Interdisciplinary analysis of southern sporting culture in William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses.
Steve Knepper - Class of 2006
This project grew out of an independent study called Hunters and Naturalists that I did with Dr. James Tuten. I conducted research for the project at the National Sporting Library in Middleburg, VA and then presented my initial draft at the Southern Writers Symposium last February. I received some great feedback (including a little from Dr. Louis Rubin, perhaps the premier twentieth century scholar of southern literature), but I knew that I wasn't quite doing my ideas justice yet.
This past summer, while attending a seminar at Princeton University, I spent an afternoon at Firestone Library and started to rewrite my essay. A month later, I had a much more polished draft with a more comprehensive survey of literature and more cogent literary analysis. I got Dr. Tuten and Dr. Mark Hochberg to read my new draft, and after revising based on their suggestions, I began the long process of shopping my article around to journals. I quickly discovered that several professional journals were unwilling to even read my work because I was an undergraduate. Finally, Studies in American Culture decided to take a chance on me. After a three month review period, I found out that it had been accepted pending revisions. I am currently polishing up my final draft, and the article will come out next Fall.
Steve was also the first undergraduate to present at the Southern Writers Symposium and the first undergraduate published in Studies in American Culture. His research has mostly focused on twentieth century American literature.
Steve was also awarded the prestigious Davies-Jackson Scholarship for two years of study at Cambridge University.