Faculty Remarks:
I met Grace in 2017 when she enrolled in the English “gateway” course that I was teaching that semester. From our first class discussions and written assignments, I was struck by Grace’s ability to connect the details and language of a specific literary passage to the arc and meaning of the literary text as a whole: not an easy task for anyone, and especially not someone at the start of their college career! I was thus delighted when Grace responded to a call that I put out to my class for help with research for a book project. Grace won an Undergraduate Research Support grant to help me with this project, and her help was invaluable for my own work. It was wonderful to get to know Grace at the start of her Duke career, and I will very much miss not being able to hand her diploma in person as she graduates–but I hope that there will be an occasion to do that at a future departmental commencement event, when that becomes possible. – Rob Mitchell
