Elva Bonsall

University of Glasgow Postgraduate Award, University of Glasgow - Literature

I’m a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley where I majored in English literature, minored in creative writing, and graduated with Distinction. Beyond my own research, I spent a good part of my undergraduate years designing and teaching writing classes to other undergraduates. I typically explain my project to friends and onlookers by moving my hands about and saying something along the lines of “memory studies,” but more accurately my project focuses on how identity—in particular, a changing identity—is represented in literature. My larger interest is in what the feeling of you being you is like, and how this feeling is represented to yourself and others. Through this work, I seek to further understand the narrative form and how people and cultures with complicated pasts can better relate to one another. As a Fulbright scholar, I am absolutely thrilled to attend the University of Glasgow, and to study with the most prominent scholars of this field while earning my master’s in modernist literature. I am so excited to further my own writing and research, enjoy local Scottish theatre and comedy, and take as many hikes through the Scottish countryside as I can possibly manage.