Welcome to the SCIO Alumni Stories blog!
As we celebrate the respective journeys of our alumni, we are excited to share their inspiring stories, reflecting on their experiences at Oxford and how those moments have shaped their personal and professional lives. Our first feature is an interview with Dr. Jessica Brown (formerly Jessica Smith), one of the early participants in our Oxford programs.
As an undergraduate student at Anderson University (Indiana), Jessica came to study with us in the fall of 2001 and the spring of 2002 as part of the CCCU’s initiative to serve academically able students, then organized via the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Her time in Oxford left a lasting impact, influencing her path as a writer, poet, and academic.
Interview with Dr. Jessica Brown
(pictures are from her time in Oxford)
Q: Can you describe the academic environment during your time here?
I remember walking from the student hall to my lodgings for the first time – I had just arrived in Oxford that morning, and I was overwhelmed by the beauty, the busyness, the old stonework, and the many bakeries. Little did I know that the circuit I took then I’d walk many more times, becoming familiar with it and coming to love it. The experience of Oxford is so rich, infused with a unique liveliness of thought and history. Corners, archways, tiny alleys: for me, these architectural, spatial points embody the in-time discovery that being a student in Oxford can supply, from a strange medieval cookbook the Bodleian librarians find for you to a student retelling of All’s Well that Ends Well to a new way of reading the Psalter.
In thinking about the academic environment, I am struck by how formative the tutorials are for a way of learning and thinking. The one-to-one hour of discussion and the time spent on a thematic essay during the week re-educated me about how to learn, with time and sustained attention.
Q: What was the most memorable experience or event from your time here?
When I think back to that autumn of 2001, what first comes to mind is 9/11 and how shocked and scared we were as students from the States, watching the news in the common room. The next day or so, we were in Stratford-upon-Avon for a field trip, and it was at a church there that we attended a prayer service for the States. I will never forget the depth of prayer and kindness in that place.
In a different vein, another memorable part of my two semesters were the 4-week lecture series each term: bringing together the best Oxford scholars, it was truly encountering a wealth of thought that was exciting and formative.
Q: What courses or subjects did you find most engaging or influential?
One tutorial and one seminar have particularly remained with me. The tutorial was Medieval Women Writers; reading the works of Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, and Christine de Pizan informed my ‘social imaginary’ about female writing, the Middle Ages, and the theology of God’s love. It also fueled my own creative self and imagination, giving me new metaphors for poetry and ideas for narrative arcs and rich voices.
The seminar, which perhaps is my most favorite course ever taken (and I’ve taken quite a few!), was History of Science with Professor John Roche. Learning about astronomy in the medieval era; reading Copernicus and Kepler; thinking about medicine and botany – this was a radically integrated course, not only in history of thought but in the deep frameworks of how we see our world. I would later be inspired to write a novella from this course.
Q: Are there any specific projects or achievements in your career that you attribute to your Oxford experience?
In many ways, my time in Oxford truly influenced the trajectory of my education and career. Seeing the fruit of scholarship and faith fused together, and having a setting so ripe for what would become a lifelong habit of ‘working out’ poems and stories by walking in natural beauty (like all the meadows in Oxford), I would go on to Boston College for a MA in English, to Seattle Pacific for an MFA in Creative Writing, and recently, to earn a doctorate from the University of Limerick in narrative studies and creative writing. As a writer with articles in both creative and academic journals, with a poetry collection published in 2019, I really do hold that time in Oxford as one which ‘gathered up’ who I was and informed with life-giving sustenance who I was (and am) becoming.
In a trajectory intertwined with that, Oxford was also where I encountered Anglican worship for the first time. Living only across the street from Christ Church Cathedral, the service of Evensong became something I cherished daily. Now, I’m an ordinand in the Church of Ireland. The line between these two is no consequence.
Q: What legacy do you hope to leave behind, and how do you think your time here has contributed to that vision?
Like many writers, I hope to leave behind poems and stories that offer companionship and formation for the long-haul of living life. ‘Lighten our darkness, we beseech you,’ goes the evening prayer . . . if my work can offer any lightness in the dark, or a lightening of the heavy burdens life often brings, that is my hope. With real thanksgiving for my time in Oxford – and the abiding, living structures this place has to quest into what thoughts and words can indeed do – I have no doubt that my year there shaped both the form and the content of this hope.
***
A poet and writer, Dr. Jessica Brown has research interests in affect theory, deep ecology, narrative studies, and public humanities. She is a creative writing mentor and editor and plans to release her first EP this summer. Studying at Trinity College Dublin, Jessica is an Anglican ordinand with the Church of Ireland. She lives and works in East Clare with her husband and son. Learn more at www.jessicabrownwriter.com.