Splash Biography



KATIE STOOPS, Recent Yale Grad. Obsessed with Steinbeck



Major: MCDB

College/Employer: Ear, Nose, and Throat Center LLP

Year of Graduation: 2016

Picture of Katie Stoops

Brief Biographical Sketch:

My name is Katie Stoops. I am a recent graduate of Yale College where I majored in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. I'm currently working and applying to medical school. When I'm not studying science, I read. John Steinbeck is my favorite author and over the past several years, I have read fourteen of Steinbeck's novels, as well as several short stories, volumes of personal letters, and biographies. Steinbeck's work inspires my own attempts at creative writing. At Yale, I wrote two episodes of a web series, and an independent film. I'm still writing and unsuccessfully (so far) submitting work to literary magazines in my spare time.



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

A3169: John Steinbeck in Historical Perspective in Splash Spring 18 (Apr. 07, 2018)
In this class we'll explore the life and works of the classic American writer, John Steinbeck. By exploring excerpts from his novels, short stories, films, and personal letters, we will seek to understand Steinbeck's work in historical context. We will look at Steinbeck's artistic responses to the Dust Bowl refugee crisis, antisemitism and other racial conflict, the World Wars, the Manhattan Project, and the rise of first wave feminism. To end the class, students will try their hands at their own creative writing.


A2892: John Steinbeck in Historical Perspective in Splash Fall 17 (Nov. 11, 2017)
In this class we'll explore the life and works of the classic American writer, John Steinbeck. By exploring excerpts from his novels, short stories, films, and personal letters, we will seek to understand Steinbeck's work in historical context. We will look at Steinbeck's artistic responses to the Great Depression, antisemitism, the World Wars, the Manhattan Project, and the rise of first wave feminism. To end the class, students will try their hands at their own creative writing.


H1967: John Steinbeck in Perspective in Splash Spring 16 (Apr. 02, 2016)
We'll take a look at how the works of John Steinbeck, a Nobel laureate and classic American author from Salinas, CA, reflected the issues of his time. Specifically, we'll see his responses and references to the Great Depression, antisemitism of the 1930s and 1940s, Germany's propaganda in Mexico pre WWII, the Manhattan project, feminism in the 1950s and 1960s. Through this course, you'll get to see how literature can inspire global change. Keeping in mind that much of Steinbeck's world-altering work was inspired by his home in a rural and relatively unknown region of California, we'll do some of our own writing about our homes!