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Student Profiles
When Amy Larson first entered UMBC as a freshman, her main ambition in life was to become a schoolteacher. Now, three years later, she is headed for Indiana University, on a fellowship that will allow her to obtain her Ph.D. from Indiana´s prestigious English Department. As a farewell gift, UMBC´s English faculty unanimously voted to give Amy the Robert G. Shedd Award for Outstanding Contributions in English. Clearly something must have happened along the way. Amy blames her change of plans not on a specific teacher or a class she took but, well, on literary theory. "I guess I was first turned on to the idea of grad school when I began to study literary theory because it gave me more of a sense of purpose regarding what I do---the study, in a way validated what had before seemed a potentially fruitless enterprise." (There´s never been a more effective plea for the necessity of English 401!). Her senior papers attest to how thinking about the purposes of literary study has transformed Amy´s approach to literary texts. Ever heard of Lucretia Davidson or Emma Embury? Well, Amy has. One of her last papers was a feminist reading of the function and importance of illness in the works of these marginalized nineteenth-century American women poets, in which Amy persuasively demonstrated that the experience of disease and disability, far from wreaking havoc on these writers´ poetic sensibilities, may actually serve as an effective tool of literary self-empowerment. But don´t imagine Amy spending all her spare time lugging dusty library tomes. She was active in UMBC´s Honors College, worked on the desk staff of Residential Life for two years, served as the secretary of the SGA House of Organizations, edited Golden Key´s newsletter for a while and joined the crew team. And, in case you wondered, Amy reads books for fun, too. In fact, one of her favorite authors is Thomas Hardy, whose work she first encountered in English 306. "I became a sucker for his use of language and tragic narratives," Amy says, adding that she likes to read books to which she can respond on "an emotional level," despite a lingering suspicion that some might consider such an attitude "un-intellectual." But then, isn´t such willing immersion in a text what studying literature is all about? And anyone who might doubt that Amy is an intellectual will quickly be persuaded otherwise when hearing that her favorite theorist is French philosopher Jacques Derrida, not exactly known for his accessibility. "His work really got me into literary theory and showed me the many different avenues that can be explored when reading literature. Ultimately, the ideas of Derrida granted legitimacy to what I often like to do when studying a text--play devil´s advocate. I really find this approach interesting, and I guess I consider it a test of my own abilities to understand a text and engage in close reading to the end of disproving, or at least offering evidence that begins to disprove or challenge an accepted viewpoint, or one that is merely tossed out there as a possible explanation." Amy is looking forward to graduate study at Indiana University, where she hopes to find an "excellent body of peers," fellow students interested in the same things that have preoccupied her over the last few years. "By engaging in thoughtful discussion and personally exploring literature in more depth I know that I´ll be able to grow as a scholar. I like the idea of having classes built around one author, or a very small body of texts rather than having to take those which focus on an extremely broad group and extensive period of time." Amy also expects that her classes at Indiana will also help her narrow down her impressively broad range of interests. "Up until now I really haven´t found an area of literature that I prefer over the others, and I hope that grad school (I guess only the first few classes, because after that I´ll have to decide) will just further my study to the point where I can … get into the more precise details of a period or genre and allow me to develop a specific expertise." Wherever the next few years will take her, we can be sure that Amy will retain the same sense of curiosity and openness that has marked her contributions to our department and that, yes, has made her like Jacques Derrida as well as Thomas Hardy. Bill Chewning An entrepreneurial spirit and a dispiriting experience in high school kept UMBC English major Bill Chewning out of college and in the world of work until he was 30. Those years spent running a small sign and printing business based in Ocean City, Maryland, and promoting digit printing technology in Perth, Western Australia, did more than provide income. Bill´s time spent working and adventuring have instilled in him both the desire to continue his education and the maturity to be certain that he makes the most of his college education. UMBC has proven to be a perfect fit for his intellect and life experiences.
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