To celebrate graduating English majors, we got together, gave them books, and toasted to the power of words. To learn a little about these soon-to-be graduates and get a list of reading recommendations, see the books given to students and the reasoning why.
We are so proud of all of you and look forward to hearing about the great things you do.
Lindsay Gallagher: Book: Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet. Lindsay, for you I chose Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet. The protagonist of this book is Shakespeare’s wife, a deep, quiet, extremely independent woman, and it centers around her world in Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s not about William Shakespeare–itself an accomplishment, given the topic–and I selected this book for you because I think O’Farrell’s narrative choice resonates with some of the “what-ifs” you explored in your work in Foundations of British Literature last fall. This woman-centered book shows the richness of telling a story from an unexpected angle. I thought you’d enjoy how this decentering relates to many of your own explorations of how we can read race, gender, and privilege through posing alternatively-centered questions about canonical texts–as you did in papers that focused on objects instead of people, or satirical feminist responses instead of canonical misogyny. Congratulations, Lindsay! Faculty: Lauren Shohet
Autumn Anderson Book: Jane Austen, Persuasion.
Autumn and I have read four other Austen novels together over two courses and two years, but this is one of the two we didn’t get to. Autumn is exactly the kind of reader that Austen liked – not one of the “dull elves,” as she called them, who needed everything explained to them, but intelligent, alert, and brilliantly adept at detecting shades of irony, character, and humour. I think she’ll enjoy this one; the last Austen completed, it’s autumnal (appropriately enough) and sadder than the others in places, but also breezy and hopeful, ending on a note of exquisite optimism about the future and its possibilities. Perfect, therefore, for someone with a future as bright as Autumn’s!
Faculty: Joe Drury
Arianna Bufalino Book: LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, Her Honor Arianna is pursuing a career in law. She will connect with Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell’s curiosity, diligence, and sense of humor. Her Honor presents Arianna with the next level to develop her analytical skills and knowledge about the legal profession from a strong woman advocate in the field. As our legal writing course jump started her legal research that continued in several other courses, this book will expand Arianna’s ideas more, as she prepares for her 1L year. Congratulations and best wishes, Arianna!
Faculty: Karen Graziano
Kye Cherry Book: Camille Dungy (ed) Black Nature
Kye, it’s been an honor and inspiration having you as a student and advisee over these past 3 challenging years. It was very hard to decide, but the book I chose for you is the anthology Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, edited by Camille Dungy. I chose it because of your love of poetry, your interest in writing about our the more than human world and because I know you were excited about Dungy’s own poetry and her thinking about the tradition of black nature writing. You’ve already read her incredibly helpful introduction and I am hoping that you’ll find inspiration in the work collected here as well, which includes work by a wide range of important poets including Audre Lorde, Yusef Komunykaa, Nikki Giovanni, Wanda Coleman, Ed Roberson, lucille clifton and many others. I hope you’ll carry these poems with you into the next phase of your life and feel encouraged to continue your own exploration of racial justice and the natural world in your writing. Congratulations Kye!
Faculty: Lisa Sewell
Caterina Deuser Book: Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Caterina, I chose for you Muriel Barbery’s Elegance of the Hedgehog. I believe you are the only student here I’ve worked with in 3 different classes–and I’ve learned from you in each of them! The interests that drew you to such different classes–Julian of Norwich to Jane the Virgin! –make you a perfect reader for Barbery. I wasn’t sure if we should give this to you in French or English, but the excellent translation makes either choice work with your capacities in both Francophone and Anglophone literature. (Tell me if you, like I, have to turn to the dictionary once a chapter, even reading it in English.) This book made me think of you because it works in such nuanced and yet page-turningly-compelling ways with gender, language, and personal connection within and across cultures. Congratulations, Caterina!
Faculty member: Lauren Shohet
Meghan Edwards Book: Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel.
Meghan, for you I chose Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 novel Station Eleven. I thought of this book for you because of your interests in science fiction, subjectivity, and agency that intertwined so effectively in the paper you wrote about Orphan Black last year in Narrative TV. This novel, which predates the pandemic by half a decade, is interestingly different from the currently-better-known movie and TV series alike. I find myself hoping that you may have seen the TV show or movie, and perhaps not yet read the book, because I think that going back to this novel reveals interesting things about the nuggets of stories, how historical circumstance alters opportunities for meaning; how genres mean. In the TV course, your paper on Dear White People was full of insights about relations among cinematic, narrative, and dramatic elements that made me believe you’d enjoy seeing how they play out in this novel. Congratulations, Meghan!
