Noah Bendzsa (They/Them)

I am a Ph.D. student in Literary and Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. Carleton’s English program helped me gain admission to this program and prepared me for the work it entails. While a student, I was given numerous opportunities to refine my argumentative strategies and my prose. I was chosen by the faculty to act the department’s student blogger for 2021-22, and I was selected to do research for a faculty member during my final year. Since my graduation, I have been mentored and advised by several former professors.

How has your Carleton English degree informed your professional and/or creative path?

My degree at Carleton exposed me to the pleasurable difficulty of literary- and cultural-studies research. In a time of uncertain academic prospects for humanities-Ph.D. graduates, this has to be the reason for pursuing a doctorate: a love of the work.

Why Carleton? What specific experiences or opportunities did you benefit from while studying English at Carleton?

I entered Carleton in 2018 as a chemistry student. It was the chemists Bob Burk and Maria DeRosa who attracted me to the university. Both are wonderful teachers, and DeRosa’s nanotechnology research is fascinating. I ultimately switched my major to English, after a brief foray into pure mathematics, because reading and writing are the work I like best. I could picture my life without chemistry or math research, but I could not picture it without an everyday relationship to art.

Although I did not know it when I enrolled at Carleton, the English faculty are in every way the equals of the chemistry faculty. I took classes with, was edited by, and conducted research for several wonderful scholar-teachers, and I stayed at the university because of them. My only disappointment in this regard is that I did not identify English as my field sooner. More time in the program would have given me the opportunity to take more classes, ask more questions, do more research, and read more widely.