Sophia Grausso, FCLC 2024

MAJOR: English; Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

BIO: Sophia Grausso (Sorrentino) is a Senior at FCLC studying Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and English with a concentration in Creative Writing. She has been published in both The Comma literary magazine and Grain of Salt for her flash horror fiction, and is regularly featured in The Observer for her Arts and Culture contributions. She hopes to publish broadly and frequently in her post-graduate career. You can find more of her work on her website: sgrsorrentino.squarespace.com

PROJECT TITLE: Flâneuse: A Walk Alongside The Wolves

MENTOR: Anne Fernald, Department of English and Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies

ABSTRACT: “Flâneuse” is a creative research project which explores the literary tradition of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath to develop a pedagogy further stimulating my own writing and self-revision. Plath and Woolf were chosen specifically for their emphasis on walking in their writing practice as well as their dedication to keeping writing notebooks and continually revising and rewriting their work, and therefore the self. Over the course of Summer 2023, I was able to conduct archival research at Smith College Special Collections, home to Plath’s archives, and The New York Public Library Berg Collection, home to a wide array of Woolf’s papers, to better understand their writing process before embarking on a literary lineage journey to London, Paris, and Edinburgh. Through my travels I was not only able to connect deeper with Plath and Woolf’s surroundings, but channel a distinct defamiliarization to better inform my writing in specific reference to a novel I have been working on since 2021. I plan to cultivate a literary collection of personal essays, fiction, and academic analysis of Plath and Woolf available for viewing at Ars Nova. 

I would like to recognize Anne Fernald for serving as my summer research advisor, and Dr. Mary Bly who has advised the curation of “Flâneuse” as a literary collection in the months since.