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Meet the Nomad Mentorship Coordinators

bannikovMartha Bannikov

marthab@uoregon.edu

I am second year PhD student in Comparative Literature. My interests include Postcolonial theory, Namibian and other Southern African literatures, and writings by the African diaspora.

I became a Nomad Mentorship Coordinator because, after mentoring a student last year I left the experience wishing I had had an opportunity like Nomad in my undergraduate program. Nomad gives a student the opportunity for one-on-one attention by someone who not only has experience writing graduate level papers—papers often written with publication in mind—but is often teaching classes as well, and is thus adept at editing papers and articulating complicated concepts. The student who participates in this program not only becomes a better writer, but gets a thrilling foretaste of what it would be like to present their papers at a conference, and then prepare that paper for publication. As a graduate student looking back on my undergrad years, this experience would have been invaluable to me. So given the opportunity to be a part of something I consider to be so valuable, and to assist those who choose to join the program, how could I pass that up?

sindhuDevina Sindhu

dsindhu@uoregon.edu

I am delighted to be joining the Nomad team this year! I cannot imagine what it would have been like to have had such an opportunity as a B.A. student–how this kind of individualized attention might have helped in finessing my own writing and thinking. Although I participated in similar projects as an undergraduate, where I wrote a longer research paper and took part in a conference, the Nomad Mentorship Program is different. It is wonderfully unique in its rigorous expectations, commitment, and engagement that come from both sides–both the student and the mentor. This is because students work with one mentor–not just for a couple of weeks or for the term–but throughout the course of a school year to produce their work. Students write an academic paper, present their findings in a conference, and publish their work in an award-winning journal. I am confident that past Nomad participants will agree that such an experience was the highlight of their academic careers. Both the research project and conference from my undergraduate years remain etched in my memory as the most enriching experiences that forever shaped and refined my academic interests, and also greatly improved my writing. I am confident that this year’s participants will feel similarly.

Here is a bit about me and my research interests: I am a first year graduate student in the Comparative Literature department. I currently study 18th and 19th century British literature, psychoanalysis, and feminist philosophy, but I also dabble in literary theory, South Asian literature and diaspora, and women’s literature from all time periods and cultural contexts. I look forward to being the Nomad Coordinator for this year’s theme, Chaos, and bringing some order to the sometimes chaotic process of writing a paper.