Jeremy
Newell '00 will likely be the only presenter under 21 at the Western
Literature Association's annual conference in Sacramento this week, but
that doesn't intimidate him. Newell is becoming very comfortable at
professional conferences: this is his second, excluding NCUR and
Steinmetz.
Newell, an English major, will present his paper on
“The West as Nation Proper,” which stems from Schiff-funded
summer research he conducted this summer with Bonney MacDonald, associate
professor of English. Last June, Newell presented a different paper at the
Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment's annual
conference, joining MacDonald on a panel of faculty discussing the use of
metaphor in nature.
“It was absolutely amazing,” Newell says.
“At first I had assumed it would be very intimidating, but everybody
was just great. They really just wanted to hear what I thought and to swap
ideas. It was definitely a boost to my academic confidence. I began to get
a feeling that I could hang with these people, so to speak. I felt very
comfortable.”
Newell's interest in English stems from a long-time
love of reading – one which he finds well-fulfilled through the three
summer research positions he has held at the College since his freshman
year. “I love to read, so the opportunity to read all summer and get
paid for it was tremendous,” he says. Newell worked with Andreas
Kriefall for two summers before joining MacDonald in her research this
June. “Those first two summers taught me so much about critical
thinking,” he explains.
Newell began to develop his own research during his
junior year when he took a course on nature and environmental writing from
MacDonald. “It was a great experience. It was the first time that I
had seen a class totally bond as an academic group. We knew each other's
mind when it came to nature and environmental writing.”
He became interested in anthropomorphism (representing
animals with human characteristics), and expanded a paper for class into a
proposal for NCUR. He tweaked the paper a bit more for Steinmetz, and then
again for the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment's
annual conference.
Given Newell's significant involvement in substantial
research before he even began his senior thesis, he predicts that his
thesis will become a culmination of his diverse work at Union. Instead of
concentrating on a narrow topic, he hopes to collect several critical
essays on different topics, each of which is intended for a different
conference or publication. For the remainder of his time at Union, he
already has his eyes on a presentation at the Institute for Twentieth
Century Studies, a submission for the Mississippi Quarterly, and an
essay on Jean Crevecoeur, a French author from the late eighteen century,
for an anthology – that's in addition to applying for a Marshall
Fellowship, taking classes, and working part-time at the Sports
Information Office.