Three English majors recently presented their research at Seton Hall University’s annual Undergraduate English Literature Conference, which featured selected students from several regional universities addressing the topic of “Returning to Form: Genre, Style, and Structure in Literary Studies.”
Breanna Guinta ’25 presented a portion of her departmental honors thesis on Nathaniel Parker Willis, a New York newspaper correspondent present in Paris in 1832 during the Second Cholera Pandemic. Postal disruptions caused the newspaper to publish his reports out of chronological order, and when read in this order of publication, his reports depict him as largely unaffected by the pandemic. However, Guinta used internal evidence in his reports, like references to holidays and weather, to re-sequence the reports in the order that he wrote them. When read in this compositional order, Willis’s reports suggest that he was traumatized by his pandemic experience and that he displays symptoms of Acute Stress Disorder.
Meghan Reilly ’25 presented a portion of her award-winning Honors School thesis on Judith Ortiz Cofer’s book “Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood.” Different scholars and reviewers have classified Cofer’s book as being in different categories of fiction and nonfiction, and the book includes transcriptions and translations of some Puerto Rican speech genres, so readers may question how to read the book. However, Reilly argues against a definite classification of the book’s genre and instead for generic indeterminacy, which accurately depicts Cofer’s bicultural identity construction and bilingual language usage.
English major Justine Bouton presented on her departmental honors thesis in progress, “Bog Queen Medbh: The Literature and Preservation of Women’s Memory during and after the Troubles.” Bouton’s presentation focused on the title poem from Irish poet Medbh McGuckian’s 2001 collection “Drawing Ballerinas.” Inspired by artist Henri Matisse’s response to the Second World War and by the 1972 death of a classmate in a bombing, the poem uses fragmentation, distortion, and visual misalignment to register the wounds of patriarchal constraints on female embodiment, and to transform these wounds into sites of resistance. Bouton contrasts these features with those of “The Bog Queen,” a poem by Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney.
The students felt they benefited professionally from their conference experience. Reilly reflected, “I was able to answer comments about my research project more broadly and consider some audience perspectives for further expansion and revision. It was great to hear my peers speak about their research and to have the opportunity to hear about other students’ research from different universities.” Guinta added that after she presented, “There was great interest in my topic, especially from a few professors. I attended multiple panels. The presentations were intriguing, and everyone was so supportive and encouraging of each other.”
Bouton’s conference presentation, her first, was very well received. Over a twenty-minute discussion period solely about her presentation, she answered eight questions from students and professors interested in her topic. “That was honestly one of the best days of my life. I got home and started researching literary conferences because I want to go to more,” she said. “I truly will treasure that day forever.”
The three students’ academic advisor, Stanley Blair, praised them for extending their professional development beyond their major requirements and beyond the classroom. Guinta and Reilly will begin graduate study in the fall, and Bouton intends to do so next year.