Three students presented professional papers Oct. 27-29 at the Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association Convention, which they attended with Associate Professor of English Rebecca Carpenter.

“All three students delivered professional, well researched, interesting papers that compared favorably to some of the graduate students’ and professors’ papers we heard,” says Carpenter, who mentored students Meghan Carlton ’08, Eric Danforth ’08 and Christine Frieman ’08 in her honors seminar “Feminism, Women's Lives, and the 21st Century.”

English major Carlton presented her paper titled “‘Zed's Dead, Baby’: Homoeroticism in ‘Reservoir Dogs’ & ‘Pulp Fiction,’” as part of a panel on film.

“I had originally written this paper for my freshman seminar “Gender, Literature, and Culture,” says Carlton. “It is a rush to present something you have worked so hard on in front of an audience that understands where you are coming from. This experience confirmed for me that I want to pursue graduate school.”

As part of a panel on Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian and Transgendered Culture, Danforth ’08 presented a paper titled “The Obstacles the Transgendered Community Faces in Assimilating into the Feminist Movement.”

“With all of the sudden Hollywood attention to transgendered people (‘Transamerica’ and other films), I wanted to see how the transgendered population fit in with the feminist movement,” says Danforth. “I am really proud of my work and loved sharing it with people.”

A Social Work and self-designed Gender Studies major, Danforth is active in Amnesty International, Allies (Gay, Lesbian & Bi-Sexual Alliance) and the Women’s Issues Group.

Christine Frieman ’08 wrote her paper “Pro-Anorexia Websites” for a panel on Internet Culture.

“I was curious as to whether these websites were still in use, and when I started researching, I found that they certainly are,” says Frieman. “I will continue to do research in this area.  There is virtually no research done on it as of yet, so it's interesting to come to conclusions that may not be supported by scholarly research yet because the topic is so new.”

The History and self-designed Gender Studies double major is head of the Women’s Issues group and serves as a peer mentor for the first-year seminar “Gender, Literature, Culture.”

The American Culture Association, founded in 1979, is an international organization dedicated to exploring all manifestations of the cultures of the Americas. The Popular Culture Association was founded in the late 1960s to study material culture, popular music, movies and comics around the world.