The Miscellany is excited to introduce Elyse Wanzenried (’19, she/her/hers) and Nathaniel Chew (’19, he/him/his), the new departmental SDAs! To celebrate our transition into October and (gasp!) fifth week, we reached out to these two seasoned English majors with some very pressing questions.
For those of us who don’t know, what are some of the responsibilities of an SDA?
Elyse: An SDA is tasked with building community among the department, serving as a resource for students who are either English majors or prospective English majors. We’re particularly useful for things like the Academic Fair or the Majors Fair, and we often answer student questions pertaining to the offerings for next term around registration time. We can also answer any questions students may have about the requirements of the English major or the Creative Writing minor. We’re also always down to have conversations about anything and everything to do with literature if you don’t have any questions but want to be our friend.
Nathaniel: Great question! SDAs (student departmental advisors) are here to share information about courses, prerequisites, major requirements, department policies and events, etc. We hold office hours before registration each term and turn up for department events and academic fairs. Administrative stuff aside, we’re also working to foster a fun and inclusive Carleton English community. We’re always open to questions about (and suggestions for!) the department and the major, so hit up our emails anytime!
What’s the best bit of advice you could give to students considering becoming English majors?
Elyse: The best piece of advice for prospective English majors is to take classes you might not be drawn to at first and to fully invest in the relationships you have with your professors. It’s easy to get comfortable in the type of classes you enjoy taking, but you would be surprised at how much you might grow to appreciate literature you previously discounted. I would also say that if you’re worried about the fallacy of English majors as chronically unemployed, try talking to your professors, they can be a great resource for you to connect with alums that work across an incredibly diverse range of careers, which can give you possibilities for future direction. Taking classes across the English major will truly enrich your understanding of the world from a literary and personal perspective–so invest in the experience and yourself as fully as you can and you’ll be amazed at what you can get out of it.
Nathaniel:
1) Cultivate a good reading posture
2) Obtain a twelve-pack of highlighters
3) Talk to your amazing professors!
4) Talk to your amazing fellow majors!
5) Come to department events!
6) Always do the reading
7) Turn pages slowly and from the corners to minimize papercuts
What was your first favorite book? Your most recent?
Elyse: My first favorite book was either Tuck Everlasting Natalie Babbitt, the opening pastoral and temporal description always blows me away, or Night by Elie Wiesel, which I read when I was still very young and found both devastating and stunning. My most recent favorite book would probably have to be either The Gangster We Are All Looking For by Le Thi Diem Thuy or To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, either of which I am ALWAYS down to talk about.
Nathaniel: Tex the Cowboy by Sarah Garland, The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit.
If you could have an eighteenth-century style duel with any fictional character, who would you duel and why?
Elyse: I would definitely duel David Lurie from the book Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee because he is a perpetrator of sexual assault and preys on women yet somehow manages to play the victim when his daughter experiences sexual assault. He studies “””fine literature””” and somehow sees that as an excuse for his behavior because of his own self-aggrandizement and conceit–as if only men have the intellectual capacity to whine about studying Lord Byron for the duration of 218 pages! Nice try David, I complain about my academic burden 25/7, so you’re not special!
Nathaniel: T-Rex of Dinosaur Comics – he has short arms and copious deposits of existential doubt, and we would probably get cereal after.
What is your hottest literary take?
Elyse: My hottest literary take is definitely that I love Willa Cather’s My Antonia and I think it’s a brilliant exposé about memory and how memory functions across borders when faced with the phenomenon of immigration. I have been involved in many arguments against those who find the book boring and pointless, but who else can describe a prairie like that? No one, I say.
Nathaniel: Everyone’s been sleeping on Bobby Horton’s turn-of-the-century Lyrical Life Science albums. The project boldly reimagines the rallying tunes of Civil War battlefields as the vehicle for a new Enlightenment. “What do you think a scientist does?” asks Horton on the album’s opening track, refocusing the hermeneutic microscope on the audience, and indeed, insisting on a scientific method that reflexively constructs its scientists. Dizzying shifts of perspective, genre, and key mirror our own destabilization within the breakneck narrative of Progress. Bob Dylan’s watershed Nobel win in 2016 means it’s a matter of months until “Oh Bacteria” clinches Horton a Man Booker.