I wouldn’t be in my current profession without the inspiration and training FOCUS provided in my first year at Duke. My career path began in the Medieval and Renaissance FOCUS Cluster: classes on Shakespeare, Renaissance women’s writing, and medieval church history immersed me in defining texts, while FOCUS events like a medieval fencing class and a trip to New York’s Met Cloisters and Cathedral of St John the Divine brought those texts to life. My sustained interest in the performance of Shakespeare began in FOCUS. I studied in the UK twice – on the Duke in London: Drama program and in my junior year a semester at The University of Oxford. My professor in the Medieval and Renaissance FOCUS showed me that you could do things with Shakespeare – read, perform, critique, distil, expand. She modeled scholarship for me in a way that made me excited to do the work I do – and made me believe I was capable of doing it.
