KINGSTON, R.I. – May 21, 2025 – Kyle Gunning’s academic success story didn’t start off on a high note. Far from it.

The Holden, Massachusetts, native wasn’t a great high school student, while working in construction when not in school. Clearly, he needed a new direction. But it was this experience that ultimately led him to the University of Rhode Island.

Gunning assessed his options after finishing high school and found that URI would offer him a scholarship with reduced tuition. And he found the size and relative isolation of the University’s campus appealed to him. Fast forward to today, and Gunning has left his hammer and nails behind. He has earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature as well as a spot in the fall as a fully funded Ph.D. student at Cornell University studying medieval Latin and old English literature.

“URI provided me with a new direction academically,” Gunning said. “I needed to be studying more challenging material, writing more and in longform, and aided with the resources that would allow me to research in depth. URI libraries secured for me a subscription to a medieval studies database so I could read field-specific scholarship. This would not have happened without the guidance of professors in the English department.”

It was one of his first undergraduate classes at URI that ignited his interest. “I was fascinated with the way we were allowed to analyze texts, much of which was at our discretion. I liked that freedom,” Gunning said.

A turning point for him was taking a course in literary theory with professor Ryan Trimm. Despite being assigned a daunting amount of reading for the course, Gunning committed himself to working his way through. His professor encouraged Gunning in his work, which gave him the confidence he needed to continue with the program.

“I also took seven or eight classes with associate professor Travis Williams, which maxed out my English credits,” Gunning said. “I had to take an extra general education course to even out the English credits. I wanted to learn as much as I could. Williams is a genius, and he took me very seriously. His concentration was in a field that was closest to mine. I’m very interested in medieval studies, and he’s an early modern scholar. Since there is no medievalist in the English department, he and I kind of partnered up, and he supervised semesters of research with me.”

Williams said he’s been impressed with Gunning’s curiosity—always questioning and now with the skills to find the answers he’s looking for. Gunning showed his promise early on, winning the Center for the Humanities’ Student Excellence Award as a sophomore. Usually that award goes to a senior, Williams said. And Gunning’s research and writing are now at the graduate level.

“Medieval studies is the most demanding subfield in English literary studies; the languages and history to be mastered, in addition to the usual skills of literary study, are vast,” said Williams. “Kyle’s work has only been energized by this challenge. He has reset the standard for what humanities students can achieve at URI, and he did it remarkably early.”

Another important mentor was Carolyn Betensky, professor and chair of the English department. Gunning said she helped him develop a passion for medieval literature that he hadn’t realized was within him.

“I found myself taking higher level classes,” he said. “I took a graduate seminar with her in my sophomore year, which was great, because I got to become friends with graduate students and see what graduate study was like.” 

The workloads were sometimes nearly overwhelming, and he realized he needed to build leisure activities into his schedule, even amid pursuing scholarly ones. “The most important thing I learned during my time at URI is that you need to be able to set boundaries, and you need to have certain hobbies which allow you to escape.”

He plays mandolin, banjo, and guitar. Cooking is very important to him as well. “I’ve made my way through a lot of Victorian cookbooks just to find out how and what people were cooking in the 19^th century.  And these are all hobbies that help me escape and which I make sure to prioritize, because I think our lives are not sustainable if we cannot find a way to enhance our own personal material experience outside of the workplace.

“I realize that these are not related to academics, but there was a time where I was seriously burning out because I was spread too thin, so I had to put on the brakes.”

As his understanding of literature deepened, the Gertrude Spencer Scholarship recipient began to see how today’s perception of the Middle Ages is inaccurate. “For example, we think that medieval people were stinky and did not have bathrooms and were illiterate or something like that, and none of this is true,” he said.

In writing, he found that medieval authors openly expressed that they wrote poetry by copying the poets they admire, leading to the perception of poetry as an art form that never changes.

“So, nothing has really changed. And ultimately, the more I learned about this, the more I realized that history is a process wherein nothing changes. That, to me, is fascinating, and I realized I wanted to study that.

“The very infrastructure of our society comes out of the classical world,” he said. “People still have the same concerns now that they did back then. That gives you this sense that time is just a continuum of humans being human. People still drank beer and went out with their buddies in the 800s as they do now in the 21st century. That has never changed, and that may never change.”

This story was written by Hugh Markey.