Audrey Husted '26 double majors in communication and Spanish, with minors in both humanities and communication design. She has seen these passions woven together during her time at Geneva, and found each of them useful in illuminating her path forward.
Because of the range of topics covered within the communication major, Audrey thrives in finding opportunities to apply philosophical concepts to hands-on projects.
“Going to class and hearing my peers and the professors have discussions on thought-provoking readings helps in understanding the concepts,” says Audrey. “Then, sometimes almost immediately, you get to go to another class and apply what you’ve learned. Conversation and practice help reinforce what start out as abstract ideas.”
One of the ways Audrey experienced this was in writing a paper that she recently presented at the Pennsylvania Communication Association Annual Conference in September 2025. Her work, “Bakhtin Walks into a Bar: The Author and Hero Relationship of Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man’” was this year’s undergraduate division winner.
Audrey wrote her paper as part of the Communication Ethics class, which explores the connections between aesthetics and ethics, as art both reveals and shapes the values of individuals and cultures. A very difficult class conceptually, Audrey found that coming to understand Mikhail Bakhtin’s work on art required creating her own in response.
“I realized I was going about writing the paper as a way to understand what we were reading better. I would come into class one day, we would go over a section of the reading, and then I would have to go back to my outline and move and change everything.”
This kind of relational, interactive process of creation is partly what Bakhtin’s work is about. He explains how the conversation between the artist and the hero of a work of art places a weight of responsibility on the creator.
“What Bakhtin is getting at, I think, is that the influence you have as an artist is so important. Part of your responsibility is thinking intentionally about the relationship between you and the art you create. Then there’s a responsibility you have to your viewers, and then from viewers to the way that they communicate and act toward others as a result of your art. There’s this ripple effect.”
Audrey generously hopes that connecting Bakhtin’s philosophy to a song as popular and relatable as “Piano Man” makes it easier to understand and apply. Even now, Audrey is putting into practice Bakhtin’s ideas about showing care in our creative endeavors. As she works to prepare her paper for publication, she has learned the value and the difficulty of writing for more than a grade or a class, and an audience beyond her professors.
“What I am trying to do through the writing is to see more of life as art. How we treat others, conversations, the relationships that we build — each of those is an art.”
This concept, Audrey explains, has helped her to integrate her work with her Christian faith, as she delves deeper into what an ethic of creation should look like.
“It’s so easy to create that we don’t always think about the ethical consequences. But think about the ethic of God’s creation of us — His design of us and our entire lives is intentional. Every action that we take He uses for his good and our good. Between Creator and creation, there is such an ethic of responsibility.”
Audrey has seen the faithfulness of God’s design for her life play out practically in her time at Geneva. Even though she does not always understand why she was given the specific mix of talents and interests that she has, God continually uses them for good.
“God knows me better than I know myself. All these things that I had a passion for, it has been such a blessing to see Him work them all together.”
As just one example, Audrey was unsure of how her Spanish major related to her other classes or how she would apply it in her life. However, when she studied abroad in Spain, Audrey was able to take mainly art classes.
“A lot of the classes I took were Spanish literature or architecture or dance, and they were very discussion-based, like my classes at Geneva. As I learned how to talk about these things in Spanish, I was understanding them better too. Spain was such a culturally rich place to study, where you can see the art you are learning about all around you.”
In addition to studying abroad, Audrey found that adding minors in humanities and communication design, even when she was unsure of her abilities as an artist, deepened her background understanding of the fields she would like to eventually work in.
“Knowing how a sculpture is made or different drawing techniques can really help you in understanding the meaning behind an artist’s piece more thoroughly. Trying to create my own gave me a deeper appreciation for art and improved the way I observe and evaluate it.”
Audrey is currently in a practicum helping with donor relations and learning some of the basics of working with museum collections. She is considering pursuing a graduate degree in the fine arts or art history. While Audrey had very little idea exactly where here interests would take her when she first came to Geneva, she rests in the fact that the Creator has known all along, and that His plans are far better than our own.
By Reagan Shields ‘26
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