![Morrissey College](/content/dam/bc1/schools/mcas/main-mcas/MCAS-web-branding-logo-mega.png)
![Morrissey College](/content/dam/bc1/schools/mcas/main-mcas/MCAS-web-branding-logo-mega.png)
Email: parsonch@bc.edu
My work crosses philosophy and the history of ideas with early English poetry through close reading moments of aporia, unhappiness, and grief. My recent essays connect "Activa Vita" in William Langland's Piers Plowman (c. 1381) with Aristotle's Politics (c. 350 BC), the "Search for Dowel" in Piers Plowman with Augustine of Hippo's De libero arbitrio voluntatis (c. 388), and moral ambiguity in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1811) with David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). My earlier essays critique Sabrina in John Milton's Comus (1634), the political in Shakespeare's Coriolanus (1609), silence and uncertainty in Hamlet's soliloquies, Edmund Spenser's iconoclasm, irony in the portrait of the monk from Geoffrey Chaucer's "General Prologue" of The Canterbury Tales (c. 1400), and inquiry and doubt in Alfred Lord Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H" (1850). In addition, I am editing some of Thomas Traherne's (1637-1674) poetry from the Dobell Folio.
For the duration of my bachelor's degree, I served as an invited member of the Liberal Arts Student Advisory Group. I completed summer tutorials in 18th- and early 19th- century literature and philosophy at University of Oxford in 2022 on a continuing education scholarship awarded by the Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society. While in England, I attended the George Herbert Society Conference at University of Cambridge.
I have six years of experience working full-time in higher education with burgeoning initiatives and budgetary insight. I currently work full-time as BC's English Department Administrative Assistant. Prior to higher education, I accumulated ten years of work experience in the restaurant industry. I am from Flint, Michigan and lived in central Kentucky to complete my undergraduate degree as a non-traditional and part-time student. My educational journey fosters a passion for student success and retention.