Tennessee Wesleyan University student Keljan Thomas has been awarded a prestigious Ledford Scholarship from The Appalachian College Association (ACA), recognizing his academic excellence in the field of English literature. The Ledford Scholarship is a competitive grant program through the ACA that allows students to conduct independent research under faculty guidance.

     Thomas, an English major and member of the TWU Honors Program, centered his research project on Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando: A Novel. Throughout months of research, Thomas explored how Woolf’s Orlando has been critically misread, arguing that a large body of criticism has ignored the formal element of biography that has ultimately caused a misplacement of the novel’s central theme. By centering his reading of Orlando on biographical elements, Thomas recentered the themes of the novel toward perception and love by filtering the conversation through biography and biographical sources.

    Thomas performed much of his research through the use of digital archives, researching scans of the original manuscript. He also had the opportunity to perform site-based research at Knole House in England. During his time researching in England, Thomas researched art connected to Orlando, the history of the Bloomsbury Group, and the biography of Vita Sackville-West, which served as the inspiration for Wool’s novel. 

    Thomas was advised by Tennessee Wesleyan English professor, Dr. William Murray.