Conference gives students opportunities

The Honors Program is sponsoring the JMU Freedom Conference in which students, faculty and independent scholars are invited to organize sessions, be involved on a panel or submit abstracts.

This year, the conference, which will be March 31 and April 1, will address the universal theme of freedom and will be directed by Giuliana Fazzion, head of the foreign languages and literatures department.

"I love to organize these kinds of projects," Fazzion said. "In fact, I have the intention of organizing another conference next year."

German professor Robert Goebel will be a participant at the conference. "It’s a chance to present a paper without going away to a conference — and probably having to fork out money because of limited travel funds," Goebel said. "Even better, I am collaborating with a student, which gives the student a chance to do something unusual in our department."

If accepted into the conference, first-year participant senior Jeff Stottlemyer will submit a paper he wrote for a class last semester. Stottlemyer’s paper discusses the dynamics of local leadership in the Memphis Garbage Workers Strike of 1968.

"Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis while working to support this strike as part of his "Poor Peoples Campaign," but I focused on local religious and labor leaders to give King’s actions a base," Stottlemyer said. This is just one of the many examples of what students and faculty may submit as part of the conference.

Fazzion said during the reception on the evening of March 31, Shukri Abed, chairman of the language and regional studies department at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., will give a speech. The JMU school of music will provide entertainment with performances by music students and faculty.

Fazzion and her collaborators will judge the papers and will accept written works, as well as art and/or science presentations. The deadline for submission of abstracts/proposals is Feb. 28 and all students are urged to submit abstracts to the conference. All abstracts should be about 300 words long and include the piece’s title and author’s name, affiliation, address, telephone number and e-mail address. If interested, the abstracts/proposals should be sent to Fazzion at fazziogx. Each year, there have been anywhere between 50 and 60 participants.