2012 Graduate Mikala Gallant Publishes Scholarly Work
Published: Monday, May 14, 2012
Her recent graduation from St. Thomas University isn’t the only academic accomplishment Mikala Gallant has to celebrate. The bachelor of arts graduate, originally from Summerside, PEI, has already been published.
Gallant’s paper “The Totality of Christian Justice: Aquinas’s Three Spheres in David Adams Richards’s Mercy Among the Children” is featured in the latest issue of The Agora, a national online journal of undergraduate academic writing that aims to integrate classical ideas and issues with contemporary ones.
Gallant says the process really began when Dr. Sara MacDonald, Great Books, encouraged her to attend a conference at Pepperdine University in Malibu in her third year at STU—and begin her competitive career as an academic.
“She asked me if I would be willing to submit a paper and attend the conference. It was eye-opening for me to see the level of accomplishment and dedication the other students in attendance had,” said Gallant. “It let me know there were students who are truly committed to this. It made me realize I had to embrace more opportunities and boost my academic profile.”
This year, when Great Books professor Dr. Andrew Moore notified her class of an open call for papers with a chance of being published, Gallant knew this was one of those opportunities.
Together, Gallant and Moore polished up a paper she had written for a third-year course on justice, submitted it, and was later notified that it had been accepted for publication.
In her paper, Gallant applies Thomas Aquinas’s view of Christian justice to the characters in Mercy Among the Children, an award-winning novel by STU Artist in Residence, author David Adams Richards. She suggests that Richards calls to question to ability of one person to implement Christian justice in all three spheres of human life: the divine, the family, and the community.
“This publication is really a remarkable accomplishment for an undergraduate student."
"All of us in the Great Books Programme are very proud of Mikala's success. Her essay brings together two very distinct works in order to generate new knowledge,” said Moore. “That's what it's all about. This publication is really a remarkable accomplishment for an undergraduate student."
"There are many, many students at St. Thomas doing brilliant, creative work and Mikala is certainly one of them,” he added. “I have every confidence that this publication is just the first of many; it marks the beginning of what will no doubt be an impressive career as a writer and thinker.”
Gallant graduated with double honours in Great Books and English Language and Literature on May 13th, 2012. She earned the Prize for Best Honours Thesis in Great Books and has been accepted to pursue her master’s in English literature at Dalhousie University in the fall.
To access the Spring 2012 issue of The Agora visit http://www.agorajournal.org/2012agora.html