Fordham English Senior Presents at the 9th Annual Undergraduate Research Workshop

English Department Senior Adam Fales (FCLC '17) presented a paper, "Herman Melville's Body: Archives, Absence, and Historical Literary Practice," drawn from his honors thesis research this past weekend at the 9th Annual Undergraduate Research Workshop at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.  

Established as the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies in 1978, and renamed in honor of its benefactor Robert L. McNeil, Jr., in 1998, the McNeil Center facilitates scholarly inquiry into the histories and cultures of North America in the Atlantic world before 1850, with a particular but by no means exclusive emphasis on the mid-Atlantic region.

Adam is writing his thesis under the direction of Professor Shonni Enelow, and his visit was sponsored by Professor Jordan Stein, who serves as Fordham's liaison to the McNeil Center.  As part of the workshop, all students are paired with a graduate student mentor, and Adam worked with Fordham English Ph.D. candidate (and fellow Kansan) Christy Pottroff, who is currently a 2016-17 Andrew W. Mellon Early American Literature and Material Texts Dissertation Fellow at the McNeil Center, and who delivered a formal comment on Adam's research at the workshop.

Fordham students are eligible to apply for undergraduate workshops and dissertation fellowships because Fordham is one of more than three dozen schools and libraries that make up the McNeil Center consortium.  Students who may be interested in presenting their work at the McNeil Center in the future should contact Professor Stein (jstein10@fordham).