Congratulations 2022-2023 English Honors Students
The decisions are in... Congratulations to our English Honors students for the 2022-2023 academic year!
| Ryan Dakin | Elizabeth Searles |
| Madeline Keitel | Nadia Seidu-Capio |
| Tay Pack | Ren Shamburger |
| Gianni Ramirez | Tiffany Whisler |
| Shiloh Romero |
The English Department's Undergraduate Committee was impressed by their applications—particularly by their personal statements, reasons for wanting to participate in the program, and potential directions for their thesis projects.
Interest in Honors English:
Our 2022-2023 English Honors students expressed a range of reasons for wanting to participate in the program.
Some discussed the power of literature to reflect, challenge, and make meaningful change—on societies and cultures, on issues with global and local impact, and on individuals and the communities where they live. Some expressed a want to embrace the power of their writing—to use their writing to make a difference.
Most were excited about the opportunity to study and grow in a challenging and exciting environment, supported by a select community of fellow scholars and professors with similar passions about the importance of literature.
They're eager for the mentorship of their professors and excited by the opportunity to engage in sustained thinking, discussion, research, and writing about topics of interest to them.
Potential Thesis Topics:
While our Honors students' applications presented only initial, tentative articulations of potential thesis topics, their areas of interest and ideas are exciting!
- the intersections of disability and queer theories with science fiction, fantasy, and horror—speculative fictions specifically—and the ways in which monsters, aliens, and automatons in fiction influence perceptions of people in queer and disabled communities
- the fractured identities and subjectivities of postmodern protagonists in fiction with an eye towards better understanding (stories of) survival
- the intersections of gender and sexuality in war literature, romantic literature, and personal narrative
- the erasure of lesbianism from media, literature, and equality movements like LGBTQ+ and feminism, specifically perspectives on erasure as expressed in New Media and traditional media—from print books to on-demand audio podcasts
- how the human condition is reflected and examined in graphic novels
- the intersections of gender, sexuality, environmentalism, and immigration in various genres and media/mediums such as Greek mythology, serialized fantasy on television and in books, and in film adaptations of young adult literature
- the intersections of psychology and literature, specifically in understanding race, gender, and identity, as well as mental health and trauma
- moral relativism, contingent ethics, and dubious virtue as expressed in/by "divine" characters across religions, faiths, and cultural narratives
- the importance of studying world literature in cultural contexts and the promise of helping us better understand ourselves and our worlds
- how horror, as a genre, can be used to examine public and personal fears
Prof. Kini's Honors Seminar as "Afterlives of Empire" in Fall 2022
In Fall 2022, Professor Kini will teach ENG 4932: Honors Seminar as "Afterlives of Empire." How exciting is his course description?
Honors Seminar: Afterlives of EmpireENG 4932.001 A. Kini Cat 1 or 2 Boca In-Person W/F 2:00pm–3:20pmThis course grapples with the ongoing structures and legacies of the Atlantic slave trade, Euro-American empire in Asia and settler colonialism in the Americas. While these topics are usually studied separately, we will focus on engaging the connections, overlaps and intersections between these incommensurate and nonequivalent histories of colonialism and gendered racialization. As Lisa Lowe observes in her groundbreaking study The Intimacies of Four Continents, “The modern division of knowledge into academic disciplines, focused on discrete areas and objects of interest to the modern national university, has profoundly shaped the inquiry into these connections. Even the questions we can ask about these histories are influenced by the unevenly inhabited and inconsistently understood aftermath of these obscured conditions” (1-2). Following Lowe, we will read promiscuously across established disciplinary formations—including literature, cultural studies, history, anthropology, legal studies, sociology, film and performance—to unsettle normative understandings of white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism and heteropatriarchy. Throughout our study we will pay particular attention to intersectional, comparative and relational approaches and methods.
Many thanks to the Undergraduate Committee for their careful review of applications; to English department faculty for their recommendations, thoughts, and feedback on English Honors applicants; and to Julieann Ulin for her endless patience, knowledge, and support.