Drown Unbound

Tell us about yourself!  Well, I majored in English and Spanish and minored in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Dayton. I am originally from Memphis, TN (which means I’m likely severely underprepared for the winter). My academic interests include medieval and 18th century literature, feminist and queer theory, women writers, and feminist post-Franco Spanish literature. Looking forward, I’m interested in learning more about postcolonial studies, Early Modern literature, and writing pedagogy. Some […]

Tell us about yourself!  My name is Ashlee Simon. I was born and raised in Southern California and received my bachelor’s degree in June 2017 from the University of California, Riverside. My parents live on a farm in Norco, Horsetown U.S.A. where my mom owns and shows myotonic (fainting) goats. She’s currently working on setting up a “goat yoga” business. Stay tuned for updates on that one… Why did you choose Lehigh? As an undergraduate, […]

Tell us about yourself! I’m a non-traditional student with a background in web-development and journalism. I enjoy cooking and video games, but not cooking video games. There is a rumor that I watch anime. I will not confirm this. I have seen Anthrax and Billy Ray Cyrus in concert, though not on the same night. I once strung a car engine to the overhanging branch of a maple tree. Why did you choose Lehigh? Nearly […]

The smell of the classroom, the reading assignments, hands cramping after writing too much in margins, and the down-and-out copy machine…. Ah, the telltale signs that another semester has started in the English department. On behalf of Drown Unbound, I would like to welcome our new members and our returning veterans. It is shaping up to be an amazing semester with exciting classes, an intriguing new teaching cohort, and many unknown surprises along the way. […]

Welcome to the fall 2018 semester–and a new series that we are debuting for Drown Unbound. Every two weeks or so, I (Sarah HB) will be inviting graduate students and professors to share their favorite pedagogical approaches and teaching techniques for folks to try out in your English 1 classrooms and beyond.  Please think of these posts as part of the ongoing conversation regarding teaching in our department. The goal of these posts is to […]

I am two seminar papers and one e-portfolio away from finishing my first year of graduate school, and that seems significant. But while reflecting on all the fulfilling, thrilling, liberating, and life-altering stuff I’ve learned this year, I can’t help but think about all the stuff I still don’t know. In fact, I’m beginning to think that the point of education is to teach you things you didn’t know that you didn’t know. I never […]

Sometimes I wonder if there are any spaces conducive to positive friendships between women. I will not presume to speak for all women, but I have always recognized that genuine friendships between us can be tough to navigate. We are socialized to see each other as competition—for the man, the clothes, the jobs. And the media loves to portray female friendships as catty, competitive, and dramatic. I learned this at a young age; I watched […]

The first bit of qualifying exam advice is not to follow anyone’s advice. If you are reading, prepping to read, procrastinating reading, complaining about reading, behind, ahead, or on schedule for reading, then you are probably already in the whirl of veterans telling horror stories of broken computers, interrupting undergrads, crying, absurd laughing, and days of either sleeping too little, or far too much. This is often paired with the sage and almost deranged eye-twitchingly […]

Get excited for the 4th Annual LSJ Conference happening this weekend (March 2-3)! If you don’t already have this marked down on your calendars, you should do so ASAP. The LSJ committee has been hard at work prepping for this conference, and we are stoked to hear from different graduate students, independent scholars, public humanists, and educators about the role of literature, and the arts and humanities in addressing inequality and building just communities. This […]