Nicole is graduating with the class of 2025, majoring in Political Science and English. She is minoring in Gender & Sexuality studies, which constitutes the primary frameworks she employs in her academic writing and thinking. She is interested in using critical theory to understand how power shapes normative ways of...
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Semester:
Summer 2024
Description
During this fellowship, I conducted preliminary research for my English SYE. Throughout the summer, I read various works of critical theory, with a particular emphasis on affect, aesthetic, and cultural theory. My goal was to prepare for a final research paper, which will focus on Sally Rooney's novels. She captures, in what I think is an incredibly unique and honest way, the conflict between existential violence and the desire for intimacy. Using her third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021), as the focal point, I want to understand how Rooney considers the purpose of literature and art in the face of such ubiquitous, intangible threats.