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The Interview:

Karen:Tell me about your URECA project.

Laci: My URECA work last summer was part of my English honors thesis, and it centered on Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House, but more specifically on how Jackson uses psychoanalytic concepts, kind of subversively, to poke fun and critique at psychoanalysis and how it functioned in mid-century America. With my URECA grant, I was able to travel down to the Library of Congress where I had access to about 8,000 of her primary documents. This included anything from her manuscripts, her drafting notes, her letters, and her personal diaries — really a lot of different types of documents.  When I was in DC, I worked in the library for ~ 6 hours every day, going through all of these documents and found some great material for my thesis. It was a really exciting, really wonderful experience.

Is this the first time you had done any kind of archival research?

Yes, I had gone to the rare books collection in the Stony Brook Library with Dr. Douglas Pfeiffer to see how archival work was done. But this was my first time doing my own independent research. So that was that was a big step for me professionally. I specifically sought out the Library of Congress archives because I had been reading a biography on Jackson which referenced this connection between her and a psychoanalyst named Dr. Nandor Fodor, just in a passing way. But I wanted to know: what did the letter say? Did we have Jackson's letter back to him? Did we have any other correspondence? And then, when I went to D.C. to follow up on this thread, the very first box of documents that I requested to access just happened to have the very letter I was looking for. I opened the folder, and the first document on the top was Fodor’s letter! It was like a scene out of movie. That moment was really memorable, a special moment for me in academic journey. Not only did I get to read that letter, but I also got to find other letters she wrote to her publisher or to her friends that mentioned psychoanalysis: “it was Freud's fault that I wrote this book”… or  “I'm not fool enough to undergo psychoanalysis”…. that kind of thing.

That’s interesting.

So in the research I had read about The Haunting of Hill House, there had really been surprisingly little mention of these notes and writings that I found when doing archival work. So it was really kind of a wonderful surprise to be able to discover the amount of information that I found there.

Prior to looking up the archives, I had read through some of Nandor Fodor’s case studies. He has a book published in 1951 called Haunted People: The Story of thePoltergeist Down the Centuries. And I realized that one of the case studies is actually really similar to the plot of Hill House, and the way his theories play out do mirror a lot of what Jackson does in the way that her ghosts function in her haunted house. In my thesis, I was able to go into detail about how Jackson is playing with these psychoanalytic theories, but at the same time revealing the pitfalls of how psychoanalysis treatment actually played out for women at the time.

How did you originally decide to focus on Shirley Jackson and the Haunting of Hill House?

I was accepted into the English Honors program in my freshman year, and as soon as I learned that I had this opportunity to write a thesis, I knew that I wanted to write something on queer Gothic. Over the next 2 years I read as many queer Gothic novels as I could to deliberately seek out material that I might like to focus on. And when I read The Haunting of Hill House… I don't know. It just touched my heart, and I knew this was it. This was what I wanted to work on!

Have you had a chance to present your findings?  

I presented at the English Honors Symposium in December, and then in February, at the Stony Brook Grad Conference. I also was accepted to the National Sigma Tau Delta Conference, an English Honor society; I'm presenting there to a larger audience beyond Stony Brook so I'm really looking forward to that.

Was there anything that particularly surprised you about doing archival work?

Yes, it surprised me how much I enjoyed it. Right now, I'm taking a queer archiving class in the women gender sexuality studies department. And I'm in the process of applying to grad schools. And a lot of the professors I'm looking to work with are doing archival work. So this experience has been pivotal in shaping my trajectory as to what kind of scholarship I want to pursue. It gave me a preview of the kind work that I want to continue doing in the future.

What do you think is the main benefit of doing an honors thesis project?

First, just getting to work on content material that I'm personally invested in is a great experience. I've taken many interesting classes. But until I did this project, I hadn't had the opportunity to home in on a specific content or subject material that I wanted to research further in such depth. The experience of writing a 40-page thesis, writing a long form piece of scholarly work, is something that I'd never done to this extent. And I felt that it was really great preparation for graduate school. I also learned a lot about the process – picking what details to focus on, how to navigate a topic that initially I had so many ideas to choose from.

Can you talk a little bit about your role in the National Humanities Leadership Council, and what kind of project you worked on during that year?

That was a really interesting experience too. The National Humanities Council is based in North Carolina. We met virtually monthly, and we would talk to different scholars. My focus was disability advocacy within the art community, and especially chronic illness. I have a chronic illness, so that topic really hit home with me. I got in touch with Hannah Laycock as an artist who documents her multiple sclerosis through photography. (For reference, I also have MS.) She agreed to do an interview with me, and I interviewed her, and I got to have this really great conversation with her about how communicating her disability through art was cathartic for her, and how that helped her build this community of people. I wrote a narrative essay, including my own experiences, through that. And I got to work with mentors at the National Humanities Center. That was my first experience with independent research on a larger scale.  

I know you were also very involved last year in helping to organize the Humanities Research Day. If you were talking to other students, what would you most want them to know about humanities research?

I just want people to know that humanities scholars are actively doing research and finding out new materials and doing important cultural studies. I want people to know that there are innovations happening, and that undergraduates can contribute to those types of innovations. Students aren’t as aware that humanities research is even an option here!

Do you have any advice for other students about how to get involved?

It’s important to make a connection with the faculty around you — other people within the department. You need to make those connections to facilitate your own projects and your own opportunities, because these opportunities might not just be handed to you. But there are opportunities out there. So really seek them out.

I was involved with the Herstory Writers network for a little while in my sophomore year, which was a great internship. But many people don't necessarily know about these opportunities. So it’s important to make connections and let it be known that you're interested. Professors are usually receptive to helping students too.

Can you tell me about the support you've received, as a humanities student?

I've gotten so much amazing support! Professor Scheckel, since my freshman year, has been amazing. She was so supportive in guiding me through the Honors process, and encouraging me to present, and to apply for graduate programs. Jennifer Albanese and Sara Santos at the Writing Center have also been a really big help all through the thesis process. Both helped me a lot with the teaching aspects of my career trajectory. I feel very lucky that I've had so much support over the 4 years.

I'm glad that you had a positive experience with your senior thesis, and that the URECA summer worked out.

Definitely. It was probably the most memorable thing I did here at Stony Brook. I am so glad that I did it!