Category: Oral Presentations

8-OP 24: Perception in The Odyssey and The Penelopiad

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Student: Alexandra Bouselli
Advisor: Dr. Kara Stone

In Homer’s The Odyssey and Margret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, Penelope is a dynamic female protagonist at the forefront of societies harsh criticisms. Penelope is forced to endure social influences that are damaging to her perception as well as her reputation as Queen. The influences that are seen within both novels include, gender segregation, feminine silence, and the concept of pious women. Male domination and presence seen within these literary classics is the root of these sociological stereotypes and categorization of women. Therefore, I will conclude how a male-dominated society can interfere with the treatment and perception of Penelope causing not only the readers themselves, but other characters to view her differently.

7-OP 24: Could Artificial Intelligence Destroy the Publishing Industry?

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Student: Taylor Belknap
Advisor: Felicia Soskin

The concern with artificial intelligence continues to grow more urgent each year, with many workers in creative industries fearing their jobs’ eventual redundancy. A GPT, or Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, is a type of artificial intelligence capable of producing text in response to a prompt. Currently, it can perform tasks such as translating languages, generating short stories, and writing essays. With time, the technology could easily push humans out of these jobs, making it of utmost importance that those in power educate themselves and address the issue where need be. This presentation defines what exactly A.I. is, how it may go on to affect the publishing industry, and how people can prepare themselves before it advances further.

6-OP 24: The Natural Strength of Friends-to-Lovers Relationships

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gold medalFirst Place Oral Presentation Category

Student: Evan Bannon
Advisor: Dr. Kara Stone

This presentation analyzes the strength and stability of friends-to-lovers relationships compared to standard romantic relationships. Consulting the realistic development of Achilles and Patroclus’ bond in Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles and research from academic journals and bibliographies, this analysis attempts to demonstrate the stronger and longer lasting bonds of a friends-to-lovers relationship. The importance of early commonalities and familiarity in forming this connection is used to highlight the methodical buildup of a solid foundation for these relationships. Discussions of sacrifice and a confession of love are introduced to display the heightened positive emotions of these relationships that achieve greater heights due to a previously established foundation. An effective use of conflict resolution is also mentioned to demonstrate the positives of its proper usage as well as its easy implementation in friends-to-lovers relationships because of the familiarity forged during friendship. Implications from the evidence gathered suggest that friends-to-lovers relationships have superior strength and stability compared to more common romantic relationships due to the foundation and connections formed in friendship.

5-OP 24: The Witch’s Odyssey: Crone, Mother, Maiden

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decorativeUniversity Libraries’ Excellence in Information Literacy Awardee

Student: River Backman
Advisor: Dr. Kara Stone

Beginning in the 1930s, the witch was portrayed, in literature, as a creepy old Crone, which forged the stereotypes of a witch to this day. With the progression of time, a transformational journey has occurred with the portrayal of the witch changing from the Crone, to the Mother, to the Maiden. The concept of the Maiden, Mother, and Crone is a Wiccan symbolization for their Triple Goddess and represents the common stages of a woman’s life. These three stages are also seen as the Fates in modern fiction, like Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, as well as in the religious beliefs of ancient Greece. I will argue that both ancient and modern depictions of witches have formed a stereotypical image of the witch to modern day society and that the portrayal of witches in media has completed the reverse transformation of Crone, Mother, and Maiden. I will examine how this image has changed in recent years and compare stereotypical portrayals to real-life witchcraft.

4-OP 24: Bringing Asynchronous Tutoring Methods to our Learning and Writing Center

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silver medalSecond Place Tie Oral Presentation Category

decorativeUniversity Libraries’ Excellence in Information Literacy Awardee

Student: Halle O’Neil
Advisor: Dr. Jody Griffith
Students at Penn State Scranton utilize the Learning and Writing Center for various reasons. However, many students are unable to attend appointments during our standard hours due to external obligations. Asynchronous models for tutoring have been implemented into educational institutions for over twenty years and have had positive impacts on students’ performance as well as strengthening the links between learning centers, faculty, and students. This project explores prior research and investigates new methods for students to engage with the Learning and Writing Center in an asynchronous format.

3-OP 24: Mythical Women and Feminism in Modern Retellings

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silver medalSecond Place Tie Oral Presentation Category

Student: Olivia Osborne
Advisor: Dr. Kara Stone

Modern adaptations of myths have become heavily popularized in today’s media due to the focus on giving a voice to underrepresented figures in society- namely, women. Feminist retellings focus on Ancient Greek figures that include the likes of Circe, Penelope, and Thetis. Their stories intertwine themes limitations based on misogynistic gender roles and sexual assault- which are experiences women still face today. This presentation explores why these ancient stories still resonate with a modern audience.

2-OP 24: Trauma in Circe

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Student: Nichols Lowe
Advisor: Dr. Kara Stone

The experiences of characters in stories often mirror real-life events or feelings. Circe is a novel written by Madeline Miller, and it focuses on the life of the witch Circe from Homer’s The Odyssey. Miller’s novel expands on what small glimpse the readers of The Odyssey know of Circe, and Miller gives Circe’s character the depth that was not seen in Homer’s work. She does this by showing the readers Circe’s past, which is full of trauma from her family and from the humans she meets. This paper studies the reactions Circe has to her trauma and analyzes how accurate they are. This is done through research of the symptoms of children who have experienced trauma and of sufferers of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These symptoms were then compared to Circe’s behavior in Miller’s novel. The results show that Circe’s character expresses several symptoms from her childhood trauma and PTSD as described by the sources. The findings support that Circe’s character accurately portrays different types of trauma found in real life. Circe’s character begins to move past this trauma towards the end of Miller’s novel, which is an example of the idea that, although trauma may be difficult to heal from, it is possible to overcome it.

1-OP 24: How Courtship has changed over time in terms of literary viewpoint and what is means in today’s literature and media

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Student: Mahathir Mahbub
Advisor: Dr. Kara Stone

The project is to be a presentation. The presentation would outline the key points that were and will be discussed on the course of this class as well as build on an idea that would be broadly discussed as part of the syllabus of this class. The presentation will talk about how the idea of Courtship has changed over time in terms of literary viewpoint and what is means in today’s literature and media. Additionally, statistics would be presented to further visualize how different factors have shaped courtship today. They key submission components will be :

  • Researching different literature over time that has courtship at its core storytelling component
  • What was depicted of love and courtship over time
  • Statistics that date over time until present day