Nomad: The Journey is the Reward

Literature and cinema are rife with secrets. Across the globe and throughout the ages, telling the tale of human experience has often involved heroes (or antiheroes) who shelter secret identities or lovers, who harbor secret schemes or plots. From the conspiracy that brought down Julius Caesar to the over-the-top intrigue of James Bond blockbusters, we love the narrative tension of secrecy.

But even the act of narration can be a secret. Consider Anne Frank. Or Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, forced to do much of his writing in secret after his novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, revealed brutal conditions in Soviet labor camps.

These are just a few small glimpses into a rich vein of possibility for this year’s Nomad journal, which will center on the theme of “Secret.”

The students who contribute to Nomad—the undergraduate journal of the UO Department of Comparative Literature—will decide for themselves how to explore this theme in the context of scholarly research and analysis.

Last year’s Nomad theme, “Trick,” included articles ranging from an examination of magic realism in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits to the use of 3-D in cinema to trick the eye. Previous issues focused on themes such as “Trash,” “The Undead” and “What Sustains Us.”

A Little Bit Provocative

We try to pick themes that can work many different ways,” said Lisa Freinkel, comparative literature department head. “We like to be a little bit irreverent and provocative, while coming up with a theme that lends itself to both contemporary cultural studies and traditional literary analysis.”

Now in its thirteenth year, Nomad is dedicated to giving undergraduates an in-depth experience of developing, writing and publishing an academic essay. Cover-to-cover, each issue of Nomad features original research papers written exclusively by undergraduates. The students also present their papers at a full-day conference in the spring.

But it’s not just the end product that makes Nomad unique; it’s also the process.

It begins in the fall, when faculty members and graduate students invite eighteen to twenty promising undergraduates to join the Nomad editorial team (about twelve of them will see it through the entire year). Most often, these students are recruited via introductory comparative literature courses, where they acquire a foundational understanding of the discipline.

Each student is then paired with a mentor. In many cases the mentor will be a graduate student, but sometimes a faculty member will volunteer. This year, Lisa Freinkel is mentoring a freshman on the Nomad team. 

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Intensive one-on-one

Thus begins an intensive one-on-one relationship, which Freinkel likens to an apprenticeship experience. This has benefits all around. Not only do the undergraduates receive individualized attention and guidance, but the graduate student mentors also gain invaluable lessons as teachers.

“We learn how to meet them where they are,” said Emily McGinn, a graduate teaching fellow and this year’s Nomad mentorship co-coordinator.

Even the faculty mentors benefit. Because undergraduates are on a learning curve and “aren’t yet fully professionalized,” said Freinkel, “they help us have a fresh perspective on our discipline. Some of the most exciting moments I’ve had have come from their ‘disorienting’ perspectives.”

Once paired with a mentor, the undergraduates undertake a yearlong process of immersion in the “conversation” of comparative literature. Building on their basic understanding of the field, they learn about library and digital research methods that will come in handy when they choose their angles on the “Secret” theme. 

An original idea

Their research mission will be to learn what’s being said among scholars that is relevant to their particular topic and how the discussion has been framed thus far. Next—and this is where a Nomad project departs from a typical term paper for a class—the students are expected to develop an original idea that adds to the conversation. This is the fundamental task of professional scholarship.

Two years ago, when Olivia Awbrey joined the Nomad team as a sophomore, the theme was “What Sustains Us.” Awbrey, a double major in comparative literature and history and a student in the Clark Honors College, became intrigued by the possibilities of a Senegalese story called “Tribal Scars,” which she had read in a class the previous year.

“Tribal Scars” is a story of survival in a time of French colonization, when native Senegalese became human fodder for the slave trade. In Awbrey’s view, “Tribal Scars” demonstrates that the act of storytelling itself can be a means of cultural and personal preservation—i.e., sustenance.

As she writes in her Nomad piece, her research aim was to explore “the possibility that storytelling can revive the past and create a new sense of meaning to sustain an individual’s identity that was dismantled by colonial rule.”

But her path through that exploration was not predetermined by any means. Even though ably coached by her graduate student mentor, her research took her into domains—like scholarly analysis of African literature—that broke new ground for both of them. 

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More piercing questions

Also, it seemed that one source inevitably led to others. “Different sources bring up different, more piercing questions,” she said, many of them opening further doors into an almost bewildering array of possibilities.

Eventually, though, Awbrey narrowed the field to a (still large) stack of articles and books that were most relevant to her research question. And then she confronted the “now what?” moment.

“I really wasn’t sure how it would all fit together,” she recalled.

Rising to this challenge—fitting together the puzzle pieces to develop an original piece—is the moment of truth for any scholar in the humanities, and Awbrey forged ahead. Next stop: the first draft.

Here again the Nomad essay differs from the average term paper, which might—in the case of a few advanced classes—be expected to undergo a revision or two, at most. Nomad essays, in contrast, undergo successive revisions that are reviewed by mentors, other graduate students and faculty members, as well as undergraduate Nomad peers.

Jacob Plagmann recalls the peer review workshop as an eye-opener. Under the encouragement of his mentor, he felt he was making good progress on his paper for the “What Sustains Us” issue, on the topic of sin and redemption in The Brothers Karamazov and the works of Søren Kierkegaard. But the feedback he received in the peer workshop made it clear that some were having trouble following his narrative thread. And so he went back for another significant round of revision.

Plagmann, now a senior majoring in comparative literature and Russian, looks back at this a little ruefully but also with appreciation for what he learned. He characterizes the editorial process as “meticulous,” as does Awbrey (who also successfully navigated the revision hurdles to see her essay through to completion).

This is indeed what’s promised on the Nomad web page: that students will experience the full extent of the editorial process, “from the subject matter’s conception, to research methodology, to putting words on the page, to structuring arguments, to final and perfect proofreading.” 

In service of fluency

Throughout the year, Nomad students also deepen their understanding of comparative literature through a host of visiting lecturers and events centered on the Nomad theme. Last year, for instance, in support of “Trick,” guest speakers included a writer of noir fiction, an expert in subversive graffiti and a performance artist.

It’s all in service of developing what Freinkel calls “fluency” in the discipline. Just as mastering another language requires much more than learning vocabulary, mastering comparative literature goes far beyond the (necessary) knowledge of terminology and taking an active role in participating in the dialog.

If students are indeed going to enter into the conversation, she says, “they need to speak the way the natives speak,” while taking the risk and initiative of putting forth their own ideas and developing an argument in a sustained way. 

—Lisa Raleigh

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