Faculty member: Lauren Shohet
Kashae Garland Book: Skye Falling (2021) by Mia McKenzie
I am honored to present this gift to Kashae Garland, a fierce advocate for racial and gender justice and an all-around brave person who is headed to law school this fall. Kash joined me last summer to help launch a collaborative public humanities initiative to honor the work of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, a Black educator, author, and activist. This spring, as Kashae has been writing her senior thesis about Dunbar-Nelson’s status as a queer Black woman, she has done the hard work of engaging seriously with the limitations of emerging scholarship about an obscure figure. Because Kashae has done so much heavy lifting to reckon with Dunbar-Nelson’s complicated status as a queer writer, I chose for her a recently-published novel that made me laugh out loud. Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie is a contemporary narrative, set in Philadelphia, about queerness, friendship, race, family, and community. Novelist Torrey Peters had this to say about Skye Falling: ”When I could manage to put this book down, I looked up from its pages to a world charged with new potential.” Kashae is one of those people who charges the world with new potential. Faculty member: Jean Lutes
Ryan Haggerty Book: Robin McKinley, Sunshine
Ryan, the book I’ve chosen for you is one that particularly delights me: Robin McKinley’s Sunshine. Back in the 20th century, I enjoyed McKinley’s nuanced feminist reworkings of traditional fairy tales, so I noticed this title, new at the time, when I came across it on display in a Glasgow bookstore in 2010. I was absolutely not expecting its intertwining of vampire romance and . . . baking. But you’re more sophisticated about the Gothic than I am, so perhaps it will make immediate intuitive sense to you. I find this novel as interesting as you are about questions of how social orders and formal orders articulate one another, and the uncanniness that can arise from these constellations. Sunshine also reminds me of your work in being vivid, smart, and enormously fun to read. Enjoy it! Congratulations, Ryan.
Faculty member: Lauren Shohet
Caroline Harding Book: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
During the fall semester of 2020, when almost all classes were still virtual, there was this magical small seminar over in Garey about feminist politics and the novel. I think the fourteen of us were all so happy to be around other people that we hung on every word and had exceptionally rich discussions. I had so much fun that semester listening to Caroline’s ideas and interpretations about gender, our responsibility to each other, and politics. I’m choosing Chambers’s book for how it represents similar themes with humor and hope. It’s about a group of odd people coming together on a spacecraft and learning to value each other’s differences (including, in this alien-populated world, species differences) during trying times. I hope Caroline finds its characters as unforgettable as I have.
Faculty member: Travis Foster
T.K. (Max) Karibian: Book: Isabella Hammad, The Parisian
Reasoning: In Victorian Doubles, I was impressed by T.K.’s smart reading of Victorian novels and thoughtful interpretations of Anthony Trollope’s utterly Orientalist representations of Palestine. Hammad’s recent novel uncannily uses nineteenth-century novelistic forms to tell the story of a man living between Montpellier and Nablus in the early 20th century. T. K, as an accomplished writer of historical fiction yourself, I hope you enjoy this book!
Faculty member: Mary Mullen
Amelia Middlebrooks Book: I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé
Amelia wrote compellingly about the multiracial and not-yet-fully-formed world of Toni Morrison’s early American setting in A Mercy. Condé’s novel at first places us in the Carribean worlds that Morrison keeps in the background. From there, it turns into a page turning thriller about witchcraft, gender, race, power, and love. I think it will appeal to Amelia’s love of good storytelling as well as her interest in how stories express ideas. Plus, I suspect it will keep her up reading late into the night, which is what it did for me.
Faculty member: Travis Foster
Jourdyn Nicholson Book: Jenny Erpenbeck, Go, Went, Gone
Jourdyn, for you I’ve chosen Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Go, Went, Gone. I love this book about European failures of response to the African migrant crisis of the 20-teens. This novel shares your passion for intertwining social justice, literary heritage, and writing in efforts to authentically work through complicated questions. You share Erpenbeck’s ear for the not-quite-said and her eye for the things that make every individual’s experience matter. I have been so excited to converse with you through your fabulous college journeys of reading, writing, and connecting. I hope this book is a worthy companion as you continue these activities in your next steps. Congratulations, Jourdyn.
Faculty member: Lauren Shohet
Mackenzie O’Reilly Book: Eimer McBride, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing
Reasoning: Mac, with her knowledge of Irish Studies and English–and Ulysses!--will certainly be interested in McBride’s feminist novel. Rethinking Joyce’s influential novel from the standpoint of a young Irish woman, McBride plays with Joyce’s experimental form while also asking important questions about the role of women in contemporary Ireland. Mac, we will miss you! I hope you enjoy McBride’s novel.
