Ashley Gregory
• English Education Major
• I chose ECU because of the reputation of their education department.
• I think one of my favorite memories ever was in one of Dr. Grasso’s classes, and he got so excited about what he was saying that he jumped on a podium!
• I’ve read so many books here...but probably my favorite is Dracula or Frankenstein! I can’t decide which one though! I just love gothic literature!
• The project I’m most proud of is the memoir I wrote for my capstone project. It was this amazingly therapeutic and healing thing to write, and I’m so proud of myself for being able to write it.
• I was in a few organizations, but I never participated, which I’m not happy with myself about. I was so focused on getting the grades that I didn’t open up and have a little fun until last semester!
• Despite missing out on a little bit of fun for it, I’m super proud of my ability to maintain high grades in college, but probably my biggest accomplishment was making friends and talking to people for once! I’m so shy and afraid to make friends and be vulnerable that it felt like a massive accomplishment to form friendships with some of my amazing English education people!
• My future plans are to get my teaching certification and stay in a public school somewhere forever! I love kids, and I just have this immense passion for the education system and my students! I do intend to keep a blog in order to keep working on my writing though because I absolutely love writing!
• My advice would be to branch out. Do things you might be afraid to do! Take risks, make memories, and please...talk to people! College can be so fun!
Abby Nance
* English Education
* My favorite memory of ECU is presenting my thesis in December 2019!
* I think the most memorable text I read at ECU was “Fire in Beulah” by Rilla Askew. I’ve read so many amazing things, but that is the one that I recommend to everyone I meet. It’s also about a piece of Oklahoma history that is so important and overlooked, and I think everyone should read it.
* The project I’ve worked on that I am most proud of has to be my thesis. It’s something I always wanted to do, but I never really thought I would. Without the help of my AMAZING professors (shoutout to you, Dr. Grasso), I never would have been able to achieve that goal!
* I plan on going to grad school in the future. I would love to be an English professor one day!
* To incoming freshmen I only have one thing to say: you’ve made a great decision in coming to ECU! Enjoy every minute of it because it goes by so fast.
My thesis is called “How Jane Austen Rewrote Gothic Literature” and it’s about the influence Gothic literature had on her writing. I focused mostly on Northanger Abbey, but I went through her other major works as well! I also talked about several of the most popular gothic novels and the history of the gothic novel itself.
Here’s the abstract if that helps:
Abstract
From its beginning in the 1700s, there have been many examples of authors who participated in the writing of Gothic novels, and there is one author in particular who contributed greatly to the Gothic movement: Jane Austen. Austen is one of the most influential writers in the literary world, and she is mostly known for writing novels such as Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, but she also wrote a more explicitly Gothic novel called Northanger Abbey. Based on my research into Gothic literature and into Jane Austen’s works, I have determined that Jane Austen used Gothic themes throughout most, if not all, of her writing, and not only in those works that are explicitly Gothic. Not only is Jane Austen’s work heavily influenced by Gothic themes, but it is her rewriting of these themes that make her works something uniquely different from other Gothic novels. Austen is able to use these themes to create a familiarity in her stories, while also changing them to create something new. This rewriting of the Gothic is something we still do in our culture today, and Jane Austen is one of the biggest proponents of this movement through her many works.
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