On April 6th and 7th, English and FTS majors and minors gathered in Waterman and Old Mill to share, celebrate, and discuss selected works at our annual English and FTS Student Symposium. The Symposium is the highlight of our academic year, where students screen films and present abridged versions of their papers and creative writing on dynamic panels. With peers, friends, prospective students, family members, and esteemed faculty in the audience, over 40 English and FTS students presented works of literary criticism, fiction, film and media, poetry, creative nonfiction, and more. We asked two student presenters, English major Emmet Moeykens and FTS major Ella Ahrens, to speak on their experience at the Symposium and to share words of wisdom with students considering participating next year.

Ella Ahrens (she/her) is a nineteen-year-old first-year student double-majoring in Film and Television and Public Communication. At the Symposium, Ahrens shared her short film entitled “Pink!”, which she shot and edited for her Contemporary Cinema class this past fall. Ahrens chose to share this work in particular because she was “proud of how [she] communicated the issue of unattainable female beauty standards experimentally through editing and dramatic acting.” She describes her experience at the English and FTS Symposium as overwhelmingly positive; while she was nervous, being the youngest of the FTS majors to submit a work, the passion that everyone shared for art and filmmaking made her “inspired and more confident during the Q&A portion of the evening.”

Ahrens' advice for English and FTS majors who are considering participating in the Symposium next year is “Just go for it! It’s an honor to be able to share your work with an audience, and even if only one person is moved by your art, then you have achieved all that you need to.”

Emmet Moeykens (he/him) is a 22-year-old senior majoring in English and minoring in History. At the symposium, Moeykens presented an original essay titled I Met a Man Who Was Not There: The Craft of Character in Wolf Hall. This was not an essay Moeykens wrote for a class; rather, he was “inspired to write it after reading the novel Wolf Hall and getting so invested in the characters who were real people, so [he] wanted to talk about the process of turning historical figures into novel characters!” Moeykens describes his experience as the Symposium as “amazing,” saying he “love[s] getting to be in an environment with so many people who are passionate about English.” Moeykens also spoke on his experience preparing for the Symposium, stating that it was “fun, especially rehearsing [his] paper, because [he] had participated [his] sophomore year and knew what to expect.”

To students considering participating in the Symposium, Emmet Moeykens says, “I think the symposium thrives on having as many diverse voices as possible, so it is always great to see more people interested! I just want to reiterate how fun it has been to have an opportunity to be creative and explore my own interests within the field of English. I also love getting to meet other English and FTS students!”