Rebecca Bush
Ph.D., English

As a first-year graduate fellow in the English department I am excited about the opportunity to work with other students and faculty who share my passion for the study of literature. Though still broad, my research interests include religious and cultural studies, particularly in Renaissance Literature and Literature of the American South. I think the ability to evoke the life and language of a people while creating a very meaningful cultural, social, and religious dialogue is what keeps a text immortal. These fluid qualities of the literary tradition and its ability to register a class-transcending, cultural history of metaphors, meanings, idioms, and symbols—sometimes in a single word—have drawn me to literature not just as a “study” but a life path.

I graduated in 2006 with a B.A. in English from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. Centre offered an intense exposure to the liberal arts and afforded me the opportunity to spend academic terms studying abroad in Cameroon, Africa and Strasbourg, France. During the year following graduation, I directed the day to day activities of a civic literacy initiative in the office of the Kentucky Secretary of State, an opportunity which demonstrated to me that students and adults at all education levels lack a sufficient understanding of arts, humanities, literature, and consequently themselves.

I was drawn to St. Louis University for its attentive faculty and research opportunities, but also because of its focus on stewardship and the social responsibility of academia. As such, I look forward to combining a rigorous academic grasp of literature with my belief in its pro-social potential in order to pursue a career as a teacher, scholar, and advocate for literature in education.