English major Joshua Wright presented a paper drawn from his honors thesis at the Summer of 1816 conference in Sheffield, England on June 27. The conference, which brought together European, Canadian, and U.S. scholars, marked the 200th anniversary of the famous gathering of Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori at the Villa Diodati in Geneva, Switzerland. Out of their creative interaction came Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Polidori's The Vampyre, among other iconic literary works.

Wright's English honors thesis, which was completed under the supervision of English Professor Judith Pascoe, explored the ways in which the Villa Diodati gathering became an enduring preoccupation both of Romantic writers who memorialized it and of scholars who sought to pin down its key events. In a stroke of serendipity, Wright completed his thesis, entitled "Have You Thought of a Story? Romantic Self-Mythology and the Villa Diodati Ghost Stories," just in time to participate in an international conference dedicated to his research topic.

Wright is an undergraduate student in the Department of English, part of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. He received funding and support for his research and trip by the Department of English and the Iowa Center for Research by Undergraduates.