On Tuesday, Jan. 13, parents and teachers filled the Community Commons at Kingswood Oxford for the school’s first-ever Senior Showcase, a new event designed to spotlight the culminating projects of seniors enrolled in Symposium, IMPACT English electives, or Honors English.
Rather than a traditional presentation night, the Showcase invited visitors to circulate freely, engage in conversation, and experience a wide range of student work, from podcasts and films to websites, visual art, and advocacy campaigns.
The event reflected the diversity of senior English coursework, emphasizing both creative interpretation and rigorous research. All Symposium students built their projects around the work of Irish Symposium author Claire Keegan, experimenting with form while remaining grounded in close textual analysis.
Senior Nirali Iyengar presented an original alternate ending to “Foster,” extending Keegan’s sparse, unresolved conclusion. “Stories without satisfying endings are a disgrace to humanity,” she said, explaining that rewriting “Foster” allowed her to explore closure in a way the original intentionally withholds. Written in restrained prose that mirrors Keegan’s style, Nirali’s continuation examined themes of neglect, belonging, and quiet resilience, drawing a steady audience throughout the evening. Senior Ishaan Bafna took a similar approach, writing a continuation of Keegan’s “Small Things Like These” from the perspective of a different character than the original.
The Showcase also highlighted inventive Symposium formats that blurred the line between analysis and creativity. Senior Ava Bonsignore displayed a slideshow project that paired recipes with literary texts, using food as a way to interpret Keegan’s stories. “I liked the idea of using recipes because they’re familiar and personal,” Ava said. “Connecting each one to a book made the literature feel more tangible and accessible.” Each dish – from “passport soup” to rhubarb tart to fried eel – was tied to a specific work, with a menu-style table of contents guiding viewers through the presentation, along with the real recipes being included.
Several Symposium students chose to explore Keegan’s work through multimedia. Senior Jordan Cipriano created a podcast focused entirely on Keegan’s writing style and endings, interviewing classmates, family, and faculty members while comparing the original novellas to their film adaptations. Seniors Charlie Levin, Shreya Adlakha, and Dalton Smith took a visual approach: Charlie chose to represent different themes extracted from “Foster” through drawings, whereas Shreya and Dalton produced a short film adaptation of “You Can’t Be Too Careful,” translating Keegan’s understated tension to the screen.
Other English electives were also included at the Showcase. In the English elective Meddling With Mystery, senior Pratt Blair shared plans for a 20-minute podcast that he carried out with a peer, senior Alexandre Picard, serving as part of his honors project. This podcast compared “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” to “Clue.” His project examined how setting, plot structure, and narrative control shape mystery storytelling, emphasizing how research questions evolve through close analysis. “Comparing ‘Clue’ and ‘Glass Onion’ showed how much setting controls the mystery,” Pratt said. “Isolation completely changes how the audience processes clues.” Pratt’s work highlighted the collaborative nature of the genre, drawing connections between classic and contemporary mystery films.
Senior Adam Gold, an honors student in What Does it Mean?, presented a slideshow on color theory in film, analyzing how hue, saturation, and value communicate emotional meaning. Using examples from “The Matrix,” “Forrest Gump,” and “Rocky,” Adam demonstrated how filmmakers use color to distinguish realities, convey growth, and underscore moments of struggle and triumph. Senior Katie Reale, who earned honors in the New York Literature elective, presented an interactive website titled “Decoding Ellis Island,” which guided viewers through the history of immigration in New York Harbor using archival images, personal accounts, and an animated map of immigration patterns during peak years. The project connected Ellis Island’s past to present-day conversations about immigration, culture, and American identity.
IMPACT English students showcased projects that connected literature, history, and social justice. Seniors Tadhg Dillow and Leo Ladewig presented a campaign advocating for Community Partners in Action, a Connecticut-based re-entry organization that supports formerly incarcerated individuals. Their work combined poetry, historical research, and civic engagement in response to recent state budget cuts affecting re-entry programs, encouraging viewers to consider incarceration and reintegration through an empathetic lens.
Music and cultural history featured prominently in several projects. Senior Ronan Culligan traced the evolution of Marvin Gaye’s music on a poster board, connecting shifts in his sound to events in his life and broader social change. “Marvin Gaye’s music changes as his life changes, and I thought that progression was an interesting one that I wanted to highlight through my presentation,” he explained. Similarly, senior Cameron Thomas created a webpage exploring James Brown’s career, focusing on funk as both a music innovation and a form of independence and self-expression. His project examined how Brown’s music, fashion, and lyrics reflected confidence and autonomy during the civil rights era.
As a new tradition, the Senior Showcase offered a window into the depth and independence of senior academic work at KO. By opening the event to families and faculty, the Showcase celebrated not only polished final products, but also the intellectual curiosity, experimentation, and dialogue that shaped them.