Faculty member: Megan Quigley
Amanda Smith Book: Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons
Amanda, for you I’ve chosen Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. You’re about to go on an adventure to graduate school in Education as part of your plan of becoming a primary school teacher, and Swallows and Amazons is a classic kids’ adventure story that seems like a perfect match for you. You explored education in your work for your Harry Potter course, including a focus on the importance of practical activities; Swallows and Amazons paints just such an education, outside of school, and (even though it features kids who are a little like Harry Potter’s Marauders) it doesn’t need any magic beyond the beauty of the English Lake District. I read this book as a kid in Brazil and I hope it says with you the way it has with me. Congratulations, Amanda!
Faculty member: Evan Radcliffe
Maria Sobinovsky Book: Edith Somerville and Martin Ross, The Real Charlotte
It’s been such a joy to witness Maria’s intellectual curiosity firsthand in several different classes. This semester, she expressed her interest in learning more about the poet Michael Field and their wondrous—maybe even holy?--dog Whym Chow. Edith Somerville and Martin Ross are the perfect follow up to Michael Field not only because they also introduce questions about queer collaboration but also becuase of how they represent domestic animals in utterly delightful ways. It’s one of my favorites—Maria, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do and that it keeps you asking great questions.
Faculty Member: Mary Mullen
Caroline Sweeney Book: Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
Carrie, I gift you Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers because it’s really, really funny, and I expect you could use a good laugh after spending an entire semester studying half a dozen relentlessly bleak iterations of Shakespeare’s King Lear. I am pleased to offer you the following spoilers from Dickens’ first novel, published serially and to great acclaim in 1836-37: No one in The Pickwick Papers is betrayed by their evil bastard son; hideously maimed; mercilessly disowned; murdered; cursed by their abusive, misogynist father; deprived of the satisfaction of jumping off a cliff; or left to spend a stormy night shacked up with a madman in a loincloth. There are no profound existential crises in this novel! Additionally, no one is poisoned with a can of Botulism Carrots. It will be the perfect primer for your upcoming literary tour of England. If you’d like to, get in touch and we can read it together this summer. I could use a Dickensian pick-me-up myself. Congratulations on your graduation. May your future be light on tragedy and rich in comedy.
Faculty Member: Alice Dailey
Lily Switka Book: Ross Gay, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
Lily, it was such a delight to have you in class this semester and to encounter your wonderful poems. I chose Ross Gay’s also delightful award winning book of poetry, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude as my gift to you. I think that you might find a kindred spirt in Gay’s expansive, generous, digressive but also deeply serious, deeply felt poetry. As the title of this collection suggests, Gay’s poetry celebrates the world in all its specificity and difficulty, paying close attention to the particular delights and sorrows of both the human and the more-than-human world. His poems range wildly, taking everything in, but he keeps things real in language that is casual, authentic and literally down to earth. I hope you find some inspiration here and continue with your own writing. I’ve also included a copy of that poem by Sharon Olds that I told you about. Congratulations, Lily.
Faculty member: Lisa Sewell
Sanaa Barnes: Book: Adrienne Marie Brown Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
Sanaa, the book I chose for you is Adrienne Marie Brown’s Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. I chose it because you wrote so insightfully about the racial and environmental justice issues raised in Brown’s short story “The River” and you also loved Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Emergent Strategy is a work of radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live and was inspired by Butler’s explorations of our human relationship to change— something I think you really connected with in Parable of the Sower. I hope this book will appeal to your love of literature and also be a source of inspiration and encouragement to continue your own fight for racial justice and climate action. Congratulations Sanaa.
Faculty member: Lisa Sewell
Emily Curtis Book: Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm.
Emily, for you I’ve chosen Stella Gibbons’ 1932 novel Cold Comfort Farm. The first sentence of the book places its heroine Flora Poste in the wake of an epidemic, but it’s a comic masterpiece. I thought of this novel as particularly fitting for you because Flora Poste is all about making things better for the people she lives with, and you’ve been so involved in various kinds of service and guidance. I know you’re planning to become a teacher, and in your Harry Potter course you took the opportunity to write insightfully about the professors at Hogwarts whom you will far surpass, and although the Flora Poste is a little too bossy to be a model either, I hope you’ll enjoy the quirky humor of Cold Comfort Farm. Congratulations, Emily!
Faculty member: Evan Radcliffe
