Undergraduate Institution: Birkbeck College, University of London
Undergraduate Major: Politics, Philosophy & History; Linguistics & French
MAPSS Graduation Year: 2013
I entered the MAPSS program intending to study poverty and class in Britain from the nineteenth century onward. The Perspectives and Historical Methods courses helped me to get a grasp of various modes of analysis and laid a great groundwork for my future studies. A course in the English department on Victorian Literature led to an interest in the history of social thought about children. My thesis was overseen by Hilary Strang, and focused on discussions of child sexual abuse in British newspapers in the late nineteenth and early twenty-first centuries. I aimed to carry out a comparative historical analysis of the ways in which victims and perpetrators were framed by the print press in these periods, through a Foucauldian lens. I am currently in the Rhetoric and Public Culture doctoral program at Northwestern University and continue to study representations of children and abuse, among other things. Despite my move into the humanities, MAPSS provided a very solid foundation for my current work, and the support of my preceptor, MAPSS faculty and office staff, was vital to the application process for doctoral study. Finally, friends I made in the program continue to provide thoughtful discussion, support and company.
