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, contemporary African American literature, and Black diaspora literature

Advisor(s): Cole Morgan

Librecht Baker

Year Entered Program: Fall 2021

Research Interests: Rhetoric and composition,  identity and language, Black feminist theory.

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): Irene Tucker

Sharece Lia Boghozian

Year Entered Program: Fall 2021

Research Interests: Modernisms, Literature and Art, Art History, Postmodernism, Literary and Critical Theory, Poetry/Poetics, Avant-Garde, Rhetoric and Composition

Advisor(s): Virginia Jackson

Maya Bornstein

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

Research Interests: 20th and 21st century literature; modernisms; poetry/poetics; critical theory; mythopoeia; bio- and necropolitics; diaspora studies; Marxism and post-Marxism; philology.

Advisor(s): Oren Izenberg

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

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

Megan Cole

Year Entered Program: Fall 2019

Research Interests: transatlantic modernism and postmodernism; climate fiction, speculative fiction and science fiction; petromodernity; Marxist theory; literary journalism and literary nonfiction 

Advisor(s): Annie McClanahan

Emily Dearborn

Year Entered Program: Fall 2020

Research Interests: 20th and 21st century literature; genre theory; poetics; postmodernism; aesthetics; rhetorical studies; existentialism; queer theory; environmental narratives and food writing; autofiction; artists' books.

Advisor(s): R. Radhakrishnan

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):  Rodrigo Lazo

Digang Fan

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

Research Interests: 19th Century, American Literature, Literature and Law, Race, the Novel 

Advisor(s): Georges Van Den Abbeele

Lucy Zi Wei Fang

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

Research Interests:  Asian American literature, transpacific studies, representations of artifice and the fake

Advisor(s):  Jerry Won Lee

Juan Carlos Fermin

Year Entered Program: Fall 2019

Research Interests: Postcolonial theory, critical race theory, feminist theory, queer theory, Marxism, world literature, Asian American literature, diasporas literature, speculative fiction 

Advisor(s): Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan

Jack Fixa

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

Research Interests: Medieval romances, early modern literature, queer theory, gender theory

Advisor(s): Elizabeth Allen

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): Rodrigo Lazo 

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): Cole Morgan

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): Laura O'Connor

Charles Gunn

Year Entered Program: Fall 2018

Research Interests: 20th and 21st century American literature; Science Fiction; Political Economy; Marxism; Critical University Studies; History of Criticism and Theory; Book History; Conservative Thought

Advisor(s): Theodore Martin 

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

Kelana Celine Johnson

Year Entered Program: Fall 2021

Research Interests: 

Advisor(s): Annie McClanahan

Jung Soo Lee

Year Entered Program: Fall 2017

Research Interests:  Science Fiction, disability studies, crip theory, queer theory

Advisor(s): Theodore Martin

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

Tara Leederman

Year Entered Program: Fall 2012

Research Interests: Eighteenth century literature, ecocriticism, environmental science, medical science, ethics.

Advisor(s): Jayne Lewis

Jean Little

Year entered program: Fall 2017

Research interests: Victorian literature, history of mathematics and natural science, economics and literature, aestheticism, poetic form, and theory of the novel

Advisor(s): Andrea Henderson

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: Contemporary American literature and culture; political economy; critical theory and pedagogy.

Advisor: Michael Szalay 

Violet Erin Moon

Year Entered Program: Fall 2020

Research Interests: Critical theory; liminal space and studies; postmodernism; metaphysics; hybridity; rhetorical studies

Advisor(s): Daniel M. Gross

Na'amit Nagel

Year Entered Program: Fall 2021

Research Interests: American Jewish literature, Immigrant literature, feminist studies, motherhood and maternity, 19th century British literature

Advisor(s): Irene Tucker 

Sarah O'Dell

Year Entered Program: Fall 2019

Research Interests:  Medical Humanities; The Long Eighteenth Century; British Romanticism; Medieval Literature & Medievalisms; Rhetoric; the Gothic; History of Psychiatry; Religious Studies; Inklings Studies

Advisor(s): Jayne Lewis

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; Walter Benjamin; ceremony and ritual

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 Century American Literature and Film; African-American/Latinx Literature; Science Fiction; Literary Theory; Attachment/Affect Theory; Narrative Theory; Ecocriticism; 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: 19th century British literature, fin-de-siècle literature and modernity, novel and narrative theory, psychoanalysis and affect theory, Marxist theory, and Empire studies

Advisor(s): Srimayee Basu McCall

Martha Tesfalidet

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

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

Advisor(s): Theodore Martin

Allie Harrison Vernon

Year Entered Program: Fall 2020

Research Interests: Contemporary American Literature and Culture, Political Economy, Racial Capitalism, Black Marxism, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Sports

Advisor(s): Christopher Fan

Noelle Viger

Year Entered Program: Fall 2022

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

Advisor(s): Julia Lupton

 

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

MacKenzie Weeks-Mahoney

Year Entered Program: Fall 2014

Research Interests: contemporary American literature and popular culture; vocality, polyvocality, and sound in the novel; critical theory; horror studies.

Advisor(s): Michael Szalay

Elizabeth Wyatt

Year Entered Program: Fall 2021

Research Interests:  Environmental humanities, historical poetics, geoscience, ecocriticism

Advisor(s): Laura O'Connor