English graduate student Clark Fennimore presented at the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Conference: Boundless. Read more about his experiences below! 

In Mid-October, Millersville University hosted the Boundless Conference in cooperation with the other universities of the PA State System of Higher Education. It specifically involved the Humanities departments. Many panels included presentations by students from these universities, including our own. I was placed on one of the first panels to present. I presented with two other students on topics related to popular culture.

I spoke for about twenty minutes. My own presentation was about American literature from the 1920s and 30s that influenced the later development of superhero comics. Because it was based on research I did for a much more extensive paper in a class I took, I had to narrow down the topic. The paper itself had sections about characters as influences and about genre characteristics developed in the era. I limited my presentation to the characters. Most famous among the characters were Zorro and Tarzan.

This was a rewarding experience in public speaking. I consider it as a short introduction to the format of lecturing. I enjoyed it and hope to have much more experience of this type. I believe that conducting and presenting research are important skills worth practicing, particularly since I am in graduate school, studying English. I consider them important for people in any kind of graduate program. They increase professional credibility.

Something else worth mentioning about the conference is that I listened to many presentations on different topics. This shows great academic diversity within the humanities. There were topics from literature and history among other areas. A major theme of the conference was the interest of humanities in many areas of life. I am honored to have presented in a conference advocating unity within such an area of academics.

-Clark Fennimore