Arts and Humanities Commons^™

We're Having A Moment, Sophia Pelosi

Honors Theses

Hi.

Thank you for being here, for reading this. Given that you’re here, I assume that you are a close friend, or a thesis advisor, or a relative, or maybe some nosy peer who just happened upon it, and found themselves curious. No judgement. I get it. I’d probably do the same to you, if it were your thesis, your heart, your soul, your memories on the page.

I wrote this because I wanted to. I wrote this because I knew it would be special for me, to get to unabashedly care about my writing and want to make it …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Victoria Sackville-West Materials., Victoria Sackville-West, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

The collection contains 27 letters and 4 greeting cards of personal correspondence written between 1947-1961, from V. Sackville-West at her home at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, U.K., to Grace Mountcastle Martin in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Many of the letters convey the author's thanks for shipments of sugar and soap during times of rationing in the U.K.

V. [Victoria or "Vita"] Sackville-West, English poet, novelist, socialite and suffragette, was born in 1892 at her family's estate at Knole in Kent. Privately educated, she began writing poetry at age 11, and had produced 8 novels and 5 plays by the time of her …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Lilla Cabot Perry Materials., Lilla Cabot Perry, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

The Collection of Lilla Cabot Perry Materials contains clippings, correspondence, two diaries, published and unpublished manuscripts, a memorial exhibit document, two portrait paintings (William Dean Howells, Edwin Arlington Robinson) and photograph items.

Lilla Cabot Perry (1848-1933) was born in Boston, a member of the prominent Cabot family. She married Thomas Sargeant Perry, a literature professor at Harvard, and through him became friends with writers such as Henry James and William Dean Howells. Perry wrote several volumes of poetry: "Heart of the Weed" (1886), "From the Garden of Hellas" (1891), "Impressions" (1898), and "Jar of Dreams" (1923). Primarily known as an …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Celia Thaxter Materials, Celia Thaxter, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

Celia Laighton Thaxter, 1835-1894, was an American poet and prose writer. Born Celia Laighton in Portsmouth, N.H., she spent her childhood on White Island Lighthouse, part of Isles of Shoals, and Appledore Island. At 16 she married Levi Thaxter and had three sons, Karl, John, and Roland. The family spent winters on the mainland in Massachusetts, where Celia felt imprisoned by domestic duties in a city house. Her first poem, "Land-locked," was published in 1860 and was an immediate success. Soon she became widely published, with poems appearing in Harper's, Scribner's, and the Atlantic. With the means to spend more …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Margaret Wade Deland Materials, Margaret Wade Deland, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

The collection includes correspondence, manuscripts, and first publications of Maine writer, Margaret Wade Deland. The bulk of the collection consists of letters written by Deland to various correspondents between 1884 and 1944. The collection also contains manuscript items of varying length, clippings, published writings, and a few photographic prints. Born Margaret Wade Campbell near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1857, Deland moved to Boston in 1880. She is known principally for the novel "John Ward, Preacher" and her 'Old Chester' books, based on communities where she grew up. She received a Doctorate of Letters from Bates College in 1920, and had a …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Louise Helen Coburn Materials, Louise Helen Coburn, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

Louise Helen Coburn was born in Skowhegan, Maine on September 1, 1856, daughter of Stephen Coburn and Helen Sophia Miller. Coburn was Colby's second female graduate (after Mary Low Carver) in 1877, and graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors. She also later received an honorary Litt. D. degree from Colby in 1914. Coburn's family was deeply tied to Colby College. Her father Stephen graduated in 1839, and the Coburn family was critical to Colby's early development as benefactors. Coburn was a co-founder, along with Mary Low Carver and others, of the Sigma Kappa Sorority. Coburn also later attended the Harvard …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Robert Underwood Johnson Materials, Robert Underwood Johnson, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

Robert Underwood Johnson, author, conservationist, and diplomat, was born in New York in 1853. For more than forty years he was associated with The Century Magazine. Associate Editor under Richard Watson Gilder, he succeeded to the editorship from 1909-1913. Using the influence of The Century Magazine, Underwood, in conjunction with famed naturalist John Muir, was one of the driving forces behind the creation of Yosemite National Park in the California in 1890. In 1889, Johnson also encouraged Muir to "start an association" to help protect the Sierra Nevada, inspiring the formation of the Sierra Club in 1892. In 1920-1921 he …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Sir Edmund William Gosse Materials, Sir Edmund William Gosse, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

