Year of Graduation
2022
Level of Access
Open Access Thesis
Embargo Period
12-15-2022
Department or Program
English
First Advisor
Anthony Walton
Abstract
I wrote Divinity School, an Honors Project for the Department of English, under the auspices of my project advisor, Professor Anthony Walton, and my readers, Professors Marilyn Reizbaum, Ann Kibbie, and Aaron Kitch. Divinity School is a novel whose conflicts are religious, generational, and familial. Set mostly in Hoboken, New Jersey with vignettes in Manhattan, Vienna, the west coast of Ireland, and an anonymous New England college town, it is the story of one family and the open secrets that keep them apart. Hal Macpherson is a Divinity School professor uged into premature retirement by allegations of misconduct; his wife, Annie Price, is a withdrawn would-be actress. They are parents to Amelia Macpherson, a woman in her twenties who rejects her father’s righteous claims of innocence and her mother’s exhausted but unwavering devotion to him. This project is concerned with sex and pedagogy, youth, want-it-all politcs, parenthood, getting old, Protestantism, and domestic life. Using third-person free indirect style, I traverse the public-private planes of literature. As an undergraduate at Bowdoin College, I have enjoyed the privilege of a great English education in literature, creative writing, and independent work. Divinity School is the culmination of these studies.