Minnesota native Rich double majored in English and LJST. Her stellar academic record included a senior thesis for the LJST department, which delved into the productive nature of censorship. The College first caught Rich’s attention because of the open curriculum. On closer inspection, however, she also came to appreciate that the College “was small and lovely and [that] the professors were wonderful.” In the process of her intellectual explorations, she took advantage of the liberal arts education and used the freedom of the open curriculum to explore unfamiliar topics. She entered college with a pre-medical mindset and contemplated majoring in chemistry for her first two years. Organic chemistry, for example, was one of her favorite classes. However, Rich ultimately decided that she needed to be working with texts, literary and otherwise, and chose to double major in LJST and English.
Her thesis, “The Queer Amalgamation of Dreams and Reality,” merged her dual interests in law and literature and focused on Oscar Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Gray,” Radclyffe Hall’s “Well of Loneliness,” and Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando.” Rich analyzed two modes of censorship’s productivity: the censorship of literature as enacted through infamous trials of Wilde and Hall, and what she calls “literary censoriousness,” the way authors “sort of picked up the dynamics of censorship in the very texts themselves, allowing them to energize and inform their fiction.” These moments of combined law and literature, described Rich, showed “a particular attention paid to judgment and representation, in terms of both sexuality and writing itself, ‘threshold moments’ where identity comes into being through text.”
The notion of creating identity especially struck a chord with Rich, having grown up as a Korean adoptee and being the only Southeast Asian girl in her grade in Minnesota. Although almost everything in her life “stopped” for her writing, she remarked that it was fun to watch her thesis grow and change over the year and said, “I would do it again in a heartbeat.”
“Adjectives that describe Kelly’s intellect cascade easily from one’s mind: as a scholar she is voracious, precocious, passionate, inventive and deeply committed to the life of the mind,” commented her senior thesis advisor, Professor Martha Umphrey. “For her, ideas are life-changing and writing about them is central to her sense of self.”
“When you read her writing, it’s also impossible to forget that she’s also a skilled musician,” added Sitze. “She writes in chord structures, grouping sets of ideas together in striking ways, playing those ideas out in relation to one another now harmoniously, now dissonantly, but always intentionally, according to a specific design, aiming at a specific effect or goal.” Rich has grown to be a talented writer, reader, and thinker during her years at the College and has brought a unique perspective to her classes and to the attention of professors. Professor of English Judith Frank affirmed, “Kelly is a true intellectual... She is one of the best student writers I’ve ever taught, and she teaches me something in everything she writes.”
Outside of the classroom, Rich has participated in the musical activities of the College. She sang with the choral society and took piano lessons. She even had a role in the production of “Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls.” She insisted that working at the music library is one of the best jobs on campus because “Ann Maggs, the librarian, is fabulous,” she added. “And so is our crew of desk workers.” In addition to working in the music library Rich also worked as a tutor at the Writing Center and enjoyed helping other students with their work. She feels that her tutoring experience was very rewarding. She wanted to be there to help fellow students, just as her professors were for her.
In addition to the academic relationships she forms, Rich’s personality allows her connect with other students on a more personal level. Angela Choe ’08, who has been friends with Rich since their first year at Amherst, attested to this fact. “Whenever I [felt] down, I [would] find little notes or treats from Kelly on my door. As you can imagine, she is such a caring person— extremely sincere and sweet. For the people who have never met Kelly, they are missing out on her vibrant energy, sincerity and brilliant mind. . . I can’t imagine my Amherst years without her. I am lucky that she is such a big part of my life.”
Alice Tsay ’08 was one of Rich’s floor-mates in North during their first year and companion at Oxford University during their junior year abroad. Some of their adventures in England included celebrating “the delights of ‘melting-middle chocolate cake’ sold at Marks & Spencers,” keeping each other from going mad because they were required to write 15 pages a week for tutorials and “puttering about London, Prague, Berlin and Paris over spring break.” Tsay added, “A writer and cookie baker par-excellence, [Kelly] is also an articulate, thoughtful, funny, gifted person—the type of friend one hopes for when anxiously envisioning what college life will be like.”
Mandy Vincent ’08, who has known Rich since they were five years old, revealed that Rich “listens like no other and usually offers a bit of poetry or a passage from a book that she likes [to the conversation]. I am always astonished by her thoughtfulness and genuine interest in those around her.” Vincent also commented on Rich’s talent in teaching. “Kelly is a born teacher.” Vincent said, “she is just as comfortable tutoring Calculus as discussing gender or legal theory—talking in a way that makes both equally accessible.”
Rich will return to the College next year as a Writing Fellow. During this time she hopes to start playing music again—perhaps collaborating with Dean Lee doing taiko drumming. She also plans to learn how to cook and to find time to read. After her time as a Writing Fellow, Rich has considered continueing her education through graduate school in English literature and cultural theory and to teach. Rich’s four years at Amherst have been very full, even if they have gone by faster than she would have liked. Because of her experiences she believes that she has truly become a better writer and a better reader: “Here, I’ve developed a commitment to knowledge and [have learned] to take courage in one’s work.” Her enthusiasm for learning, coupled with her optimistic outlook on life, makes Rich a remarkably promising graduate from whom one comes to expect great things.