Evelyn Kilty
Spring 2025 John Jay Fellow
Hometown: Centennial, CO
College: Hillsdale College
Major: B.A. in English Literature; Minor in Linguistics
Evelyn Kilty is a native Coloradan, who attended a private, Jesuit high school before beginning her undergraduate education at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. After 2 years in Minnesota, she studied Linguistics, and Victorian and English Gothic Literature at Lancaster University in England during the fall of 2022. Evelyn transferred to Hillsdale College in Michigan in the spring of 2023 where she was elected President of her sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, and was involved in the leadership honorary, Omicron Delta Kappa. She graduated in May of 2024, cum laude.
Interested in the arts from a young age, Evelyn took piano and voice lessons throughout college and participated in multiple choirs. She wrote a thesis, marking the successful completion of St. Olaf’s 5 semester long Great Books program titled, “The Sublation of the Other,” addressing how the individual finds wholeness in community using St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, St. Augustine’s Confessions, and Georg Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.
Evelyn has always been curious about different cultures and languages, loves to travel internationally, and hopes to visit as many European cathedrals as she can. She also enjoys spending time with friends, making good food, and skiing in the Rocky Mountains. She comes to the John Jay Institute after an internship with the Pacific Legal Foundation in Arlington, Virginia and looks forward to getting to know the other fellows.