St. John’s native Nancy Martin has a recent letter of acceptance to Oxford University as proof of the power of an arts education.

Ms. Martin, who is currently completing a second master’s degree (in women's studies), had a life-changing experience while attending the 2005 Literature and Landscape program in Harlow.

Going to Harlow, said Nancy, was "one of the best choices I ever made. It was definitely one of the best periods of my undergrad education. To study English is one thing, but to travel around Britain visiting the places where the writers lived and worked . . . wow!"

Drs. Annette and Michael Staveley took the group to Oxford and Cambridge on day trips so the students could see where many of the writers they were studying had received their education.

“It’s impossible as an English student not to fall in love with those campuses,” said Nancy.

Then and there Ms. Martin decided she wanted to teach English and work at a university. 

Flash forward a couple of years, and while working on her master's of women's studies (she also holds a master's in English literature from Carleton University in Ottawa), Martin returned to Harlow for five weeks in the summer of 2009 thanks to two scholarships – one from the Canadian Federation of University Women (St. John’s chapter); the other from the Bowring/Harlow Scholarship for post-baccalaureate students undertaking studies in Great Britain.

Ms. Martin is quick to credit the women's studies department for an encouraging and supportive environment and said she had considerable assistance from Dr. Katherine Side and Dr. Sonja Boon in applying for the scholarships.

Working in the archives of the British library and the Cambridge University library researching 19th century representations of fallen women reinforced her anglophilia and months later, when she started looking into doing her PhD, she applied to Cambridge and Oxford -- among several other North America universities.

“It was a total wild card,” she said. “You know you won’t get in but you have to apply. I didn’t want to be looking back 50 years from now saying, ‘Why didn’t I try?’”

Ms. Martin will begin her doctoral studies in October. She will continue to focus on the fallen woman but hopes to move ahead chronologically and look at “her” representation in 20th century literature written during and after the First World War.

“I also ideally want to connect this back to Newfoundland and compare her representation in the mother land and island colony.”