When letters arrive for Professor Abigail Drachman-Jones of the history department, workers at the Hinman Boxes may have trouble figuring out where they belong.
There's no box assigned to such a person in the 6000s, where professors get their mail.
But someone with the exact same unusual name -- sans the title -- does pick up her mail from box 907.
The confusion arises from the fact that Abigail Drachman-Jones '03 does not even possess a degree from a college -- and certainly does not teach at one.
The American Historical Association, however, featured Drachman-Jones for a professorial achievement this month, when she spoke at its 115th annual meeting, a conference for historians, professors and authors.
The unassuming listing of "Abigail Drachman-Jones, Dartmouth College" drew little attention to her age, until the 19-year-old was introduced at the actual panel January 5 and her youth became apparent. But that was exactly how she liked it.
"I wanted to be seen as just Abigail Drachman-Jones, and taken at face value for my own work. Because I am a sophomore, I felt I had that much more to prove."
Drachman-Jones began her paper -- a narrative history of Levittown, a "cookie-cutter" community on Long Island created to provide housing for men returning from World War II and their families -- as a senior in high school.
Inspired by her teacher and the project-oriented format of the semester-long seminar class, Drachman-Jones' primary-source research in magazines, stories, movies and letters from the town led her to write 60 pages on the subject.
"I've never been so engaged in a topic," she said. "I loved sitting there and reading about these people's lives in their own words. It's just fascinating to me -- all the different ironies and emotions and ideas that were a part of this moment in history."
Drachman-Jones grew up in a household of historians, so she was familiar with a particular style of writing called "narrative history," which "brings the audience in like a textbook can't" by using a storytelling approach.
"I relied very much on what people of that era actually wrote and said. Woven into my paper are quotes from people who actually had the Levittown experience."
Feeling that the paper had potential to be more than a high school project, Drachman-Jones sent it to Yale professor John Demos, a leader in the field of narrative history.
He was "so impressed with what I did," she said, that he recommended she submit it for presentation at the AHA meeting,
Drachman-Jones heard of her acceptance to the conference at the end of last winter term, and kept it in the back of her mind -- though she kept revising the paper -- until this winter break.
She condensed the paper into a 10-minute reading selection for her panel, entitled "Reading the Past: A History Slam," with four other panelists who wrote papers in a similar style.
Even now, she cannot recall the topics of the other presenters without referring to the conference program. She only remembers intense nervousness and the actual time she spent at the podium.
"I'm introduced as a sophomore at Dartmouth College," she described. "I walk up, and put down my reading selection on the stand, and I think "What am I doing here?
"But then, I started to read, and as I got further into my selection, I began to love having their attention -- having them listen to me, and know that what I was saying to them was important and true and told a story.
"Then I concluded, and I looked up at the audience, and they started to clap, and it was such an amazing feeling -- that I was admired -- not as a historian like the other panel members necessarily, but as an aspiring historian, who was ready to tackle questions as well."
Since the AHA meeting, several publishers contacted Drachman-Jones expressing interest in her manuscript -- hence the letters addressed to the nonexistent Dartmouth professor.
One even told her "Yes, I can definitely see this being a book in five years," Drachman-Jones said.
"This reaffirmed the fact that what I wrote mattered. If publishing companies were interested in my work without even seeing it, it just proves so much to me," she said.
"I got a glimpse of where I could be in the future, and saw that I absolutely can get there."
Drachman-Jones insisted that she hated history until her junior year in high school despite it being "in the blood" from her parents, and said she only recently considered majoring in history.
Currently she's in the process of applying to write another narrative history paper while in London for the History Department's foreign study program. She hopes to write non-fiction someday, but that "glimpse" of potential success isn't tempting her out of the classroom yet.
"I've grown so much as a writer here," she said. "I would not have been able to make it a better paper without being here. And I still fret about every single paper I have to write for class."
However, she doesn't lack ambition. "I have this desire to be published. I know I can make this a book. But who am I to say I'm going to write a book? I'm nineteen years old. I'm here now."
"This was just an opportunity to step aside, to say 'Okay, I'm not just number five on the squash team. I'm not just that girl who sits on the third floor of Berry every night and pretends to study while she socializes.' What I wrote mattered," she said.
