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Graduate Colloquium Aids Students’ Professional Development
The English Graduate Organization (EGO) recently sponsored “Re-reading the Canon,” the fall quarter graduate colloquium which gave students the opportunity to present their work to faculty and peers, and receive feedback. The presenters, who were chosen after submitting abstracts of their work, were: Jeremy Carmack and his paper “The Trouble with Latimer: Cognition and Narrator Unreliability in George Eliot’s The Painted Veil”; Nicholas Hetrick and “Mounting Snowdon: Queering the Growth of the Poet’s Mind”; and Ryan Judkins’ “Papjayez and pervynes: Symbolic Identity in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.”
Each presenter spoke for about twenty minutes. A group discussion followed the presentations in which students and faculty in attendance could ask questions, and refreshments were donated by Camille’s Café. Presenters and audience members alike seemed pleased with the results.
“I thought this fall’s colloquium was impressive on a number of levels,” said Marissa Cull, member of the EGO steering committee, who attended the colloquium. “Each presenter was an absolute standout, with interesting work and engaging presentation skills. And I think the success of their presentations was demonstrated by the lively discussion they generated—we had at least twenty minutes of Q & A, which is more than you sometimes get at a standard academic conference”
Presenter Ryan Judkins says the opportunity to present gives students “a chance to shake loose some jitters in front of a ‘practice’ audience before you have to go do the real thing. You have a great chance to talk about your work, and people are actually listening.”
“For all the fear that goes into exposing an idea that might be toppled by one well-placed and incisive question, participating in an event like this is absolutely worth it,” said presenter Nicholas Hetrick. “I’m glad our department puts events like this on and recommend reading at the colloquium to anyone who wants to give her/his work a try before submitting it for publication or another conference.”
