Every year, Archer holds its “Literature &…” Conference, where students from Los Angeles schools congregate at Archer to share literary analyses and creative works.
This is English teacher Kristin Taylor’s third year as faculty coordinator.
“‘Literature &…’ is a really unique high school literature conference. We invite students from all over Los Angeles to submit papers that connect literature to something else like pop culture, or music, or history, or philosophy, all kinds of opportunities,” Taylor said.
The conference receives many more submissions than there are slots, according to its website, so it can be difficult to determine the lineup.
“We get a lot of different proposals from all the different schools and we pick the strongest proposals,” said Taylor.
“I put all of the papers that we’ve chosen out on the floor and I look for patterns. So I think ‘Oh these three papers have to do with gender.’ or ‘those three papers have to do with overcoming adversities,’ and I make panels based on that, and my goal for each panel is to have a variety of schools represented,” she said.
This year, the student coordinator is senior Sophie Frank ’15. Frank said, “I wanted to be the student coordinator this year because even though I wasn’t able to attend the ‘Literature &…’ conference last year since I was in Vermont [studying at the Mountain School] I kept thinking about how much I enjoyed hearing everyone’s presentations in 10th grade,” she said.
Taylor and Frank have similar goals about the conference. “I hope that people will have the opportunity to talk about literature in a fun environment with people whom they don’t encounter every day,” said Frank.
“My goal every year is to get people excited about literature, and to bring schools together in a non-competitive environment where they can celebrate and enjoy each other’s work as opposed to always seeing each other as competition,” said Taylor
Eight Archer students are presenting this year: Tracey Thompson ’16, Eva Bombeck ’15, Emerson Krull ’15, Nicole Schneider ’15, Angelica Richardson ’15, Shishi Shomloo ’15, Yasmeen Namazie ’15 and Emily Ward ’15.
Here is the tentative list of panels according to an email sent to the Archer community:
- “Mind’s Eye:” pieces exploring literature through a psychoanalytic lens
- “Place:” pieces examining literary connections to our natural and urban environments
- “En-gender-ing Conversation:” pieces examining literature through a gender lens
- “A New Lens:” pieces deconstructing the definition of “normal” with regards to literature
- “Out of This World:” pieces exploring the literature of fairy tale, fantasy, and science fiction
- “Power:” pieces examining the notion of power in literature
“Literature &…” will occur on Wednesday Feb. 25 in the library. Grades 10 and above may attend during their English classes or free periods.
The full program can be viewed here.
