In May 2012 I graduated summa cum laude from the University of California at Berkeley with a BA in English. My focus had been on early American writing, particularly on Northeast Native America and the political and social relationships between Native North American nations and European colonizers. Following my graduation from Berkeley I spent the next four years traveling and working in Education. I lived Thailand while teaching English at a large Buddhist school, I attended the National Indigenous Conference in the Zapatista territory in Southern Mexico, and I returned again to Thailand to study Taoism under Master Mantak Chia.
During my time at Oxford I returned to the study of early American writing. I wrote term essays on anecdotal stories and the transmission of historical fact in the various wars between English and French settlements and their Native allies, on the psychosocial and supernatural effect of epidemic death and disaster on the Plymouth settlement, and on the re-contextualizing of Roger William's famous Key to the Language of America within the English political climate. In my dissertation I examined early French and English colonial writings about Native American children, looking particularly at issues of autonomy, self-determination, and cultural familial metaphors.
Life After Ertegun House
Since completing my MSt with distinction in June of 2017, I have since moved to Burlington, Vermont and opened up a business. My husband and I run ONTA Studio -- a martial arts academy which teaches a holistic program of self defense and Taoist meditation to adults and children, including those with special needs. I am also in the process of writing a very silly novel.