For the first time, the LSU Discover Day Undergraduate Research Conference opened its doors for outside universities, and some of our fellow Warhawks attended to represent ULM. The ULM team had six student presenters accompanied by Professor Will Rogers, assistant professor of the English department.

The conference took place in Baton Rouge this past Tuesday and had over 200 attendees from schools all over Louisiana. Along with oral presentations, it also had visual aided presentations, an art exhibition and a keynote speaker from the LSU FACES lab.

Each presenter had 12 minutes to present, followed by a three-minute question panel with the judges. The conference had presenters from the humanities, social sciences, science, technology and other fields.

Senior history major, Cooper Doyle, presented his research on the hit anime series “Yuri on Ice.” Doyle’s presentation, “Miracle on Ice: Radical Normalcy and Unremarkable Queerness in Yuri on Ice,” talked about two men falling in love while working for a gold medal in their sports field.

“I touch on how ‘Yuri on Ice’ handles gender expression, expression of sexuality itself, the show’s central gay romance, and also just how radical it is for, being different in so many ways, a good number of those ways being rather simple, e.g. having gay characters and not being a tragedy about their sexuality,” Doyle said.

Doyle had been working on his paper for months and said it felt nice to be finally able to present his paper to an audience.

The team was mentored by Rogers, who also drove the team to and from Baton Rouge. The six presenters also received preparation guidance from Professor Lesli Pace of the communication department. The travel cost, however, was funded by CAB.

Mary Katherine Hillman, an English major, gave a presentation that examined Eurocentrism and Anglo-centrism in the fantasy fiction sub-genre of transatlantic pop culture.

“Overall, I think that what I can take back with me from this conference – besides the generous bag of participation goodies the program gave us – was the value in sharing ideas, of course factually-based, with others outside the classroom and in having an open mind,” Hillman said.

Kimberly Doughty, a senior English major, presented her term paper for Professor Jana Giles’ Romantic Movement class in the conference. Her presentation was titled “Unleash His Inner Monster: Victor Frankenstein’s ‘Filthy Creation.’” Doughty, who loves hearing what people are passionate about, said her best moment in the conference was being able to share her research and listening to other people’s interests.

Overall, according to the ULM presenters, the team had a chance to learn about presenting outside of class and to experience a state-level conference.