Last week, I sat down for a chat with Alexis Atwood ‘26 to discuss how one class from her first semester of courses in the Graduate English program inspired her to pursue a fascinating research topic. Alexis arrived at Villanova last fall and, as a first-year student, took the required ENG8000: Literary Theory with Dr. Heather Hicks, a survey course designed to introduce first-years to a wide variety of theoretical fields and frameworks. She told me how two particular classes in ENG8000—on Vulnerability Studies and Border Studies—helped her build upon her pre-existing scholarly interests and develop them further in a new context.
“I’ve always been interested in discourse in particular and the ways that discourse exposes systems of dominance, so I think that's kind of what brought me to Vulnerability Studies," said Alex. "And then I found that poetry was a potent source to pull from when it came to understanding discourse and the way it exposes hierarchies and hegemony. I've also always been interested in the poetry of Pablo Neruda. He's someone I really enjoy reading…because of the Border Studies class, I was really drawn to this relationship between North and South America, and I felt like there was something to kind of dig into there when it came to vulnerability and how our vulnerability as North Americans might impact the way that we engage with that sort of poetry.”
Synthesizing these interests together led Alexis to “Poetry of Witness,” or poetry “that comes from people who have experienced extremity, whether it be extreme poverty, exile, or if they’re experiencing severe human rights violations.” Linking her affinity for Latin American poetry with the new methodological approach of vulnerability studies allowed Alexis to “make a connection between the field and the practice of actually reading poetry.”
Once she realized the potential for her academic intervention, Alexis then had to familiarize herself with the canons of Latin American poetry, Vulnerability Studies, and Poetry of Witness, which she achieved by participating in the Summer Research program. Alexis began by identifying key texts that would be most beneficial to her interests. She told me how an anthology of Poetry of Witness called Against Forgetting, edited by Carolyn Forché, served as an excellent entry into the field. “I started there by reading the introduction and getting an overview of what poetry of witness looks like,” Alexis told me. “After that, my day-to-day looked like reading poetry collections from Latin America, and then reading articles that were supplementary to my topic. I was reading articles about vulnerability studies, but I also started veering off into care ethics, and then I was also thinking about pedagogy…asking questions about how we implement these things into a classroom, so that if a student reads poetry through the lens of vulnerability studies, how do we make them a subject who is aware of human rights violations in a way that would hopefully urge them to be active.”
After a long summer filled with lots of reading, Alexis presented her findings in the Summer Research Symposium, where students are invited to share the findings they made over the break. Alexis, who was new to a symposium as large as this, had to manage some initial nerves, noting to me how she was surprised by the size of both the audience and the room itself. In the end, however, everything turned out great. “It was fun, and it was a tiny bit scary. But it was really nice to see everyone else there, and everyone was really supportive. They asked really great questions during my Q&A period, which was really nice.”
Now, as Alexis’s second year in the program begins to near its end, she’s looking ahead to the field exam. When asked about her decision to opt for the exam instead of writing a thesis, she explained how the former would allow her more time to immerse herself in the various fields she was entering. “There is still so much to read,” said Alexis. “There’s still so much foundational reading to get through. I realized that there were a few different things I would really need to dig into, so I decided to do a field exam to expand my research to focus on poets as public figures and to gain a stronger understanding of vulnerability studies as a whole.”
Moving forward, Alexis looks to continue developing her research as she pursues a second Master’s degree in Human Rights. “I do kind of look at this as a stepping stone to a larger project,” Alexis told me when asked about her plans for the future beyond Villanova. “I would like to maybe write a book that’s a collection focused on vulnerability and poetry of witness, that's maybe similar to Against Forgetting, but is more focused on care ethics and border studies, and still focused on Latin American poetry. I'm kind of looking at the field exam as something that is helping me to build that foundation to write this longer project that I'll probably be researching for a few years.”
To close out our interview, I asked Alexis if she had any words of wisdom she'd like to pass on to current first-year students. "I think it's two things. The first is that if you have something you're really interested in, don't deviate from it. I knew what I was interested in, and that thread has led me here. When I look back at my graduate bio, it still reflects what I'm interested in and what I'm doing right now, which is great. But the other part is that you don't need to just focus on your one thing. Every semester, I usually write one paper that is focused on my main topic and another paper that's focused on a more creative topic. That not only keeps me grounded, but it also helps me to explore different things, so I don't get pigeonholed or bored. I would say know what you want or find out what you want to really research and maybe contribute, but also find a fun thing to study as well." —Aria Gray
