Meet Our Students

Sarah Abolail

Year Entered Program: Fall 2019

Research Interests: Contemporary literature, critical theory, visual studies, narrative theory, transnational studies, trauma, historical erasure, temporality, representations of violence, witnessing, memory, Marxist theory and political economy. 

Advisor(s): Michael Szalay

Elia Agudo

Year Entered Program: Fall 2020

Research Interests: Identity, Queer Theory, African-American literature, Latinx literature, Gender and Sexuality, Afrofuturism, Harlem Renaissance

Advisor(s): Kyle Grady

Hannah Elizabeth Bacchus

Year Entered Program: Fall 2021

Research Interests: 20th century African American literature, postcolonial theory, historical materialism, and globalization

Advisor(s): Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan

Librecht Baker

Year Entered Program: Fall 2021

Research Interests: Global Black Rhetorics (cultural rhetorics), Black Feminisms, and Ifa (spirituality & religion)

Advisor(s): Daniel M. Gross

Sheryl Barbera

Year Entered Program: Fall 2020

Research Interests: 17th and 18th centuries, the early novel, and narrative theory

Advisor(s): Jayne Lewis

Sharece Lia Boghozian

Year Entered Program: Fall 2021
 

Research Interests: Modernism, Literary and Critical Theory, Deconstruction, Avant-Garde and Experimental Literature and Theatre, Aesthetics of Disgust

Advisor(s): Martin Harries

Maya Bornstein

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

Research Interests: 20th and 21st century American, documentary poetry, mimesis and representation, literary historiography, mythopoeia, bio- and necropolitics, Marxism, philology. philology.

Advisor(s): Oren Izenberg

Maureen Brouwer

Year Entered Program: Fall 2017

Research Interests: Early Modern (Spencer)

Advisor(s):  Martin Harries

Claire Burdick

Year Entered Program: Fall 2017

Research Interests: Poetics (historical, eco, necro); American and British Romanticism; Native American Literature; Settler colonialism; the American frontier; Performance studies; Feminist theory

Advisor(s): Virginia Jackson

Jiyon Byun

Year Entered Program: Fall 2018

Research Interests:  Asian American literature, global studies, cultural studies, modernities, and women's writing.

Advisor(s): Joseph Jeon

Buddy Cassidy

Year Entered Program: Fall 2017

Research Interests: Shakespeare, Shakespeare and Performance, Early Modern poetry and drama, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, history of ideas, performance studies, poetry and poetics, prosody, horror film, long 18th C. British, American Romanticism, queer theory

Advisor(s): Julia Reinhard Lupton, Elizabeth Allen

Rebeka (Beka) Castro 

Year Entered Program: Fall 2023

Research Interests: Research interests: Medieval literature including legends, travel narratives, and writings by women during the period as well as Arthurian romance and medieval religious culture. Additionally, theories of phenomenology and hermeneutics, and themes of curiosity, empathy, authority of women, aging, and age beliefs. 

Advisor(s): Elizabeth Allen

Yvonne Cha

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

Research Interests: modernism & postmodernism, contemporary lit, aesthetics, Asian American lit, experimental immigrant narratives, lost literature, translation, transnationalism, creative writing, autofiction, genre theory

Advisor(s): Joe Jeon

Emily Dearborn

Year Entered Program: Fall 2020

Research Interests: 20th and 21st century American fiction; form and aesthetics; postmodernism; experimental narratives, with emphasis on autofictions and metafictions; figures of collectivity; critical race studies; queer theory; literary journalism and travel writing. 

Advisor(s): Chris Fan

Misael De La Rosa

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

Research Interests: Latinx Literature: specifically, poetry, comics, and graphic novels; Translation Studies; identity formation; hybrid forms of literature

Advisor(s):   Valentina Montero Román, Virginia Jackson

Digang Fan

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

Research Interests: Transatlantic romantic poetry, poetic form, and critical race theory

Advisor(s): Virginia Jackson

Lucy Zi Wei Fang

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

Research Interests:  Asian American literature, historical materialism, the novel

Advisor(s): Chris Fan, Joseph Jeon

Juan Carlos Fermin

Year Entered Program: Fall 2019

Research Interests: Global Anglophone literature, Postcolonial theory, Filipinx American Studies, Philippine Studies, Global South Studies, Asian American literature, Southeast Asian literature, diasporic literature, Critical Black Studies, Critical Refugee Studies 

Advisor(s): Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan

Jack Fixa

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

Research Interests: Early modern drama and poetry (especially Shakespeare and Milton), utopian literature, pastoral literature, travel narratives, colonial literature, Black Studies, environmental humanities 

Advisor(s): Julia Lupton

Brian Flores

Year Entered Program: Fall 2017

Research Interests: Latino/a American Literature; Hemispheric American Studies; 20th and 21st Century American Literature, Transnational Identities; Cultural Studies

Advisor(s): Joseph Jeon

Lawrence Hall

Year Entered Program: Fall 2023

Research Interests: 20th-century social/political thought, double-consciousness, dialectics, deconstruction, event identity, self-identification, and critical theory.

