing a series of autobiographical comic essays. Horvath will present a poetry collection about the medical and social treatment of chronic illness. Shrestha is writing a collection of essays and short stories about Nepal and Nepalese immigrants in the United States.
The final panel will be held on March 10 at 11 a.m., and will include interdisciplinary presentations by Ben Taylor, Dani Gagnon and myself. Taylor’s I.S. examines utopias and dystopias in politics and theory, taking as a case study democratic norms in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Gagnon’s project is a creative nonfiction collection that curates narratives shared at Trinity United Church of Christ’s breakfast program. My project utilizes music theory analysis as a guide to interpreting one of the episodes from James Joyce’s Ulysses.