Graduate Student Profile: Monica Multer

Monica Multer is 7th year Ph.D. Candidate in the Literature Department at UC Santa Cruz. Through THI’s Summer Dissertation Fellowship, supported by Steve and Laura Wagner, Multer was able to make great strides toward her dissertation titled, “Repairing the Ruin: The Didacticism of Embodied Passion in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.” We sat down to talk about the progress she made this past summer.

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Hi Monica! Thanks for chatting with us about your ongoing research. To begin, could you give us a general synopsis of your research project?

I would be happy to! My research project explores early modern understandings of emotions through the works of John Milton. The early modern period, spanning roughly from the late 1500s to 1700s, witnessed a surge in pamphlets, guides, and literary writings aimed at teaching the public how to manage emotions. Interestingly, the concept of “emotion,” as we understand it today, did not exist during this time. Instead, feelings were conceptualized as “passions” or “affections” and were closely tied to the soul’s interior state.

During this time, John Milton wrote his biblical epic, Paradise Lost, showcasing the intricate emotional lives of Adam and Eve as representations of humanity. My dissertation, Repairing the Ruin, suggests that Paradise Lost can be read as a pedagogical tool that offers readers complex models for passionate living in each of the poem’s characters. From Adam and Eve’s loving companionate marriage to Satan’s despairing isolation, Milton creates models for his readers to both read passion and experience it themselves. Ultimately, my work argues that examining early modern views on passion can enhance our modern understanding of emotions.

Your project sounds fascinating! Could you talk more about what drew you to John Milton and Paradise Lost?

I have been captivated by Milton’s challenging poetry since I first picked up Paradise Lost at 16, in a local bookstore, Logos, in downtown Santa Cruz. His influence permeates culture, even for those who have never heard of the poem; Milton’s work shapes many people’s visions of biblical figures like Adam, Eve, and Satan. The notion that a single poem could resonate so profoundly over centuries intrigued me. It made me wonder: how else could Milton’s nearly 350-year-old work still impact our modern world?

Affect theory is such an interesting methodology that is used across the humanities. Could you define it further for us and talk about how it is utilized in your dissertation?

One of the things that is so beautiful about Affect theory is its interdisciplinary nature, how it transforms and resonates differently across disciplines, cultures, and time. Broadly, it considers how emotions and affect act as non-linguistic forces shaping human behavior. In literature, it studies how feelings are represented in texts, emphasizing how they act as powerful agencies that extend beyond language. I am interested in Affect theory as a method for considering the non-linguistic interactions that occur between the reader and the text. So much of my work boils down to the simple question that so many in literature wonder about: how does literature or poetry make us feel? 

So much of my work boils down to the simple question that so many in literature wonder about: how does literature or poetry make us feel? 

Applying Affect theory to early modern literature, like Milton’s, is in many ways an anachronism. So my research uses Affect theory in a slightly unorthodox way; my project considers the recent “affective turn” not as something new but as a re-turn to an older way of considering emotions. I seek to understand how Milton and his contemporary’s portrayal of passion anticipate our modern cognitive discoveries about emotion, such as the deeply interconnected nature of a person’s state of mind with their physical well-being. 

It’s exciting whenever a graduate student can teach a course directly related to your research. Can you walk us through a bit about how you designed Lit 111C and how you were able to pull from one of your dissertation chapters?

Being able to combine the subjects I research with my passion for teaching has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my academic career. When designing Lit 111C: John Milton and Renaissance Passion, I envisioned the course as an open dialogue with students about my dissertation. I wanted the course to be an invitation to my students to think with me as I processed such a monumental task as going through Milton’s entire oeuvre to examine passion. I designed several other courses in the Literature Department, including Paradise Lost and Classical Epic, and many of my students from those courses expressed interest in learning more about Milton and his other works. I designed this class both for those students and to help me work through my research project. Teaching something is often one of the best ways to master your knowledge on a subject, so I employed my own pedagogical approach to myself in this case!

We love hearing about the benefits of alumni Steve Wagner’s ongoing support of Literature graduates through the THI Summer Dissertation Fellowship. In your application, you described how it would support you to solely focus on your writing. For those who might not know how important it is, how significant was it for you to sit deeply with your work?

The support of Steve Wagner and the Humanities Institute is massively important for completing this type of work. Having the financial freedom to focus solely on my work rather than dividing my attention between multiple jobs and my dissertation, is so impactful. The support of the THI Summer Dissertation Fellowship gave me an entire summer to fully immerse myself in only my dissertation research and let go of all the other distractions of financial stressors. 

Finally, we have to ask you about @santacruzbucketlist and your experience running one of our favorite local social media accounts. Can you share more about what inspired you to start this, the large following, and your favorite part of working on this project alongside your PhD?

I am so happy to hear you enjoy my social media page! My students like to refer to @santacruzbucketlist as my alter-ego, my double life outside academia. I’m happy to chat about it! I was born and raised here in Santa Cruz, and when I returned for the Ph.D. program, I decided to start the page to reconnect myself to my hometown. My first bucket list account was actually @sanfranciscobucketlist, which I still run, and it was a way for me to explore a new city that I moved to as I was working in communications at a tech-startup. When I decided to go back for my Ph.D., I created @santacruzbucketlist to help me rediscover the place I grew up in with fresh eyes. 

So in many ways, my Ph.D. program is tied to my work in social media. I started both the page and my career in academia at the same time, and they have been such wonderful experiences. I designed the account to share what I love most about the place I grew up in with a community of followers who care about and want to learn more about what Santa Cruz offers. I think of my followers as my best friends; if my best friend came to town, where would I take them? What would I show them? How could I teach them about this place that means so much to me? So in many ways, @santacruzbucketlist is also about teaching! Watching this little community grow to over 55k active followers as I grow into the scholar I want to become has been a very fulfilling parallel journey. 

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Banner image: John Milton’s bust in the Trinity Library Long Room in Dublin Ireland. Monica visited the Trinity Library while presenting her dissertation work at the Renaissance Society of America annual meeting in 2021.