English PhD candidates Megan Kane and Katelyn Lucas will each present a talk on their dissertations, followed by student response and Q&A. 

Speakers:

Megan Kane | Student respondent: SaraGrace Stefan

"Undergraduate Citations in the Age of ChatGPT”

Contemporary concerns over plagiarism and AI have sparked numerous questions about how, when, and where students cite. Equally crucial, I argue, is exploring “why” students engage with secondary sources. I propose four primary motives for undergraduate citation: sharing information, conducting analyses, making judgments, and asking questions. In this forum, I’ll discuss where these citation motives manifest within a collection of first-year writing portfolios, highlight how they differ between high- and low-scoring papers, and address how understanding the “whys” behind student citations can enhance pedagogy and assessment.  

Katelyn Lucas | Student respondent: Albert Soojong Hahn 

"Ghost River: The Collaborative ‘Historio-Graphic Novel’ as Restorative Indigenous Storytelling"

The 2019 graphic novel Ghost River revisits the 1763 massacres of the inter-tribal community known as Conestoga Indiantown in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, by a mob of White vigilantes known as the Paxton Boys. Scholarship has often focused on the political motivations of these vigilantes and marginalized the perspectives of the Conestoga people and this event's relation to enduring tribal nations today. I discuss how Ghost River uses the graphic novel form to interweave contemporary Native American perspectives with colonial records, revealing new possibilities for restorative historical storytelling and Indigenous representation. I unpack the collaborative creation process behind Ghost River as a crucial component of restorative storytelling, using its triumphs and arc to discuss best practices for future projects of restorative storytelling seeking to consult with the tribal nations whose histories are being represented.