Lit-con: The BYU English Symposium

This past week, the English department of BYU hosted an Symposium to showcase the work and research of BYU English students (and a couple honored guest). Like most symposiums, there were many different sessions covering a variety of different topics from Joyce's "The Dead" to book signings. This is the second year that I have attended and I find it a real treat to attend. I was only able to go to 2 different sessions and each one was really interesting.

I first watched a showcase of winners of a writing contest. These students had recently taken the writing 150 class and entered their papers into this contest. The pieces ranged from personal narratives to research papers. They only had 5 minutes to present their papers, but I was impressed with their topics and how well they were able to articulate their thoughts and the complexity of their subject material. Speech impediments, sexual harassment, and nuclear war were just a few of the themes the students chose to write on and they were all compelling.

The second session I viewed was a number of different presentations on new  contextual findings in "The Book of Mormon." These students either took, or were currently taking, the "Literature of the LDS People" class that is provided on campus, a class I took last year (I highly recommend it). These students presented on different things that they found while studying "The Book of Mormon," including how hardening and softening of hearts are not opposites, similarities between Enos and Alma, and comparisons between the dream of the tree of life and Christ's death. I love this type of research and I am thinking about doing more of it, maybe making a career out of it, so it was really cool to see their research. With each presentation, the thought kept coming to me that Joseph Smith was not the author of "The Book of Mormon," and that it is a divine book.

I enjoyed my time at the symposium and I came away with a stronger desire to keep writing and studying, because there is no end to what you can find in the written word.