Wheeling Jesuit University senior Lauren Lief earned second place for her efforts at the 15th Annual West Virginia Undergraduate Literature Symposium on Saturday, Feb. 17 at West Virginia University.
Lief's winning topic was, "The Common Altar of Wealth: The Ironic Use of Religion and Morality in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth." A native of Wheeling, she is the daughter of Dr. Jonathan and Barbara Lief of Wheeling.
Wheeling Jesuit senior Marcie Panutsos, also presented a paper at the symposium, entitled: "Harry Potter and the Ambiguous Nature of Morality."
Held in the Mountainlair, the daylong symposium got its start on the campus of Wheeling Jesuit University in the early 1990s when now-retired English professor Dr. Paul Orr and current English professor Dr. Joe Brumble, agreed that their students needed an opportunity to meet and present their senior essays to other English majors.
"In general West Virginia students suffer from a sense of inferiority so a symposium like this helped to dispel this attitude," Dr. Orr said recently, when asked about the prestigious undergraduate competition. "On our campus, English majors were a small, self-conscious minority. Taking part in a statewide symposium, reassured them that there are other quite normal people who also like literature like they do."
"The experience of presenting their student work before a student audience of their peers, provided incentive to do their best work and when they achieved their best, it proved that they could hold their own and excel in a forum of this type," he added. Dr. Orr taught at Wheeling Jesuit for 40 years and recalls that Wheeling Jesuit hosted the symposium for its initial two years.
He added that it's nice to note that the winner of the 1994 symposium was current Marshall University English professor, Dr. Janet Badia, who graduated from Wheeling Jesuit in 1994. She went on to earn her master's and doctorate. Dr. Badia actually had a current student in the 2007 competition, Christina Belcher.
For the past 13 years, the literature symposium has been sponsored by the West Virginia University Department of English and the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. WVU's involvement began with professor Rudy Almasy, then chair of the English department who welcomed the chance to showcase undergraduate research across the state and assumed the symposium's coordination after Wheeling Jesuit relinquished control. Almasy is currently associate dean of development for WVU's Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.
This year the symposium featured papers from five different West Virginia schools, plus comments from keynote speaker, professor Jay Dolmage of West Virginia University who spoke on, "Thinking Bodies: Normality Is So Boring."
Other 2007 student winners and their colleges include: First Place: Laura Pfeffer, WVU; Third Place: Christina Belcher, Marshall University and Honorable Mentions: LeAnn Davis, Concord University and Rose Simis, WVU. Awards included a monetary prize of $100 for first place, $75 for second and $50 for third.
