As a double major in English and Environmental Studies, I have sought out the overlaps between these two disciplines in many ways. At the same time I was writing my Environmental Studies thesis on earthquake fiction, I was writing another thesis on John Keats for my English Major. 2 theses?!? Yes.
The Process
In the fall semester, I was enrolled in the English Senior Seminar on John Keats with Kurt Fosso. We read almost all of Keats’s poems and many of his letters. The goal was to write a 20-25 page paper on something in Keats last book Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes & Other Poems. After dabbling in reader-response, space, architecture, and several other ideas, I settled on writing about Isabella; or, the Pot of Basil:
Isabella’s lover lies buried in a dark forest, murdered at the hands of her greedy brothers. With the help of her nurse, Isabella digs through the soil of the grave and unearths Lorenzo’s remains. Isabella decapitates his corpse and carries the severed head back to her castle. She hides the morbid token in a garden pot under a sprout of basil and her tears foster the herb until it grows tall and lush. But her suspicious brothers discover the horrible secret buried within. They discard the pot and Isabella dies in devastation.
While many of my English projects examined literary landscapes, Keats is among the least environmentally focused Romantic poets, only engaging with nature through the apparatus of art. While I retained an environmental aspect, specifically regarding the garden-pot and the role of the basil plant, I was moreso engaged in literary theory of signs, in tombs, and in the question: where does art come from and where does it go? This question united my English and Environmental Studies theses on a theoretical plane, somewhere, I think. As I mentioned in my English thesis defense, there were many times throughout the semester that I was pulled back and forth between my two projects, each one leading the other to interesting places and dead ends (reader-response theory). Its actually amazing because I remember well reading Keats in English 206 at the same time I was taking ENVS 160 and even writing a post bringing them together!
Though I was spread thin in the fall semester, researching earthquake literature while piecing together my Keats argument, the spring semester was where the rubber hit the road. I decided to pursue honors in both departments, committing to writing my ENVS thesis on an accelerated timeline and to revising and improving my Keats paper from the fall. Kurt Fosso was abroad in Dublin, advising me over email for the semester. I made my own schedule for completing assignments and revising portions of the paper around the timeline of ENVS. The middle of March and the first week of April were the two crunch-times. In March, I had three weeks of madness: ENVS first draft, Keats first draft, and ENVS final draft. The first week of April saw my ENVS thesis defense and the final draft of my Keats paper. I spend a lot of time in the library.
I think that it was the most rewarding semester that I’ve had at Lewis & Clark. I went out with a bang! It was hard work like I’d never known before. I’m so grateful to all 6 of my thesis advisers and to all my supporters at home and abroad. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to study hard and push myself to write and research things that fascinate me, and to engage with academic conversations in both my fields.