If literature saved her life, then the study of bioethics gave her a tool to improve it.
Samantha Chipman’s fascination with the places where disciplines intersect has taken her far. The second-year Emory PhD student in English at Laney Graduate School is also pursuing a certificate in bioethics at the Emory Center for Ethics. She has co-authored two papers for leading bioethics and medical humanities journals, and this year was elected to the board of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH).
None of this may have come to pass had it not been for a program that gave Chipman’s talents and ingenuity the opportunity to take wing.
The Cross-Institutional Undergraduate Sponsorship Program in Bioethics (CUSP), based at Emory, supports promising undergraduates from universities around the country in their pursuit of the study of bioethics. Most notably, CUSP funds students’ attendance at North America’s largest assembly of bioethics scholars and professionals, the ASBH conference.
It was this gathering that, in 2021, changed everything for Chipman.
A love of literature and a passion for critical advocacy
Long before then, reading was Chipman’s first love.
“It saved my life,” she says. From young adult science fiction to the early American writers she discovered later, “I was always drawn to texts,” she says. And yet she couldn’t help but notice that most canonized literature represents a narrow spectrum of voices.
Her scholarship of marginalized groups crystallized when Chipman discovered bioethics as an undergraduate English major at Loyola University Chicago. Bioethics gave her the chance to study what she describes as “how we treat and, essentially, ‘make up’ disability in health care and clinical circumstances.”
For Chipman, who identifies as autistic, the intersection of literary studies and bioethics has grown into a passion that is both academic and personal.
“I can’t divorce the study of bioethics from the study of narratives,” she points out. Nor, she adds, can she “take off my own skin” when she leaves the classroom and heads into her personal life.
Diversity of experience enriches the field
When Chipman learned about Emory’s CUSP program as a junior at Loyola, she knew right away that she wanted to apply.
“Before I even knew that I was applying to graduate schools and PhD programs, I was applying to CUSP,” she says. “That’s really how I got to know Emory as an institution.”
Chipman’s range of scholarly interests and personal background was part of what made her an attractive candidate for CUSP, says Gerard Vong, director of the Masters of Arts in Bioethics program. Vong founded and runs CUSP, which is housed at the Emory Center for Ethics, alongside senior program coordinator Joanna Young.
“Samantha is not only brilliant,” Young says, “but she also self-identifies with these diverse populations and brings a varied academic background to the field.” Chipman’s unique combination of personal and scholarly perspectives lead her to ask different questions than other scholars might, she adds.
Once she was accepted into CUSP, Chipman hit the ground running. Her goal at the ASBH conference was clear. “I wanted to connect bioethical inquiry to questions about language,” she explains.
The CUSP program emphasizes the importance of academic and professional growth. Part of that growth is learning key skills like networking. Today, the program pairs students with mentors before, during and after the conference.
Chipman began by emailing scholars and professionals presenting at the conference. The year was 2021, which meant the conference was virtual. While an inability to connect in-person might strike some attendees as a disadvantage, Chipman’s preferred mode of interaction is virtual rather than face-to-face. In her emails and online chats with prospective new mentors, she shined.
During the conference, she kindled what became robust working relationships with Mayo Clinic researchers Karen Meagher and Amelia Barwise. Later, the three would co-author two papers before reuniting when Chipman applied for and got an internship with the clinic.
(Almost not) coming to Emory
Today, Samantha Chipman is an enthusiastic Emory PhD candidate and an active participant in campus activities like the Student Wellbeing Advisory Committee.
But she almost didn’t come here at all.
During her initial PhD program inquiries, she says, “Emory really stood out because of their attentiveness, their kindness and their response.”
Still, after a series of fraught deliberations, she did not place Emory on her final application list.
Then one day, late in the process, her mother pulled her aside. “She asked me, ‘Did you apply to Emory University?’”
“And I said, ‘No.’
“She said, ‘What was the institution that provided you with support for bioethics when you were an undergrad?’”
Hearing her mother advocate for the university that had so long advocated for her, Chipman says her choice became clear. Quickly, she applied and was accepted.
Today, she says she’s grateful to study at a university that values and supports the interdisciplinary nature of her scholarship.
She goes on to describe how English Department faculty, familiar with her studies of early American literature, pulled first editions of Bram Stoker’s and Mary Shelley’s work at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library for her to peruse when she visited.
And how a class called “Transpacific Femininities” led her to consider the ethical and genetic implications of international adoption, which she hadn’t thought of before coming to Emory.
These days, her goals range from what she calls “lofty” to specific. She hopes to be a champion of disability justice and an autism advocate. She also hopes to mentor others as she has been mentored in programs like CUSP. Both of those things “seem entirely possible here,” Chipman says.
Where poetry and neuroscience meet
In 2023, Chipman co-founded Intersecting Minds, a cross-disciplinary collective of scholars, professionals and community members exploring the connections between neuroscience and the humanities. Recently, Chipman gave a talk to the group about the intersection between cognition and poetry as exemplified by Emily Dickenson, including the untitled work known as poem 632:
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and you—beside—
The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As sponges—Buckets—do—
The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—