Sir Edmund William Gosse (1849–1928) was an English biographer and critic. He was lecturer in English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge (1884–90) and librarian of the House of Lords (1904–14). Although he wrote with enthusiasm and wit, his scholarship was often inaccurate and thus much of his critical work has been superseded. He did, however, introduce English readers to Ibsen and other Scandinavian writers as well as to some modern French writers and painters. Among the many biographies he wrote were those of Gray (1882), Donne (1899), Sir Thomas Browne (1905), Ibsen (1907), Swinburne (1917), and Congreve (rev. ed. 1924). …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Harriet Beecher Stowe Materials, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was an influential author and novelist, born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in a household of ardent theologians and abolitionists which included her parents, Lyman and Roxana Beecher, and many of her thirteen siblings, notably her brother, Henry Ward Beecher. She received an advanced education for a woman of her time at the local seminary for girls run by her sister Catharine. In 1836, she married the abolitionist Calvin Ellis Stowe; the couple supported the Underground Railroad and sheltered fugitive slaves. In 1850, Stowe began writing installments of her best-known work, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which had a profound …

When You Meet Me Again: A Novel, Jacob O. Hyatt

Honors Theses

This document is Part One of a novel. Join an unnamed central character and five other odd individuals on a journey through a near-future college landscape, where a virtual-reality sandbox world called "Daydreamz" provides people with the opportunity to do whatever they want in a fake landscape of their own creation. This freedom ultimately comes with a deadly cost...

I Remember It Like This: Essays, Robin C. Lewis

Honors Theses

This thesis is composed of eleven personal essays. As an Environmental Policy senior, I wanted to write down some of my formative stories—not just any stories, but those that may reveal the environmental thread in my life, which, I believe, was somehow instilled in me by my parents. This thread has followed me from Texas to Maine, from childhood to almost twenty-three. It has been supported and tested by various characters along the way, sometimes growing faint, other times stronger. As I prepare for something new, I’ve found it valuable to look back on the people and landscapes and stories …

Devising Performance & Queer Futurity, Brendan F. Leonard

Honors Theses

This project argues that devising performance is an inherently queer and utopian form. In response to recent political movements, such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, which seek to stage dissatisfaction with the systems of late capitalism, I turn to devising performance as a site. Informed by the queer and performance theories of Jose Esteban Munoz, Lee Edelman, and Jill Dolan, I argue that devised theater allows us to process disillusionment, rehearse collectivity, and stage futurity. In conversation with Munoz, I define futurity as an imaginative site that considers what will follow what some scholars suggest will be …

Educating By Poetry: In A Too-Literal World, Metaphor Makes Magical Connections, Adrian Blevins

Colby Magazine

I often rouse students in my poetry classes through hypothetical exams. Sometimes the subject of the exam is quite narrow: Is this image of something "falling light as a thistlebloom" effective in Heather's gritty Manhattan poem? Or the question is vast, universal: What is the purpose of poetry? Why are we sitting here doing this? Shouldn't we cease our literary indulgences right this instant and find some hungry kids to feed?

The purpose of the exam that I don't give and don't grade is just a way to generate discussion, of course, but the fact that it is imaginary could …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of John Masefield Materials, John Masefield, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

The collection contains correspondence from and to Masefield, dated 1899-1960 and undated; manuscripts and published materials, music using the poet's words, and materials about the poet.

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Thomas Bailey Aldrich Materials., Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

Thomas Bailey Aldrich -- poet, novelist, traveler and editor -- was born in New Hampshire in 1836. His father's death in 1849 caused him to abandon his idea to attend college and move to New York to work with his uncle at age 16. Soon he became a constant contributor to newspapers and magazines and the intimate friend of many Bohemian poets, artists and writers. He was editor of various major newspapers and magazines in New York and Boston from the 1860s to the 1890s. During this time he was also a prolific, published writer of prose and verse. He …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Booth Tarkington Materials., Booth Tarkington, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

This collection contains correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and other materials relating to the life and work of Booth Tarkington. Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) was a writer from Indiana, well known for his novels of life in the midwest. Pulitzer Prizes were awarded to him for The Magnificent Ambersons and for Alice Adams. He attended Purdue University and Princeton, where he was a well-known literary and social figure. In later life he divided his time between Indiana and his estate, Seawood, in Kennebunkport, Maine, where he became friends with neighbor Kenneth Roberts.

