English News Edu

Many writers are known at least as fully by their popular reputations as they are by their own work. Yet writers, like most people, are usually more complex and contradictory in their personal lives and in their work than the reputation that precedes them.  Emily Dickinson is one good example. She is often viewed as an idiosyncratic recluse, the nun of Amherst, the “Queen of Calvary,” as she sometimes refers to herself in her own poetry, as if she were the sexless Monarch of Divine Suffering.  Dickinson seemed to invite this reputation in her later life, dressing in her later years always in white and behaving in such theatrical ways as refusing to come out of her bedroom to greet a family friend, sending out on a plate instead a single red rose.  Possibly this was her way of drawing public attention to herself, a provincial form of self-promotion, a way of saying that something unusual was taking place in what might otherwise seem a dull, sheltered life.  Still, Dickinson was a grown woman—36 years old—before she went into seclusion.  By then she had already written more than half of her 1700+ poems.  During her vintage years, from 1860-1865, when she was writing a poem nearly every other day, some of them among the greatest poems ever written by an American, she was regularly attending a literary salon hosted by her sister-in-law and next-door neighbor, Susan Gilbert Dickinson. 

Susan Gilbert Dickinson was Emily Dickinson’s childhood classmate, intellectual companion, and often during these vintage years the first reader of Dickinson’s poems. The editor of the Springfield, Mass. newspaper, Samuel Bowles, often attended these literary gatherings, with Emily Dickinson in attendance too, though she shyly chose to stay away the night Ralph Waldo Emerson graced Susan Dickinson’s home. Samuel Bowles published at least a few of Emily Dickinson’s poems in the Springfield Republican.  Judith Farr, one of Dickinson’s critical biographers, believes (in The Passion of Emily Dickinson) that Samuel Bowles was the object of Dickinson’s attention in the many love poems she wrote to a male lover, some of them overtly erotic.  Farr believes too that Susan Gilbert Dickinson was the object of attention in the many love poems Dickinson wrote to a female lover, many of them equally erotic.  Some of Dickinson’s love poems are so radical, even by contemporary standards, that I would hesitate to quote them here.  If Emily Dickinson likely died a virgin, deprivation in her intimate, physical love life drove her imagination. 

My hope is that all Ashland English majors will read Dickinson deeply and widely before they graduate, and will continue to read her, over and over again, for as long as they love literature. 

                                                                                                                             

I first read Passing in Dr. Mondal’s Gender and Literature class during my sophomore year. At that time Dr. Mondal suggested that I might want to expand my work and present it at URCA.  URCA was a fantastic way to challenge myself, to explore a subject about which I am passionate on a deeper level. Moreover, URCA undoubtedly helps to strengthen the scholarship, and scholarly community, here at Ashland.  

In the novel Larsen directly refers to the Rhinelander case, a divorce case that featured the act of passing at its nucleus. She does not, in other words, allow the reader to forget that this story is real. That is not to say that the novel’s characters actually lived, but rather that the challenges they faced, and the decisions they were forced to make, were far from uncommon in the era in which Passing was written.   The simple fact that this is a part of our shared history, then, is significant, and makes the novel worthy of study. Moreover, I think that critical study of any work like Passing can eventually lead to valuable reflection on the state of things today. For example: boiled down, a portion of my central argument essentially contends that Larsen’s Passing suggests that eliminating racism is impossible if people try to ignore it, blindly assimilating instead of tackling it head-on with a consciousness of (often society-imposed) difference. Whether this entirely true, somewhat true, or entirely false can be debated, but the idea is, at least, worthy of conversation. Moreover, this idea cannot only be applied to conversations about racial justice, but to conversations about many different varieties of discrimination (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) which we as a society/world still sustain. Being able to explore such an important issue is, I think, the broader significance of the text as well as (albeit in a smaller way) my presentation.

