Through the English Honors Program, I was able to explore an area of research that I was passionate about. My two mentors in the process, Professor Thomas Lockwood and Professor Tom Foster, encouraged me to delve deep into topics that were not simply the popular topics of the day in English Studies, but topics that had room for expansion and original thought.
In the end I submitted a thirty-two page honors thesis which explored the science fiction figure of the “Fembot” through feminist theory and computer theory, while simultaneously drawing parallels to both literary criticism and film/television criticism. Professor Foster helped me sift through various scientific papers and theories, well out of my comfort zone as a traditional language and literature major, and understand the texts I was reading as interdisciplinary. I found that the essays of great mathematical and computational minds like Alan Turing and John Searle had as much to say about the human condition and belief systems as essays by Lisa Nakumura and stories by science fiction greats like Thomas Burger. Professor Lockwood then helped me carefully construct my research and articulate the meaning and form of my findings.
Put quite simply, the independent research I pursued widened not just my concept of “language and literature,” but my concept of the interconnectedness of the world in which we live.
BA in English: Language and Literature, 2011
Cum Laude
UW English Department Honors
MLIS in Library Science, University of Kentucky, 2013
Conferences:
- “A Radical Notion: Feminism and the Figure of the Fembot,” Twenty-Sixth Annual National Undergraduate Literature Conference, Weber State University, March 2011.