Advisor(s): Georges Van Den Abeele

Sarah Goeppner-Kallungi

Year Entered Program: Fall 2019

Research Interests: Early Modern, Poetry/Poetics, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Advisor(s): Julia Reinhard Lupton

Aditi Kumar

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

Research Interests: Postcolonial

Advisor(s): Michael Szalay

Toni Hays

Year Entered Program: Fall 2017

Research Interests: 20th & 21st Century American Narratives, Global Asias, Asian/American Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Critical Mixed Race Studies, Land & Housing

Advisor(s): Joseph Jeon and Christopher T. Fan

Vincent Hiscock

Year Entered Program: Fall 2018

Research Interests: Poetry; modernisms; modern thought; intersections of literature, art history, film & media studies; the 20th century.

Advisor(s): Oren Izenberg and Martin Harris

Rachel Hoffer

Year Entered Program: Fall 2020

Research Interests: 19th Century British Literature, Romanticism, Law and Literature, "Fear" and Trauma Theory, Eco-pessimism, Critical Theory, Aestheticism, and Novel Theory.

Advisor(s): Jayne Lewis

Stephen Thomas Howard

Year Entered Program: Fall 2017

Research Interests: C20 American Poetry; Modernism; Historical Poetics; Black Poetics

Advisor(s): Virginia Jackson

Isis Huang

Year Entered Program: Fall 2017

Research Interests:  Post-1945 Multicultural Literature; Mental Illness Narratives; Trauma Theory

Advisor(s): Theodore Martin

Kelana Celine Johnson

Year Entered Program: Fall 2021

Research Interests: 

Advisor(s): Virginia Jackson

Chelsea Lee

Year Entered Program: Fall 2020

Research Interests: Early Modern literature and culture; Medical Humanities; Death--The intersection of life and death in the human experience; The human body as/in literature, anatomy, and decomposition

Advisor(s): Julia Lupton

Gema Ludisaca

Year Entered Program: Fall 2019

Research Interests: Contemporary Latinx Literature, YA Fiction, Gothic/Horror, Speculative Realism, Queer Indigeneity, and Intersectionality

Advisor(s): Jonathan Alexander

Jan Leonard Maramot Rodil

Year Entered Program: Fall 2019

Research Interests: 19th, 20th, and 21st century American Poetry, Queer Theory, Queer Archives, History of American Poetry and Poetics, History of Criticism, Lyric Theory, Queer Lyric/Lyric Queerness

Advisor(s): Virginia Jackson

Amanda Malone

Year Entered Program: Fall 2019

Research Interests: 20th & 21st c. American poetry, epic poetry, Marxist theory

Advisor(s): Oren Izenberg

Letizia Mariani

Year Entered Program: Fall 2020

Research Interests: Twentieth and twenty first century poetry and poetics, transnationalism, multilingualism, modernism and postmodernism.

Advisor(s): Oren Izenberg

Patrick McBurnie-Nicolay

Year Entered Program: Fall 2019

Research Interests:  Transnational Studies, Material History, Labor Studies, 19th Century American Literature, 20th Century American Literature

Advisor(s): Sri Basu and Michael Szalay

Louise McCune

Year Entered Program: Fall 2018

Research Interests: 19th and 20th century American fiction, history of criticism, labor & the economy, gender & sexuality

Advisor: Michael Szalay 

Na'amit Nagel

Year Entered Program: Fall 2021

Research Interests: American Jewish literature, Minority literatures and women's writing

Advisor(s): Irene Tucker 

Bridget O'Reilly

Year Entered Program: Fall 2017

Research Interests: Modernism, James Joyce, Genetic study of Joyce, 20th century British, American, Irish novel, 20th century Irish and American Drama, Irish post-colonial history, the Plays of Brian Friel

Advisor(s): Martin Harries

Olivia Rall

Year Entered Program: Fall 2017

Research Interests: Early modern literature; political theology; religious studies; Shakespeare; the Hebrew Bible 

Advisor(s): Julia Reinhard Lupton

 