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Elizabeth Akers Allen Materials, Elizabeth Akers Allen, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

This collection includes correspondence, manuscripts, and first publications of Maine writer, Elizabeth Akers Allen. The bulk of the collection consists of manuscripts and published writings written by Allen between 1846 and 1906. The collection also contains correspondence, an Autograph book, clippings, and a few photographic prints. Elizabeth Akers Allen grew up in Farmington, Maine, and first published a volume of poems under the pen name Florence Percy. She traveled through Europe as a journalist reporting for the Portland Transcript and Boston Evening Gazette, and was later a regular contributor to Atlantic Monthly.

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Sarah Orne Jewett Materials., Sarah Orne Jewett, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

This collection includes correspondence, manuscripts, and first publications of 19th-century Maine writer, Sarah Orne Jewett. The bulk of the collection consists of letters written by Jewett to various correspondents between 1879 and 1908. The collection also contains manuscript items of varying length, an Anecdote Book, clippings, published writings, and a few photographic prints. Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) of South Berwick, Maine achieved note as an author and poet. The daughter of Dr. Theodore Jewett, she was educated at Berwick Academy, though her studies were frequently interrupted by illness. She never married and lived most of her life in her home …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of James Brendan Connolly Materials, James Brendan Connolly, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

The Connolly Collection contains the writings and personal library of James Brendan Connolly (1868-1957). The collection includes Connolly's reminiscences, newspaper articles, and galley and page proofs as well as scrapbook clippings. There are also notebooks containing holograph notes on schooners and the navy, letters from Connolly's personal correspondence, and books from Connolly's personal library. James Brendan Connolly (1868-1957) was an Irish-American author of sea-related stories, novels, and nonfiction such as The Book of the Gloucester Fishermen. Born in South Boston, he attended Harvard and was a medal-winning athlete in the first modern Olympics, held in Athens in 1896. He …

Finding Aid To The Bern Porter Collection Of Contemporary Letters, Bern Porter, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

Bern Porter (1911–2004) was an artist, writer, philosopher, and scientist who was involved in the development of the cathode ray tube, the Saturn V rocket, and the Manhattan Project, which he renounced upon learning of the bombing of Hiroshima. Also a pioneer in the arts, he is known for his landmark work as an author and publisher. He was an early practitioner of mail art and found and performance poetry and experimented with typography, sculpture, photography, artists’ books, and collage throughout his life. Porter lived and worked in New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, California, Guam, Alabama, and Tasmania. He finally …

Beer Stein Poem, True Poem, Sick Poem, Erotic Poem, And Other Poems, Margaret Bower

Honors Theses

A collection of poems dealing with subjects like absurdity, strange love, and adulthood.

A Poem- Inspired By Alex Katz, Margaret Sargent

Colby Magazine

Margaret Sargent '14 wrote this poem last year as an assignment in Introduction to Poetry. The project asked students to write ekphrastic poetry, work that collaborates with visual art, inspired by a piece of their own choosing in the Colby College Museum of Art.

Front Matter

Colby Magazine

The Fifty Percent Solution
Chapter 2: Watt's Up, Doc?

The Last Page, Bill Roorbach

Colby Magazine

Writer Bill Roorbach finds that reality casts a strange light on his fiction.

Front Matter

Colby Magazine

The Fifty Percent Solution is the last chapter in Colby's Alumni Fund participation challenge (announced in a special mailing to alumni and parents last fall).

Moon Jellies, Christina Garbarino

Honors Theses

A collection of short poems.

Choosing A Poet's Life: Despite Daunting Obstacles, Colby Poets Pursue Their Solitary, Creative Craft, Gerry Boyle

Colby Magazine

Solitude, sacrifice, self-examination: Colby poets follow their muse and their craft, and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Biographer's Craft: Writers Discuss The Art Of Capturing Lives With Words, Frank Bures

Colby Magazine

Working in what one calls the highest form of nonfiction, Colby biographers labor to recreate the lives—and essence—of their subjects. Chronicling figures ranging from Lincoln to Van Gogh, these writers strive to create the definitive biography.

The Last Page: Love Story, Lucy Dotson

Colby Magazine

“Love Story” a poem by Lucy Dotson ’13J

Island Voices, Sarah Hirsch

Honors Theses

A story that’s actually a series of poems, told somewhat by the people themselves but mostly as it is seen by the ocean, which narrates lovingly, scathingly, honestly, feelingly.