Delivering papers at academic conferences is usually the realm of faculty members.
But Jeremy Newell '00 has already given papers at two academic conferences — the Western Literature Association's annual conference last October and the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment's annual conference in 1998. At both, in fact, he was the first undergraduate ever to give a paper.
The achievement is perhaps inevitable for this senior English major, who was drawn to English almost as soon as he set foot on campus. After his freshman year, when the opportunity arose for a summer fellowship with Andreas Kriefall, assistant professor of English, Newell jumped at the chance. “I loved to read and I loved my English classes,” he says. “The opportunity to get paid to do that was tremendous.”
Newell signed on for another summer of research with Kriefall after his summer year. “Everything that I learned about crucial learning I learned from Andreas those first two summers,” he says.
The interest intensified during the fall of his junior year, when Newell took a course with Bonney MacDonald, associate professor of English. The class, a seminar on nature and environmental writing, had twelve students from several different majors. “It was just an absolutely amazing experience,” he says. “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.”
That bond, created through serious discussions throughout the year, reached its peak when the class spent a weekend at a rustic lodge in the Adirondack Mountains. The students hiked and talked for hours about English and nature and writing.
Newell was inspired. He developed a paper on anthropomorphism (representing animals with human characteristics), expanded it for presentation at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR), and polished it a bit more for Union's own Steinmetz Symposium for scholarly achievement. Finally, he presented his work at the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment's annual conference, where he also joined MacDonald on a panel of faculty discussing the use of metaphor in nature.
“At first I had assumed it would be very intimidating, but everybody was just great,” Newell says. “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 success at the conference prompted him to continue his research, and he signed up for another summer fellowship, this time working with MacDonald and funded by the Schiff Foundation. While studying Western literature and theories of the frontier, he had an idea for his own research — combining John Locke's theory of property with the history of Western literature about the frontier. Encouraged by MacDonald, he submitted a proposal for a paper at the Western Literature Association's annual conference. His proposal was accepted, and he traveled to Sacramento last October to give his second scholarly presentation.
Now well into his senior year, Newell is developing his thesis. Instead of concentrating on a single topic, he plans to write several critical essays on different topics, each intended for a different conference or publication. 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.
Of course, that's in addition to applying for Marshall and Fulbright fellowships, taking classes, and working part-time for the College's Sports Information Office. After graduation — and perhaps after a fellowship — Newell plans to pursue a Ph.D. in English. “If nothing else, it immerses you in the world of academia,” he says.