ENGL 461 – Senior Seminar Presentation Paper
If there’s one class at Longwood University that’s said to be the culmination of the English major, it’s ENGL 461 – also known as Senior Seminar. Over the course of the semester, senior seminar students are tasked with reading the works of philosophers and authors such as Aristotle, Plato, Beauvoir, Woolf, and more. These authors’ writing spans decades. Millennia, in fact!
From there, the latter half of the course is spent creating a thesis statement that an entire research paper can be crafted around.
I chose to explore the lack of feminist agency within the main character of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy. In the past I realized a lot of people, myself included, were characterizing Katniss Everdeen as the perfect feminist heroine to lead the literary movement. However, we didn’t acknowledge her flaws or the fact that she is largely controlled by the powerful figures in her society throughout the entire narrative. Therefore, I asked the question of whether Katniss can be a satisfactory example of a female heroine if she’s not given much agency.
I have included the paper below as an artifact for my professional development. If given the chance, I would love to one day expand on this idea. Especially considering the recent release of the prequel to the series, which offers more insight into one of the tyrannical powers in control of Katniss Everdeen.
Loading...
Reload document 
Open in new tab