This is difficult question, but I think the most obviously place to begin is in Dr. Mondal’s Gender and Literature class. Like all of the English professors here at Ashland she challenges students to develop deep understandings of the text through encouraging nuanced close readings. Moreover, I think that Dr. Mondal’s passion for social justice is both obvious and contagious; it is difficult, near impossible, to exit her class without understanding the special ability of literature to challenge stereotypes, discrimination, and apathy.  This, in fact, is a common trend in the English department.  Many of the department’s professors and courses attempt to pay particular attention both to marginalized authors, as well as marginalized characters in texts that could be said to belong to the widely studied literary canon. As a result, I think Ashland’s English department produces students who are particularly attentive to literary voices that are commonly silenced. Its students are able to see texts and issues from multiple perspectives, empathizing with characters of different backgrounds, cultures, races, etc.  

This approach to literature was perhaps especially prevalent in a course I took by Dr. Lehman called African Literature which primarily focused on South African literature. This led up to a summer study abroad trip in South Africa which I and several other class members attended. Whether written in the apartheid or post-apartheid era, it is nearly unavoidable for South African literature set in South Africa to avoid establishing race as at least a subtext. Now that I have studied South African literature and even visited the country, I would allege that my understanding of societal injustice in South Africa informs my understanding of societal injustice in the U.S.  It is unquestionable that this study abroad experience informed the research I presented at URCA. This is not to say that I am attempting to make any direct comparisons or to force a certain framework onto my research, but it is to say that my approach to, and perspective on, these types of issues has been substantially affected by my experience abroad. 

At Ashland, the professors are eager to hear what students have to say, to explore literature with students instead of lecturing at students or necessarily forcing a specific framework on students’ interpretations. By valuing each person’s input professors at AU undeniably help students to develop creative, yet sound, responses to what they read. This, in turn, exposes all of us to diverse perspectives that inform our interpretations of the texts we are reading.

Do you have any plans to expand on the research you presented--and if so, what are those plans?

I hope to submit my research to The Sigma Tau Delta Review, an undergraduate academic journal published by the national English honorary Sigma Tau Delta.  Because of length requirements I do not plan to necessarily expand upon the research I have already completed...at least at the current time.

Function of Sherlock Holmes and Phileas Fogg in the Late Victorian Period,” was recognized at the Honors Program Cording Ceremony with the Howard O. Rowe Scholarship for best Honors Capstone project.  According to Dr. Chris Swanson, Director of the Honors Program, "The award is given to the student whose Honors Capstone Project is considered to be the best among his or her peers."

Eberly wrote the following reflection on her experience with the project.

As a member of the Honors Program, I knew two things: 1) I had to do a Capstone Project and 2) I wanted to love my topic so much that a year of studying and writing about it would not dampen my enthusiasm for it.  When looking at past projects, examples from past English majors were sorely lacking, so I drew on my previous English classes for inspiration.  The three most influential classes on my project were Literature & Film, the Victorian Period, and Women’s Literature.  My film class introduced me to the show Sherlock, which sparked an obsession with Sherlock Holmes that involved an entire summer of reading Holmes’ stories and watching numerous film and television incarnations of the great detective.  The Victorian Literature class introduced me to Dr. Sharleen Mondal, who taught me how to craft well-written scholarly arguments and that the social issues surrounding texts are important to consider when working with literature.  The syllabus initially included a Holmes novel, which proved to me that it was possible to look at Holmes critically.  Finally, Women’s Literature emphasized taking an intersectional approach to novels by looking at how race, gender, and class work together within a narrative, in order to fully understand the world the novels were published in.

I decided to compare two of my favorite literary characters: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Phileas Fogg from Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days.  I began by wanting to look at why these characters were popular when they were written, as well as continued to intrigue readers (and viewers of films and television shows).

Combing through databases and requesting dozens of books from the library that dealt with my characters was only a start for this paper.  Scholarly articles, post-colonial theory, author biographies, you name it; if it referenced the Victorian period, Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne, cultural studies, or detectives, I tried to read it.  I got to work closely with Dr. Mondal, who graciously let me borrow numerous books and pointed me in the direction of other sources.  As I read, I met with her biweekly to talk about common themes throughout the sources and how they connected with Holmes and Fogg.  These meetings were work, but we managed to have fun with the material as well.  After several months, we organized common themes and began to chart out how to approach the writing.  The fifty to 100 page limit was daunting, but by breaking it down into chapters that had several points to argue, it suddenly became a very reasonable range to aim for.