Isabelle Charles on literature, Wendell Phillips award

During the second semester of her junior year, Charles became the president of the Tufts English Society. She organized events including meet and greets, professor panels and creative writing showcases, and her love for the English department left her honored to hold the role.

In the fall of, and the summer after, her junior year, Charles had an internship at “Basic Black,” a show on GBH, Boston’s PBS station.

“It was a very incredible experience being able to see how news is made behindthe-scenes,” Charles said. “I was able to do some research because they do a whole different slew of shows on different topics. … But the focus is definitely on the interests of people of color in the Boston area specifically, but also nationally as well.”

During the summer between her junior and senior year, Charles was also an editorial intern at Transition Magazine, the magazine of Africa and the African diaspora housed at Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.

At the same time, Charles was conducting research funded by the Ted Shapiro Memorial Award under the race, colonialism and diaspora department at Tufts, which became a precursor for her senior thesis.

“That research was a lot more about family history for me. And it also was … kind of a precursor to my now-thesis,” Charles said. “I started from a very personal frame … then I moved on to how diasporas have worked in the Caribbean and how they evolve.”

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