John H. Willis Jr. Scholarship Recipient 2017
Sarah Heins is the 2017 recipient of the John H. Willis Jr. scholarship, which was made possible by a generous donation to the William and Mary English Department by the Willis family. Sarah is an English major and pre-medical student who will be doing research for an honors thesis on the writings of William Carlos Williams. Her research will focus on Williams’s portrayal of his experience as a doctor in New Jersey. Among other subjects, she plans to explore the complexities of communication in the doctor-patient exchange. In the coming months, she will study original manuscripts at SUNY Buffalo’s library and Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and she will apply what she learns to an analysis of Williams’s medically related poems and short stories. She will try to answer questions concerning Williams’s narratives of physicians and patients navigating cultural, linguistic, and gender differences in their attempts to communicate. She will also apply her findings to current efforts to unite science and creativity.
