What Makes Atlanta a Great College Town

Take a city tour from Kristen Ellingboe 14C (Journalism and Political Science), who co-authored a piece in Atlanta Magazine about why the term ‘college town’ should be among Atlanta’s synonyms.

When you think of metro Atlanta, many things may come to mind. Capital of the New South, for example. Or worst place to be a Pepsi fan. “College town” probably isn’t on your list. But the area’s 6 million residents include more than 250,000 college students, according to the Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education. Each year this quarter-million-strong cohort studies at one of the metro area’s fifty-seven colleges and universities.

And while Atlanta is hardly a typical college town, its borders contain a wealth of student experiences. From the refurbished dot-com building that houses SCAD Atlanta to the picturesque quad of Agnes Scott, you can find any college vibe imaginable.

We’re both students at Atlanta-area schools, and drew on our experiences here—as well as input from dozens of fellow scholars—to take you on a tour of the city’s neighborhoods.

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Ralph Savarese Looks at Autistic Writers

In his recent talk at Emory (see YouTube video), Ralph Savarese of Grinnell College advances the notion of a much less human-centered empathy by exploring the propensity in autism to attend to objects more than people (February 19, 2014). Focusing on the work of two autistic writers, Dawn Prince and Tito Mukhopadhyay, he investigates the trope of personification, appealing to neuroscientific investigations of the phenomenon in order to distinguish between a categorical and a precategorical engagement with experience. Lyric writing, especially poetry, plays a controlled game with categories, dwelling in the sensory and blurring distinctions through a range of literary devices such as personification and metaphor. For Prince and for Mukhopadhyay, the space of lyric writing appears to welcome autistic difference.

Ralph James Savarese is the author of “Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption,” which Newsweek called “a real life love story and an urgent manifesto for the rights of people with neurological disabilities,” and the co-editor of three collections, including “Autism and the Concept of Neurodiversity,” a special issue of Disability Studies Quarterly. The winner of the Herman Melville Society’s Hennig Cohen Prize and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation, he spent the academic year 2012/2013 as a neurohumanities fellow at Duke University’s Institute for Brain Sciences. He teaches at Grinnell College in Iowa.

The Disability Studies Initiative at Emory is a new working group (beginning Fall 2013) generated across departments and schools that is dedicated to interdisciplinary research and teaching by faculty and students. The Initiative is led by a group of faculty and students who are interested in the social, cultural, historical, political, and legal dimensions of disability in our world.

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Bobby Jones Scholars Selected for 2014-15

Four Emory University seniors—Lauren Ball, Rachel Cawkwell, Blake Mayes and Fiona O’Carroll—are the 2014-2015 recipients of the prestigious Robert T. Jones Scholarship Award for a year of study at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

They will represent Emory as ambassadors to St. Andrews and were selected based on their established records of leadership, academic excellence and interests that can be pursued through the offerings at the venerable Scottish institution.

Widely known as the Bobby Jones Scholarship, the award was established in 1976 and recognizes individuals who will be excellent representatives of Emory at St. Andrews. The late Bobby Jones, an internationally renowned golfer, was an Emory School of Law alumnus remembered by those who knew him as an extraordinary man of rare loyalty, compassion and integrity.

The scholars for the competitive award receive full tuition, room, board and a travel stipend for their year of study. In addition, four St. Andrews students are chosen to spend a year at Emory.

The 2014-15 Bobby Jones Scholars represent a wide range of academic interests:

Ball, a double major in mathematics and physics and astronomy from Grayson, Ga., plans to complete a conversion to psychology degree at St. Andrews. She entered Emory as a Questbridge Scholar, and has played for Emory’s varsity basketball team for three years. Ball has led both the Society for Physics Students and the Emory Astronomy Club, and has served as an athletic and academic coach in the local and international communities. During the summers, she assisted with the Appalachia Service Project and traveled to Dharamsala, India, as part of Emory’s Tibetan Mind/Body Sciences program.

 

 

Cawkwell, an English major from Bedford, N.Y., is a Woodruff Scholar, a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, and was named to the 100 Senior Honorary Society. She represented Emory on a four-person slam poetry team in 2011, and received the Academy of American Poets Award in 2012. Cawkwell is completing an undergraduate honors thesis on the representation of charitable works in Victorian novels, and plans to pursue a degree on Victorian Studies at St. Andrews. She has been a leader with the Emory College Tour Guide program, a fellow in the Community Building and Social Change program, and is in her second year as co-director of Volunteer Emory. Cawkwell also is president of the women’s ultimate frisbee club team.

 

 

Mayes, a religion major with a minor in Community Building and Social Change from Knoxville, Tenn., plans to study systematic and historic theology in St. Mary’s College at St. Andrews. A Woodruff Scholar, Mayes helped develop a mentoring program for new Emory Scholars and is a fellow at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, completing his honors thesis on contemporary monastic communities. As a fellow in the Community Building and Social Change program, he worked on strategic planning in south DeKalb County. He co-chaired the Student Visioning Process for University Center Renovations, and advocated for civic engagement programs for Emory students.

 

 

O’Carroll, a double major in history and French studies from Seattle, Wash., plans to seek a master’s in intellectual history at St. Andrews. She has studied abroad in Paris and at the T.S. Eliot International Summer School in London, leading to her involvement as a CIPA peer advisor helping other students study abroad. A Woodruff Scholar, she has been active with Emory Student Ambassadors and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. The recipient of a SIRE research grant, O’Carroll is completing an undergraduate honors thesis in history on women’s suffrage in the U.S. Progressive era, and is a fellow at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry.

 

 

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