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BEND - A paper by an Oregon State University-Cascades Campus student, which explored similarities in the lives of two women who struggled to deal with a dominant European-American culture, has been chosen for presentation at the National Undergraduate Literature Conference.

Samantha Sheley, a senior from Redmond majoring in liberal studies, had her paper accepted for this conference in competition with literature students from universities across the nation.

"Since only those students whose work was excellent to begin with would have been encouraged to submit work, the acceptance of Sam's paper from a very competitive field places her among students of the very top rank," said Neil Browne, an OSU-Cascades assistant professor of English.

The paper analyzes the lives of two women - Harriet Jacobs, a slave woman, and Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, a Native American - through a comparison of their autobiographies. Sheley contends that both women were marginalized, first by the dominant culture, and then by their own cultural group. There are similarities in how the women negotiated their culture, sex and the positions of power at play, Sheley said.

"This paper allowed me to push my thoughts beyond the classroom discourse into another realm, where I could reinforce previous ideas and expand upon them," Sheley said.

The National Undergraduate Literature Conference will be from March 30 to April 2 at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, and includes presentations by a number of nationally known authors.