Julia Maher '03 is another one of
those prodigious achievers with a small-town New England
background. She hails from Owls Head, Maine
– population 1,600. Maybe it's the benefits of growing up breathing sea air or
living where the pace is a bit slower – whatever it is, Julia has certainly
left her imprimatur on Union.
Maher, an English major, minored in
East Asian Studies and was a tutor at the Writing
Center. She also performed with
Idol Minds improv group. She wrote a commentary on Allen Ginsberg's Tear Gas Rag during a “Deadheads”
seminar and is a contributing writer for the Concordiensis.
At Prize Day, Maher walked away
with an armful. She is the 2003 recipient of the William F. Allen Essay Prize;
William H. Bloom, M.D., and Jonathan R. Bloom Poetry Prize; the David Brind
Memorial Prize in English; and the Phi Beta Kappa Award.
Maher said the most enduring impact
of her four years at Union will be the relationships she
cultivated with her professors. She said that since Union
is a small college, she had opportunities to work closely with her professors
and get the personal attention she desired, unlike her friends who attended
large universities. “They [the faculty] are amazing people,” she said.
Her immediate post-graduation plans
are on hold due to SARS – she hoped to teach English in China
and attend Nanjing Normal
University to study Chinese.
Ultimately, she plans to earn a doctorate so she can teach English and comparative
literature on the college level.
Maher's love of literature is
rivaled only by her love of writing – critical writing for the intellectual
stimulation and challenge; and poetry, an outlet for her creative energies.
Perhaps most telling is her senior
honors thesis, “The Overpassing Marriage of Speaking and Hearing within William
Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Absalom! Absalom!” In Faulkner's richly
textured works, Maher explored dialect and the basic need for communication – a
concept she herself has mastered very well indeed.