2020 English Graduates

Thesis title: Ghost Stories: Discovering and Disintegrating Homespace

My thesis is a group of essentially nonfiction memoir-style essays. I explore the mutability of the definition of home, through a series of interlocking relationships and spaces that connect back to me. I examine the tatteredness in the fabric of my selfhood through the co-constitutive threads of family, pain, food, memory, and love.

Favorite part of Reed: Everything. My friends. Having classes outside. Finishing essays. Sunday morning of Renn Fayre.

Favorite English Class: Queer Writing with Sara Jaffe, August Wilson with Pancho Savery, Junior Seminar with Laura Leibman, and Somatic Writing with Samiya Bashir.

Take away lesson: When you learn to read and write better, you can apply those skills to anything and everything. Intellectual and creative energies share power in one another.

Jillian de la Torre

Thesis title: "I Felt Myself a Phantom": Spacemaking and Radical Self-Representation in the Literature and Filmmaking of Homeless Bay Areans

My thesis looks at poetry, short stories, and journalism from two homeless-authored Bay Area newspapers and, after an examination of homeless representation in American film history, analyzes two documentary-style films produced in conjunction with Bay Area homeless communities. Through my thesis, I hope to bring more attention to the voices of local homeless creators in the context of a locality where homelessness and inequitable wealth and property distribution are ever-increasing issues.

Favorite part of Reed: My favorite part of attending Reed was having the opportunity to work with a variety of different social service and community organizations through the SEEDS federal work-study program. In different positions, I worked with communities experiencing homelessness, domestic and sexual violence, food insecurity, and challenges related to immigration and employment status. I feel incredibly blessed to have had the chance to engage with my community in this way and to begin to learn how to navigate advocacy and systems works from a trauma-informed place.

Favorite English class: Junior Seminar with Laura Leibman, American Short Story with Gail Sherman, and Theories of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in Fiction and Theory with Nathalia King.

Take away lesson: Learning how to communicate effectively can actively prepare you for important work in so many different fields.

Thesis Title: Laughing at Some Fucked Up Shit: An Investigation into the Relationship Between Trauma and Stand-up Comedy

My thesis is about examining the various ways material concerning personal or identity-based trauma makes its way into notable stand-up comedy routines. I consider the various performative and rhetorical strategies comics use to make difficult subjects funny, and why that is utterly important to the genre.

Favorite part of Reed: I still think the best part about attending Reed was finally meeting and being around people who accepted my dumb nerdy ass. That allowed me to grow personally in ways I never have before, and now I'm so grateful to have this awesome community of people I adore!

Favorite English class: So many! Junior Seminar and Dead & Undead with Laura Leibman, Dante's Divine Comedy with Michael Faletra, Revision and Beyond with Sara Jaffe, Joyce with Jay Dickson- really I never had a bad class in this department!

Take away lesson: Storytelling is so important to our human condition. I've always loved listening to the stories people tell across time and space, but I think at Reed I finally understood that for me, the most important part of storytelling is how it has the transformative ability to create empathy. And on top of that, I can tell my own stories too!