I graduated from UMBC in May 2018, with a B.A. in English Literature, a B.A. in Global Studies: Development, Health, and the Environment, and a B.A. in MLLI (French track). I completed an honors project in Fall 2017 exploring the ways that gender, sexuality, and race carve alternative and sometimes subversive spaces of identity for women migrating from the Caribbean to Europe, using Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid and At the Full and Change of the Moon by Dionne Brand. My project framed Arjun Appadurai’s “ideoscape” as a means of conceptualizing the continued impact of imperial ideology on the formulation of family and self, specifically highlighting the role of cycles (of mother-daughter relationships, of trauma, and of the body) in the rehearsal or rejection of cultural belongingness, and the ocean as a site of both separation and promising liminality.
Joining the English Honors Program allowed me to develop my research interests and to form a combined narrative of my studies within literary scholarship. I feel thankful to be able to continue my studies and hopefully to pursue a career in the academy, because literature is a dynamic field that is wide open to inquiry and interdisciplinarity.
In Fall 2018, I began a combined MA/PhD dual-title program in English and Visual Studies at the Pennsylvania State University.