BYU English Symposium

This past Thursday and Friday, BYU had an english symposium where they had many different panels, presentations, about a wide variety of topics.  I only made it to 2 of the presentations, the 3mp competition, and a panel called "The Range of Rhetoric".  The 3mp competition, which stands for 3 minute presentation, had 11 different presenters with a wide variety of topics ranging from feminism, to education, to even just our different portrayal and understanding of villains.  They were all interesting presentations, and I could tell that they had all put a lot of work in, and were very well put together. One that piqued my interest in particular though, was one by Elizabeth Young, who's presentation was entitled "Baudrillard's Hyperrealities: The Case for Living in a World of Simulations".  This one interested me, mainly because I basically did a literary review in my Technical Communications class about this very subject, which was how Virtual Reality can and is used in educational settings, for training simulations, and the like.

The second panel that I went to, which was called the Range of Rhetoric, as mentioned previously, had three presenters that each presented different uses of rhetoric in differing fields; one talked about religion, another Bio-genetics, and the third Statistics.  They each had their different approaches, and had some fascinating ideas.  The first presenter, Mitchell Holman, talked about Erasmus and Martin Luther's debate, and their different approaches, and talked about the importance of listening-rhetoric.  He compared the debate between the Catholic Church and Martin Luther to our political debates today, where there are 2 opposing, extreme viewpoints, that argue vehemently against each other, and refuse to compromise at all.  He spent most of his time talking about the viewpoint of Erasmus, who sought to seek understanding from opposing viewpoints, and seek a compromise that both sides can be happy with, yet no one listened to him, and the presenter talked about the importance of trying to use listening-rhetoric, and trying to understand other viewpoints than our own.  The second presenter, Alexis Polson, talked about how she transformed her literary review about cancer into a magazine article that could help those diagnosed with cancer to better understand what's going on, since many of them don't understand what exactly is happening to them because of all the medical and scientific jargon that goes on with explaining things to them.  And lastly, the final presenter, Brandon King, talked about the business model of pay what you want that has been happening in the video game industry, and the company that has found success with that model.