Four students from Tusculum College’s English Department and one student from the Mathematics and Computer Science Department were presenters on Friday, March 25, at the Blue Ridge Undergraduate Research Conference, held at Maryville College.
English students presenting were Elizabeth McDonnell, a senior from Memphis; Abigail Wolfenbarger, a junior from New Market; Kenneth Hill, a junior from White Pine, and David Roncskevitz, a senior from Franklin. Elizabeth Wright, a sophomore from Powell, Tenn., represented the Mathematics and Computer Science Department.
All of the English papers presented were the product of a literary theory class the students took with Dr. Sheila Morton, assistant professor of English, and were focused on an interpretation of Agatha Christie’s “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.” Each paper employed different theoretical lenses in their study.
“The variety of their arguments illustrate just how much literary theory can enrich our reading of a single text, offering various and compelling readings that yet ring true,” said Morton. “In her paper, for example, McDonnell approaches the text as a new historicist, drawing parallels to other discourses contemporary with Christie’s novel, most notably film noir. Though very different in their realization, she argues, both are propelled by similar social feelings of isolation and alienation.”
Both Wolfenbarger and Hill approach the novel from the standpoint of reader response critics, Wolfenbarger arguing that the failure of the novel to surprise many twenty-first century readers is due in part to our changing “horizon of expectations” that has grown to accommodate the idea of a dishonest first-person narrator. Hill, by contrast, focuses on the shifting role of the “narrattee,” a role the reader is asked to play as they enact the drama of the novel.
Roncskevitz’s presentation showed how he deconstructs the novel, likening the piecing of “clues” in whodunit novels to the linguistic piecemealing of everyday language.
According to Morton, the panel was a huge success, garnering considerable praise and attention, including an email from the coordinator of the conference.
Wright, who is majoring in mathematics with a concentration in computer science, made a presentation about “Secure Programming in Python” during the conference.
Python is a commonly used program language and in her presentation, Wright focused on ways to make programs written in the language more secure. She explored the use of pre-conditions and post-conditions on each function to make the determination if it is functioning properly. She also investigated the use of loop invariants, which are logical properties relating to the data that should be true at each repetition of the statements within the program as it loops.
The Blue Ridge Undergraduate Research Conference is designed to encourage undergraduates in colleges in the Appalachian region to conduct research projects by providing a high-quality, low pressure forum for presentations. More than 80 undergraduate students from eight colleges in East Tennessee and Kentucky are expected to attend the 2011 conference. Approximately 60 separate presentations are planned.