Julia Guarneri planned to trip the light fantastic -- but destiny had other plans

By Franklin Crawford

Born and raised in Oakland, Calif., she'd studied ballet and modern dance throughout middle and high school. But prior to her sophomore year here, Julia Guarneri developed a painful and mysterious form of tendinitis in her ankles.

Senior Julia Guarneri displays a first edition of Walt Witman's "Leaves of Grass" in Cornell's Kroch Library. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

Discouraged but not dispirited, Guarneri channeled her terpsichorean passions into her Cornell College Scholar program honors thesis, delivering a remarkable academic performance titled "'I Am With You, You Men and Women of Generations Hence': Walt Whitman's Influence on Artists and Writers of the American Scene."

"In my 37 years at Cornell, I have never seen a finer honors thesis," said Michael Kammen, the N.C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture and Guarneri's thesis adviser. "Her exploration of Whitman's cultural influence is really stunning: wonderfully researched, clearly structured and elegantly composed. It's highly original and a genuine contribution to knowledge."

Guarneri has thrived in the College Scholar program. This year she received a Goethe Prize for the best essay on a German topic, and her Whitman thesis is now in contention for several academic awards.

"I could have declared a dance major or gone to a conservatory, and that would have been a disaster," she said. "This way I had the flexibility to change my direction a little bit."

College Scholars are freed from the normal restrictions of degree and distribution requirements. Instead, students pursue self-designed, extensive and cross-disciplinary research projects. For her focus, Guarneri combined American cultural history with history of the arts, especially dance.

An Einhorn Discovery Grant covered Guarneri's trips to Yale University's Bienecke Library and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where she gained access to primary source material for her Whitman thesis.

Guarneri spent the fall 2001 semester abroad at the University of Bologna in Italy and was a member of the Cornell Abroad Student Information Team. Following the events of Sept. 11, she said, "I decided to compile reactions from Cornell students abroad." Students responded from Australia, Russia, Spain, France and Lebanon, among other countries, with varied descriptions of a world they felt was in turmoil.

"It was strange to feel close to Cornellians halfway around the world that I never met -- but I did," said Guarneri. "Knowing that we form this net all the way around the globe was a pretty amazing thing. And getting to see these unbelievable events from the perspectives of students not so different from myself helped me, and hopefully others, to form a more comprehensive picture of the effect of the attack and counterattack."

Guarneri also finessed a rare, in-depth interview with legendary choreographer and dancer Bill T. Jones when his company came to Cornell. Considering a career in journalism, she hosted her own radio show on WVBR, recording a special program with Jones.

Pursuit of a Ph.D. track in history is a future possibility, as well, she says, and Guarneri mentions several professors who have inspired her in that direction, among them Professor Larry Moore, director of the American Studies Program.

She reserves special praise for Kammen, offering an anecdote by way of her regard: "My thesis was due for several prizes on a Monday deadline. Professor Kammen was at a conference in Spain all weekend long. He had read drafts of everything I had written except my conclusion. What we arranged was this -- I put my conclusion in his box on Thursday. His wife [senior lecturer Carol Kammen] taught that day and picked it up. He got back from Spain on Sunday night, read my conclusion and then drove it over to my apartment where I got it from him, with corrections marked so that I could fix it up and turn the thesis in the next day. And he brought me a T-shirt from Spain to top it all off. He really goes above and beyond the duties of an adviser."