Alumni Jamie Lewis on Words, Robots, and Community

By Eve Zhu

Jamie Lewis graduated from the University of Georgia in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in English. After gaining experience in public relations, she returned to UGA in 2014 to work in social media management, where she has remained ever since. In 2021, Lewis chose to further her education through UGA’s Tuition Assistance Program (TAP), pursuing a master’s degree in English under the guidance of Drs. Isiah Lavender, Adam Parkes, and Rodrigo Martini. Her master’s thesis, “Romancing the Robot: Posthumanism, Simulacra, and the Hyperreality of Love,” examines three novels that explore romantic relationships between humans and robots, and uses these literary insights to shed light on the contemporary concern of romance between people and AI technologies such as ChatGPT. In her spare time, Jamie also likes to read and also to run. She has just completed the Athens half marathon for the 11^th year. She also enjoys watching movies at Cine, the independent movie theatre in Athens.

How has UGA and English in particular led you/helped you to where you are currently in life?

I chose an English major because I initially wanted to work in publishing, which many of my cohort members back in the day ended up doing. I ended up interning with a few PR agencies after graduation before returning to UGA for social media and digital marketing. I used to run the social media channel for the alumni, and I now run the main UGA social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

English teaches you how to think critically and empathize with different perspectives.  In social media, you have to constantly step into your audience’s shoes. You’re analyzing why a post resonates, what emotions it taps into, and how it connects with people. I think a lot of humanities subjects lead well to social media and digital marketing, as they train you to find connections other people might not have thought of.

What did your cohort end up doing?

I know many went on to law school, K-12 education, and publishing of course. I also know a few who went into marketing as well like me. Elizabeth Crowley Webber is now running an independent bookstore in Newnan, Georgia.

Interestingly, the only person I know who went into academia in my cohort was Dr. Jessica Maddox. She funnily also went into media studies and social media and now teaches at Grady in UGA. I believe she had a book on how animal images shape our digital lives. I think of myself as a practitioner of social media, while she does the theory side.

Can you tell me a little bit more about the prize you won?

I got back into academic writing when I entered my Master’s program in 2021. I had a bit of anxiety at first, because I had been out of school for ten years. Critical thinking is a part of my job for sure, but I was worried whether I could do academic writing.

Fast forward to May of 2024, I presented my paper “The Mechanical Man: Posthumanism in D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love and Lady Chatterley’s Lover” for Dr. Parkes’s class at a digital graduate conference. My paper was awarded the Virginia Hyde award in 2025, and I presented it again at the International D.H. Lawrence conference in Mexico City this year. Having Dr. Parkes there with two of my cohort members Jessica DeMarco-Jacobson and Alex Sheldon who also presented, made it feel like having a small UGA cohort there. It was really special to share that experience with them. I am now publishing the paper more as well as a few chapters in my thesis to hopefully publish one day.

I called my master’s degree and the classes my “passion project,” and that really captured how fulfilling it felt. It engaged a part of my brain that I don’t use at work and reconnected me with the critical part of reading in a way I hadn’t felt in years.