By Gary Glancy
gary.glancy@shj.com
Spartanburg Herald-Journal
Published: Friday, March 27, 2009

(PHOTO: Clockwise from top left: Meredith Jones, Wofford; Lyn Radke, Wofford; Elizabeth Roberds, Converse; Rebecca Rawls, Converse; Lauren Holland, Wofford; Caitlin Buxton, Wofford; Jessica Miller, Wofford; and Erin Cramer, Converse, participated in the eighth annual Conference on Gender at Wofford College on Thursday. Photo by Gary Glancy / Spartanburg Herald-Journal.)

For Converse College student Elizabeth Roberds, writing her senior thesis was the easy part.

On Thursday, Roberds presented a shortened version of her research paper, “Puritanism in the Salem Witch Trials,” in front of a filled Montgomery Room at Wofford College. Roberds was one of nine students from Converse, Wofford and the University of South Carolina Upstate whose papers were chosen for the eighth annual Conference on Gender.

“It’s exciting,” Roberds said as she awaited her turn to speak. “It’s the first time I’ve presented outside the classroom. I’m real shocked to have been accepted.”

The conference originated from the gender studies program at Wofford, and this year Wofford collaborated with the gender studies programs at Converse and USC Upstate as part of those schools’ Women’s History Month celebration.

Each student had 10 minutes to present her paper, all related to issues of gender and written in the context of an academic requirement. The topics ran the gamut from “Yoko Ono’s Koan” (Kenneth Norsworthy of USC Upstate) to “The Role of Mother and Family in Nazi Germany” (Caitlin Buxton of Wofford) to “Pornography and Schematic Processing: A Psychoanalytic Approach” (Lauren Holland of Wofford).

“Diversity is important, so we wanted to try and represent as many disciplines and as many schools as we could,” said Karen Goodchild, a coordinator of the conference and Wofford’s gender studies program with Sally Hitchmough. “But we were also looking for a paper that has a strong thesis related to gender that we thought could present an argument within just the 10 minutes that the student has to present it.”

Other students whose papers were chosen were Wofford’s Jessica Miller and Lyn Radke, and Rebecca Rawls and Erin Cramer of Converse. Meredith Jones of Wofford also presented her poem, “Its Own Egg.”