USM Gulf Park Students Present Papers at Prestigious Conferences

Five students majoring in English at The University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Park campus in Long Beach presented papers recently at two prestigious annual conferences.

Senior Holly Rutledge, of Long Beach, presented her non-fiction piece “There's No Place Like Home” at the Sigma Tau Delta Conference for the Southern Region held Oct. 2-3 at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Fla.

Seniors Heather Miller, of Long Beach; Shelby Payne, of Noxapater, Miss.; Megan Wilkinson, of Ocean Springs, Miss.; and Rachel Smith, of Diamondhead, Miss., presented their papers together as part of a panel discussion at the 2015 Gulf South History and Humanities Conference held Oct. 1-3 in Natchez, Miss.

Miller presented “Fragmented Language and Structure in Coming Through Slaughter”; Payne presented “The Consolation Confederacy”; Smith presented “Live! Live! Live!: An Insight into Gay Liberation in New Orleans Through Literature”; and Wilkinson presented “The Effect of Carnivalesque: An Analysis of Emotional Freedom in the New Orleans Couple.”

All five students are members of the University's chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society. Wilkinson serves as president; Payne serves as vice-president; Rutledge serves as historian, and Miller serves as public relations officer.