Hazel Northrup Hyde '21 M'42 University Fellowship Endowment

The research I was able to complete this summer is very dear to me. With the guidance of my faculty advisor, Paul Graham, I conducted research on novella structure and genre with a strong focus on environmental literature. Alongside this, I began developing my own piece of environmental literature: a novella devoted to discovering what it means for a girl to grow up completely immersed in the ecology around her.

Though I originally sought out to write a series of fiction pieces utilizing dark humor, what transpired over the course of the fellowship was a rigorous lesson on adaptability, flexibility, and revision. The bulk of my project consisted of a set of autobiographical non-fiction works that, while featuring occasional dark humor, focused more so on the theme of loss during childhood than trying to perfectly emulate a specific genre.

This summer, my project focused on testing the boundaries between genre fiction and literature. I revised 200 pages of my fantasy novel, Song of the White Dove, with the intention of understanding how far traditional plot formulas, tropes, and archetypes can be challenged and blended with literary techniques. I learned about methods to create a piece of writing that walks a middle ground between elusive, subtextual literature and traditional genre fiction, in a way that captures the best of both, crafting a work of art without losing the attention of wider audiences.

During the summer fellowship, I read A. D. Melville’s English translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, paying particular attention to Ovid’s use of rape narratives in the epic. Although I had read excerpts of the poem in a mythology course in the spring of 2023, this was the first time I read the piece in full. Since Ovid was primarily retelling existing myths, I thought it was especially important to examine the poet’s linguistic delivery of the verse, so I also read excerpts from the poem in the original Latin.

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.

Among the challenges facing today’s educators and students is a mental, emotional, and behavioral health crisis. In order to ensure that all children receive an education that fosters healthy development, emotional maturity, and overall success, profound adjustments must be made to the education system.

My name is Xi Chen and my graduation year is 2023. The inspiration for my topic is from an off-campus course from Japan called "A Successful Life and The Best Education in The World." In this class, we read an article called, “Japanese students is crisis and the event of the ‘school killer’ in Kobe.” The main subject of the article, a boy, had been repressed in school for a long time without the teacher’s attention and the parents in Japan always asked their children to follow their teacher’s lead.

Teachers are the backbone of the education system. Not only do they teach students the factual information related to their subject area, but, more importantly, they also teach students the essential life skills that they will use to work with others, solve problems, and remain motivated and engaged life-long learners. Given their direct impact on students, it is important that every teacher enter the profession with a clear idea of their values as an educator.

The conception of this project came during a class about feminist theater. I found these plays (Goodbye My Fancy, The Children’s Hour, Machinal), which were supposed to represent feminism, lacking in many ways. I’ve been reading stories critically through the lenses of gender and sexuality studies throughout my education. I wanted to insert my own voice as a writer into the gaps I’ve identified in creative conversations about gender normativity.

This project explores life in Northern New York, often through situations of desperation and extremity. The final four stories are divided evenly into the realistic mode ("Among the Ancients," "Spotter"), and the dystopian or science fiction mode ("Preservation," "A-1"). These stories intend to capture the darker aspects of a place, to explore where we are, and where we may be going.