Dr. Shannon McRae's English Senior Seminar students will be presenting their final work at the Chautauqua County History Exhibit through Thursday, May 12 in Reed Library.
There will be a presentation on Tuesday, May 10, from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. in the Japanese Garden Room at the library.
As the major research component of the English capstone experience, the seniors have worked most of the semester researching topics they chose themselves. Topics include: Stella Florine Broadhead, founder of "The Fortnightly Literary Club in Jamestown in 1894; the Brooks Locomotive Works in Dunkirk, how the railroad transformed Silver Creek; the campaign to declare the Barcelona Lighthouse a national landmark; shipwrecks in Chadwick Bay, the causes of Lake Erie pollution in the 1960s; the first Gerry Rodeo of 1945; the Dewitttville Poorhouse; the Erie People, how the 112th regiment was formed to fight the Civil War; and Reuben Fenton and how he infuriated everybody during the Civil War.
Images and artifacts the students collected as part of this project will be on display at the Reed Library as part of the exhibit.
Dr. McRae noted that the projects have allowed the students to apply the skills learned as English majors: textual analysis, narrative structure, engaging with and formulating arguments, writing for an audience, to real-world situations and events outside the classroom. Encouraged to use Internet sources as little as possible, the students have delighted in discovering original materials through the generous and skilled assistance of Reed Library librarians and archivists, as well as other librarians, historians and experts in the larger Chautauqua County community.
