������˾��

Claire J.C. Eager awarded grant to complete book

Claire J.C. Eager, visiting assistant professor of English at ������˾��, was named one of 14 awardees of the Project Development Grant by the American Council of Learned Societies. According to the ACLS website, the grant program �offers flexible support to faculty at teaching-intensive colleges and universities whose research will advance humanistic studies and interpretative social sciences.� The $5,000 award will allow Eager to give �full attention to writing and revising� her first book, Vertuall��Paradise: Vaulting Ambitions Brought to Earth in Early Modern England.���The book studies where and how �paradise� appears in English culture in the time of Shakespeare and generations after, and how the familiar images of paradise as a garden connect to��ideas of imperialism and ecology,� Eager explained. She��finds evidence of this in three places: literary works, gardens, and printed books, which have �ideas and labor contributed by people besides the author, such as patrons, publishers, printers, and illustrators.�����

Eager�s teaching includes courses on older topics, like Shakespeare, and more contemporary topics, like inclusive children�s literature, Baldwin, and creative writing.��Being able to draw connections from the past to the present is something she asks students to do in the classroom and is a major part of her research. �Studying the past is incredibly important because it can show us the beginning of paths that led to today�s racism, inequality, and climate change,� Eager said. �It allows us to think critically about our own choices today.�����

Working at the College since 2019, Eager has found that the �students and culture of teaching and learning, including Independent Study, seem to be a great fit� for her own teaching and research interests. By the end of summer, Eager hopes to have a completed draft and to have sent the book proposal to publishers. �It�s so exciting to be close to completing the final phase of my biggest early career project and to share my work with colleagues, students, and other readers,� she said.

Posted in Faculty, News on June 3, 2021.