Madeleine Read

Year Entered Program: Fall 2017

Research Interests:  20th- and 21st-century theater / political theory / utopianisms / aesthetics and performativity / space: extralegal, urban, public, theatrical

Advisor(s): Martin Harries

Francisco Reyes-Betancourtt

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

Research Interests: 20th/21st C. African-American and Latinx Literature; Digital Media, Electronic Literature, Video Games, and Race/Internet; Postcolonialism; Attachment Theory; Narrative Theory; Philosophy of Mind

Advisor(s): Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan

Dalton Salvo

Year Entered Program: Fall 2017

Research Interests: Rhetorical Ontology and Ecology, Digital Rhetoric, Visual Rhetoric, Phenomenology, New Media Studies, Virtuality, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Game Design and Analysis

Advisor(s): Jonathan Alexander and Daniel M. Gross

Kathryn Schubert

Year Entered Program: Fall 2020

Research Interests: Early modern literature, Shakespeare, gender and sexuality, political theory, vulnerability and embodiment, ethics

Advisor(s): Julia Lupton

Leah Senatro

Year Entered Program: Fall 2019

Research Interests: rhetoric and composition, medical humanities, digital multimodality, the sensorium, the rhetoric of pain, the rhetoric or mourning, the body

Advisor(s): Daniel M. Gross

Dominique Shank

Year Entered Program: Fall 2019

Research Interests: Blackness, critical race theory, speculative fiction, metaphor theory, and performativity

Advisor(s): Joseph Jeon

 

Saiham Sharif

Year Entered Program: Fall 2021

Research Interests: 

Advisor(s): Kyle Grady

Haley Youn-Ju Suh

Year Entered Program: Fall 2021

Research Interests: Victorian literature and culture, novel and narrative theory, and Marxist literary and cultural studies

 

Advisor(s): Jami Bartlett

Martha Tesfalidet

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

Research Interests:  Identity, African American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Narrative Theory, Critical Theory

Advisor(s): Theodore Martin

Alexandra Harrison 

Year Entered Program: Fall 2020

Research Interests: 20th and 21st century literature; gender, sexuality and the family; critical prison studies; autotheory and autofiction

Advisor(s): Theodore Martin

Noelle Viger

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

Research Interests:  18th century literature, political theory, Indigeneity

Advisor(s): Jayne Lewis

 

James Vitiello

Year Entered Program: Fall 2023

Research Interests:  Police militarization & abolition, racial capitalism, crisis theorie(s), Marxism & Marxist-feminism, horror, cinema.

Advisor(s): Theodore Martin

Alex Bernstein

Year Entered Program: Fall 2024

Research Interests:  human and nonhuman cognitions; poetry and poetics; C19 and C20 American; gender and sexuality; aesthetics; Marxist and Hegelian literatures; psychoanalysis; compositionism; bio-politics; new materialisms

Advisor(s): Virginia Jackson

Eliana De La Torre

Year Entered Program: Fall 2024

Research Interests:  20th and 21st century Chicanx/Latinx Literature, Post-colonial Theory, Ethics, Religious Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Creative Writing

Advisor(s): Valentina Montero Román

Mel Stevens

Year Entered Program: Fall 2024

Research Interests:  Old and Middle English Literature, Indigenous Studies, Environmental Humanities, Feminist New Materialisms, Ecocriticism, Postcolonial and Decolonial Theories, Feminist and Queer Theories, Disability Studies, Honeybees, Wonder, Ceremony, and Time and Temporality.

Advisor(s): Rebecca Davis

Michael Corbin

Year Entered Program: Fall 2024

Research Interests: The short story, literary-critical forms, creative writing, narratology, aesthetics, 20th- and 21st-century U.S. literature, 20th- and 21st-century Japanese literature, 20th- and 21st-century Russian literature, philosophy of language, Marxist theory and political economy.

 

Advisor(s): Chris Fan

Michael Jimenez

Year Entered Program: Fall 2024

Research Interests: Sound studies, 20th century African American literature, Afrofuturism, speculative fiction, literary and critical theory

 

Advisor(s): Cole Morgan

Amanda Cruz

Year Entered Program: Fall 2024

Research Interests: Queer gothic literature, Folk Horror, Queer Theory/Studies, Feminist Theory, Horror        

 

Advisor(s): Jayne Lewis

Madeleine Hurst

Year Entered Program: Fall 2024

Research Interests: Jewish Studies/Culture, Feminist Studies, Early Modern Literature        

 

Advisor(s): Julia Lupton

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