Stories

The English Department is very pleased to present our three Canterbury Scholars for the 2023-24 academic year: Nadine Koochou, Rhiannon Briggs, and Natalia Cantu! The Scholars’ projects will cover a diverse array of topics, media, and writing styles, and we can’t wait to see what they’ll produce this year!

Nadine Koochou

Nadine Koochou’s research project, "If I Cannot Hear Us, How Do I Know We Are Here? A deep-dive into the trauma and beauty of growing up an Assyrian-American woman," developed as a creative piece which spans multiple genres. Her work has been greatly inspired by her love for being a creative writer as well as by the “complete lack of Assyrian voices in the literary canon and academia,” Nadine explains:

Through this work, I will do a deep-dive into my life growing up as an Assyrian-American woman. Combining Assyrian history with personal experiences, I will explore themes of family, language, love, war, displacement, home, and the highs and lows of being indigenous to the Middle East. Moreover, as parts of my work will be informed by research I do into topics such as Assyrian language, art, and genocide, I want to create an archive of resources to help make this research more accessible to other people who want to know more about who Assyrians are and were. I envision that this will take the form of a website.

Now in the midst of her project, Nadine tells us:

While I began with the vision of both a creative work and an archival resource, I realized that my idea for the archival resource was born of a sense of obligation to the Assyrian diaspora to compile research on our people more broadly. This is certainly a noble task and one that I will likely come back to later in life, but for my Canterbury project, what I really wanted to focus on was the power of storytelling. By telling of my personal experiences and the lives of my family members, I hope to provide a more intimate picture of what life can look like for Assyrian people within the diaspora. I would encourage anyone applying to the Canterbury program to really dig into their dreams for their project, while also leaving room to recognize that their vision may change over the course of the school year. That has been the most exciting part of my journey.

Nadine’s faculty mentors are Prof. Claudia McIsaac and Dr. Allia Griffin.

Rhiannon Briggs

Rhiannon Briggs has a thoughtful, evocative piece of work brewing for their project this year, titled “The Disembodied Poetics of the Mad Woman: On loving her, being her, and killing her”. In this project, Rhiannon will explore themes of madness, beauty, poeticism, and idealization in context of the characterization of women in literature. They explain how madness and beauty have been stretched to both opposing and agreeing sides of defining women in literature and in greater society. Their project also grapples with the overwhelming narrative of the “transcendentalizing” of women’s “madness” which “becomes an inherent part of their demise,” a beautiful, alluring trap Rhiannon argues it is easy to fall into. In their own words:

In seeking and consuming these narratives, there seems to be an inevitable internalization of this divine, sensationalized feminine madness. Ralph Waldo Emerson is often quoted as saying, “I cannot remember the books I have read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” I have read hungrily throughout my life, and perhaps, just as much as my mother’s cooking, I have been made of the mad woman…

I’m not confident that there’s an answer— or a way to find one. My expectation is not to reach a conclusion but to interrogate and explore my relationship with her. I hope for it to be both analytical and deeply personal, breaking down the graceful suffering of the mad woman with an almost memoir-esque quality in a collection of lyric essays. In doing so, my ultimate goal is to make the mad woman's suffering ugly and real, internal, destructive, and powerful.

Rhiannon’s faculty mentors are Prof. Claudia McIsaac and Dr. Danielle Morgan.

Natalia Cantu

Natalia Cantu’s project takes on themes of identity and memoir writing within the cultural context of being Chicana, titled "The Labyrinth of Mexicanness, Identity, and Memoir In Latinx Literature: An intricate study of The Circuit by Francisco Jiménez and Canícula by Norma Cantú." Her personal interest in reading memoirs and autobiographies by people of Mexican descent in which the authors grapple with their own identities and experiences fueled the development of her project. Additionally, her inspiration for this work has come from the advice and musings of her maternal grandfather, who has pushed her to embrace and pursue the depth of her Mexican culture and heritage. Natalia elaborates:

Having multiple generations of Mexicans under one roof has been influential in understanding how identities vary and has been a stepping stone which I wish to embark off of. With this project that I have developed in collaboration with my wonderful mentors Dr. Juan Velasco-Moreno and Dr. Kirstyn Leuner, I have aspirations to create a discourse over the multi-faceted identities present throughout generations of Mexicans. As I continue work on this project, I hope to understand exactly how Mexican identity, specifically Chicana identity, is shaped by the factors around and within us and ultimately gain a better perspective of my own Mexican-American identity throughout the process.

Natalia, now working on putting her project together, says:

I started my Canterbury as a combination between a creative and scholarly project. As the year has marched forward and after having multiple conversations with my sensible mentors, Dr. Leuner and Dr. Velasco, I have realized that this plan was a bit ambitious. Because of this, my project has developed into more of an academic focused undertaking, centered around the varying choices and experiences in Mexican autobiographies that shape the writer's identity. Now that I have this set idea in mind, I am excited to see my vision come to fruition.

Through my experience as a current Canterbury Scholar, I would encourage prospective applicants to not stress too much about having all of the logistics worked out right away. New ideas can stem from anywhere so I would suggest meeting with your mentors frequently and getting to the root of what you are passionate about.

Natalia’s faculty mentors are Dr. Juan Velasco-Moreno and Dr. Kirstyn Leuner.

Congratulations to Nadine, Rhiannon, and Natalia on being named 2023-24 Canterbury Scholars! We’re so excited to see this years’ Scholars embark on these innovative, meaningful, and complex projects this year, and look forward to hearing about their journeys and conclusions at next spring’s Department Awards Event.