If you wander into Trinity\u2019s Watkinson Library on any given day of the week, there\u2019s a good chance you\u2019ll find Professor Wyss there, poring over a book she\u2019s pulled from the archives. Professor Wyss has an undeniable enthusiasm for her studies in early American literature and she\u2019s taken full advantage of the resources available at Trinity. Now in her third year here, her dedication and passion definitely show in both her classes and research.<\/p>\n
Professor Wyss teaches a variety of courses in early American literature and Native American literature. Just a few of those include \u201cLiterature of Native New England,\u201d \u201cEarly American Women\u2019s Literature,\u201d and the First-Year Seminar \u201cIndigenous Science Fiction\u201d. In the Spring 2020 semester, Professor Wyss will be teaching two new courses: \u201cContemporary Native American Literature\u201d and \u201cOrphans and Others in American Literature\u201d. In the former, the course will be focusing on works by modern Native American authors \u2014 both well-established and newer to the field \u2014 and considering how these texts help us think about what it means to be an indigenous person in the US today. \u201cOrphans and Others in American Literature\u201d will be looking at the ways in which the Americas fostered individuals\u2019 reinventions, and how these reinventions are present within 18th and 19th-century American texts. Any and all of these courses are sure to offer a fantastic introduction to Professor Wyss\u2019 areas of expertise.<\/p>\n
Prior to teaching at Trinity, Professor Wyss taught at Auburn University for 20 years. Obviously, there are some big differences between life in Connecticut and Alabama, and because Professor Wyss\u2019 research has always focused on New England, she has really enjoyed the change. When asked about how the move has affected her teaching and research, she commented that students – wherever they\u2019re from- will attach their own personal experiences to the material they\u2019re learning, and said \u201cwhen I teach texts that I have taught for my entire career now there are students in my class who recognize place names and see their own home towns in new and different ways.\u201d In her own research, the move has allowed Professor Wyss to engage more closely with Native communities. She said the shift has taken her work from \u201can abstract academic exercise to an engagement with a very real and ongoing set of issues that affect people today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outside of her classes, Professor Wyss is currently working on a few projects. Her long-term focus is her work towards her third book, which will be on 18th-century ideas about children and charity work. Using the evangelical minister George Whitefield as a touchstone, Professor Wyss is studying charity institutions in England and America, ranging from a Foundling Hospital in London to an Orphan House in Savannah, Georgia to a charity school right here in Connecticut for Native American students. Ultimately, she said she\u2019ll be arguing that \u201cif we look at the ideas shaping these three [institutions] we can see that their marginalizing rhetorics of race and poverty are remarkably similar. We can also see that the ways English missionaries and charity organizations imagined their obligations to England and America\u2019s children in the eighteenth century carry over to today.\u201d In the short-term, Professor Wyss is working on an article about some of the resources available in our very own Watkinson Library. \u201cI want to talk about how 19th<\/sup>-century book collectors thought about Native American materials and what the effects of their collecting practices were for Native communities,\u201d she said. The Watkinson has a huge amount of resources that have supported Professor Wyss\u2019 research in the field. She is particularly excited about the Eliot Indian Bibles we have in the collection, and how they can help her to better understand how the Bibles were collected, by whom, and from whom.<\/p>\n The courses Professor Wyss teaches, and her research as well, are all great examples of why studying English, and specifically American literature, is so relevant to us all. As Professor Wyss put it: \u201cAs Americans, we\u2019re all grappling with this question of what it means to be an American in political, social, and cultural contexts. The thing is, we\u2019re not the first people to be thinking about this. There are generations of brilliant writers who were contemplating these same questions long before us, so when we thoughtfully engage with their texts, we\u2019re collectively working towards these answers. The answers aren\u2019t always going to be the answers that we want, but that, I think, is part of why doing this work is so important.\u201d<\/p>\n –Macie Bridge (’21)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you wander into Trinity\u2019s Watkinson Library on any given day of the week, there\u2019s a good chance you\u2019ll find Professor Wyss there, poring over a book she\u2019s pulled from the archives. Professor Wyss has an undeniable enthusiasm for her studies in early American literature and she\u2019s taken full advantage of the resources available at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"parent":209,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-218","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n