By JOYANNA LOVE/Senior Staff Writer

Two students from the Jefferson State Community College Clanton-Chiton Campus presented a literary paper at the Association of College English Teachers of Alabama’s “Conference on the Sympathetic Imagination: Literature, Film, and Writing of Sympathy and Empathy.”

Anna Taylor of Columbia and Carly Niswander of Clanton had written a proposal to present on “An Estate of Memory” by Ilona Karmel, which is a book about the Holocaust from a female perspective. Niswander said they outlined “some ideas we had about the book and how it related to the conference’s discussion topics for this year” in the proposal.

The students received help creating their proposal from English professor Ashley Kitchens.

Two weeks later, the ACETA notified them that they had been selected.

“The main reason I decided to participate is because this year I have really been pushing myself to try new things,” Niswander said. “I have been stepping out of my comfort zone, and the results have been greater than I ever could have imagined. Public speaking has always been something that has scared me a little bit, but I’m pushing myself to overcome these fears.”

Taylor said she also wanted to participate as a way to become more comfortable with public speaking.

“It was a great opportunity,” Taylor said.

Taylor and Niswander had both written about the book for an assignment in Kitchens’ class.

For the presentation, “we just combined our papers together and kind of mixed our ideas,” Taylor said.

It was challenging at times to combine the separate papers.

“We had two different characters that we were speaking about,” Taylor said.

She said the characters were so different it was difficult to find any similarities during the traits portion of the presentation.

“What I really enjoyed about this is this book is not (a) really well-known book, and it is a powerful topic,” Taylor said.

She said she enjoyed making more people aware of the book.

In preparation for the presentation, Niswander and Taylor re-read “An Estate of Memory” and discussed the main ideas they wanted to present.

They also practiced the presentation in front of other students to get feedback on improvements to make before the big day.