Hope Fuqua and Samantha Morgan, who are finishing up their bachelor's degrees in English at Middle Georgia State University, will present papers at the prestigious South Atlantic Modern Language Association meeting in early November in Atlanta.
 
Fuqua and Morgan, who will graduate from Middle Georgia State in December, are presenting - along with an undergraduate panelist from the University of Wisconsin, River Falls - as part of the special Undergraduate Research Forum for the panel examining “Shades of the Übermensch: From Gothic Romanticism to Nietzsche and Conrad.”
 
Fuqua's paper is titled “Faustian and Promethean Allusion in Frankenstein.” Morgan's paper is titled “Architectural Othering in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Two MGA faculty are also involved: Dr. Chris Cairney, assistant chair of the English deparment, will chair the session while Dr. Stephen Fuller, associate professor of English, will serve as a moderator.
 
Besides the experience of delivering and then discussing their papers with other SAMLA members, Morgan and Fuqua look forward to attending some of the hundreds of presentations and special activities available over the three days of this year’s conference. MGA's Office of Experiential Learning provided the two with a travel and research grant, and for their experiences they will also be awarded “bronze” level recognition from the same office.
 
Fuqua and Morgan are the first MGA students to complete all the coursework for the Bachelor of Arts in English on the Cochran Campus. The University began offering upper-division English classes on the Cochran Campus several years ago, but students typically had to commute to the Macon Campus to complete the all-important senior capstone course. Fuqua and Morgan changed that when they successfully presented and defended their capstone projects to English faculty on the Cochran Campus.
 
Fuqua, 23, is from Dublin. She wants to teach high school English after graduation and move into a legal career at some point. Morgan, 26, is from Cochran. She plans to work for a while after graduation to save money for graduate school. She hopes to become an English professor.