English Conference

Session # 1 - Early Cases of Media Negatively Influencing Behavior

In this session, there were 3 different speakers that each gave a separate presentation.
The first presentation was about a British Literature poem, " The Goblin Market." Before this presentation , I had never heard of this poem. I learned that it was written in the Victorian era. The poem tells of two sisters, Laura and Lizzie , that hear the goblins crying to them to come buy their fruit. Lizzie does not give in to the goblins' requests but her sister Laura is quite interested. Laura has no money, and in exchange for the goblins' fruit she gives a lock of her long blond hair. After this, Laura becomes infatuated with the fruit and longs for more. Laura looks for the goblins but can not seem to find them to buy more of their fruit, while Lizzie still sees the goblins trying to convince her to take some of the fruit they have to offer. Religious symbolism is used in this poem, by the use of "forbidden fruit" tempting the young maidens.

The second presentation was about Sherlock Holmes' " The Man with the Twisted Lip" and it's connections to "Opium Eater." This presentation covered the mental and physical addictions that a man has to the drug, opium. The story is split into two sections , phase 1 and phase 2. In phase 1 , the character speaks of all the wonderful results he has due to his consumption of opium. In phase 2, the character speaks of the horrible things his addiction has brought him and the remorse he feels due to his use and addiction.

The third presentation was about the portrayal of women in horror films. The speaker covered films such as Dracula, Phantom of the Opera, Misery, Silence of the Lambs, and films produced by Hitchcock himself. Although some roles played by women throughout history are those of power, many are focused on the sexual being that the woman represents. In earlier films, the woman always seems to be the damsel in distress, the weaker of the two sexes, and the dependent that "needs" a man to make her life enjoyable. In films such as Misery and Silence of the Lambs, the woman roles covered are that of power. If a woman is in power according to the speaker, she is often considered to be psychotic or obsessive of the men in the movies. If a woman is present usually plays the victim and if she is actually part of the plot , in a progressive way, she may be hyper-sexualized to still bring attraction to her feminine side.


Session # 2 The Writing Center

This session was held as a panel discussion by 5 employees of our campus Writing Center. As part of the Writing Center's services to students , they offer tutoring sessions where a student may bring in a paper and receive help in writing it , making their thoughts more clear, etc. The Writing Center employs 11 tutors and also has 2 volunteer workers. For a successful tutoring session both the tutor and the student must be active listeners, a set amount of working time often helps in decreasing the chance of either the student or tutor burning themselves out on work, and of course participation from both. Some signs of an unsuccessful tutoring session may be that the student is in the Writing Center just because their professor offers extra credit for a tutoring session or refers them to the Writing Center. You can't possibly bring your paper to the Writing Center without any specific troubles in mind.

One "service" that the Writing Center is used for by students seems to be copy editing. This is not an actual service that the Writing Center offers, but students expect this because punctuation/ grammar seem to be a major concerns when writing papers. Instead of offering this as a service, the Writing Center provides workshops for professors to bring their classes to, and the Writing Center is now offering workshops that students may individually sign up for. The Writing Center tutors are willing to help with thesis statements, brainstorming/expansion of ideas, and minimal grammar/ punctuation errors.

For an overall fulfilling trip to the Writing Center, a student may want to proofread their papers thoroughly for punctuation and grammatical errors, prepare specific questions for the tutors to help with, and bring text resources that may be helpful in preparing the polished piece of work.