Graduate Students in the Department of English
(click for listings of students in Comparative Literary Studies below)
Abedeen, Lydia
she/they
3rd-year MFA+MA
Field: Poetry
Areas of Interest: Trauma theory, Caruthian literary analysis, ancient Greek mythology, fairy tale, classics and ancient history, cult and religious studies, effects of war on women, psychoanalysis, Bangladeshi identities, motherhood
Abraham, George
he/him/his, they/them/theirs
3rd-year MFA+MA
Field: Poetry
Areas of Interest: Anti-colonial Poetics, Palestinian Poetry, Southwest Asian & North African Diasporic Poetry, Experimental Poetic Forms, Digital Humanities, Horror and Speculative Fiction
Ady, Elisa
2nd-year MFA+MA
Field: Fiction
Areas of Interest: magical realism, borderlands, the queer uncanny, domestic dread, the un/inhuman (monsters, ghosts, robotic bodies)
Aftel, Sam
1st-year PhD
Areas of Interest: Gender and Sexuality Studies, Post-Colonial/Diaspora, 20/21st c. American lit.
Anowe, JK
he/they
1st-year MFA+MA
Genre: Poetry
Balooni, Agam
4th-year PhD
Field: 19th-century British literature
Barcelona, Dawn
Bellaart, Elena
she/her/hers
PhD Candidate
Field: American literature
Areas of Interest: 19th-century American women’s writing, 19th-century representations of gender, labor, and domesticity
Bergh, Rio
PhD candidate
Field: American literature
Areas of Interest: 18th- and 19th-century American literatures; environmental humanities; Indigenous studies; material textual studies
Bianchi, Andrea
she/her/hers
2nd-year MFA+MA
Field: Creative Nonfiction
Areas of Interest: memoir, lyric essay, relationship and family dynamics
Boyden, Kayla
3rd-year PhD
Field: Contemporary African American Literature
Areas of Interest: Black contemporary poetry and poetics, Black feminist thought, and Critical Theory
Browne, Kaitlin
PhD Candidate
Field: Medieval literature
Areas of Interest: medical and digital humanities, the construction of race in the middle ages, corporeal literacy, sociolinguistics, authorial theory
Chase, Kai
they/them/theirs
PhD Candidate
Field: Contemporary American Literature
Areas of Interest: Black feminist theory; Indigenous studies; gender and sexuality; Latin American and Caribbean literature; decolonial literature and theory; Marxism
Cohen, Emma
she/her/hers
3rd-year PhD
Field: Early Modern literature
Areas of Interest: embodiment, affect, illness
Comerford, Jennifer
she/her/hers
PhD Candidate
Field: 18th-century British literature
Areas of Interest: the novel, epistolarity, cross-channel exchange, representations of consciousness, and women's writing
Cornejo Griffin, María José
she/her/hers
1st-year PhD
Areas of Interest: Early Modern Literature, Early Modern Drama, Literature and Science, Literature and Imperialism
Corning-Myers, Michaela
she/her/hers
4th-year PhD
Field: American literature
Areas of Interest: medicine in literature, naturalism, modernity, and gender and sexuality
Dugas, May
she/her/hers
3rd-year MFA+MA
Field: Creative Nonfiction
Areas of Interest: Fiction and nonfiction focusing on psychological aspects of trauma and grief, the intersection of consciousness with quantum physics, speculative fiction, fantasy, and epistolary forms
Ellefson, Philip
he/him/his
PhD Candidate
Field: American literature
Areas of Interest: 19th/20th century American literature, urban fiction, architecture and housing
English, Samantha
she/her/hers
PhD Candidate
Field: 19th century Anglo-American literature
Areas of Interest: aftermaths of the 19th century, multi-ethnic contemporary literature, literary form and adaptation, queer theory, girlhood studies
Feero, Eliza
she/her/hers
4th-year PhD
Field: Medieval literature
Areas of Interest: Pre-modern critical race studies; European representations of Islam and blackness; conversion and the body in pre-modern literature; manuscript studies and history of the book; textual afterlife
Gibeily, Allison
she/her/hers
4th-year PhD
Field: Global 18th century literature
Areas of Interest: 18th century Arabic and English travel writing; postcolonial studies; archive studies; medical humanities
Goddu, Charlotte
3rd-year PhD
Graves, Harrison
PhD Candidate
Field: 20th/21st-c African American Literature
Areas of Interest: 20th/21st-c African American Literature; American Literature and Culture (Post-1945); Black Film (Post-1965); Black Studies and Black Critical Theory; Black Masculinities and Black Gender Theory; Psychoanalytic Theory; Prison Studies
Dissertation: “Dark Gardening in the Vertigo Cold: Black Masculinities and Ungendering in the Contemporary Literary and Cultural Imagination,” which studies post-1965 literature and films that address Black masculinities post-Civil Rights and after the publication of The Moynihan Report.
Griffith-Gorgati, Isabel
she/her/hers
2nd-year PhD
Field: 20th/21st-century transatlantic literature
Areas of Interest: Women’s writing, Gender and Sexuality Studies, war and nationalism
Gutierrez-Lowe, Mariana
she/her/hers
PhD candidate
Field: American literature
Areas of Interest: Latinx literature, indigenous studies, postcolonial feminisms, borders and citizenship, decolonization, and motherhood
Happe, Nat
2nd-year MFA+MA
Field: Creative Nonfiction
Hirsi, Mariam
2nd-year MFA+MA
Field: Fiction
Hu, Jinjia
MA student
Areas of Interest: Early Modern lit, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Ibarra, Alexandra
she/her/hers
PhD candidate
Field: American literature
Areas of Interest: Latinx literary and cultural studies
Johnson, Lauren
2nd-year PhD
Field: 20th/21st-c American lit
Areas of Interest: African American literature, jazz studies, critical race and ethnic studies, and gender and sexuality studies
Johnson, Mitchell
2nd-year MFA+MA
Field: Creative Nonfiction
Jones-Torregrosa, Paulina
she/her/hers
PhD Candidate
Field: 20th/21st-century American literature
Areas of Interest: multiethnic American literatures since 1900, especially Latinx and African-American literatures, feminist, gender, and sexuality studies, critical race and ethnic studies
Kim, Irene
she/her/hers
PhD Candidate
Field: 20th/21st-century American literature
Areas of Interest: race and ethnic studies, affect, aesthetics, poetics, media theory, and visual culture
McGrath, Jackson
he/him/his
3rd-year MFA+MA
Field: Creative Nonfiction
Mercer, Harris
he/him/his
PhD Candidate
Field: British literature, 1500-1650
Areas of Interest: Economic and social history and other historicisms; disability, queer, and gender studies; political philosophy
Milner, Surya
3rd-year MFA+MA
Field: Creative Nonfiction
Narayan, Govind
PhD Candidate
Field: 19th Century British and Contemporary Indian Anglophone Literatures
Areas of Interest: Comparison, Energy, Empire, and Postcolonial Studies
Nhu, Ryan
3rd-year PhD
Field: 20th/ 21st-century American literature
Areas of Interest: Autobiography Studies, Comparative Race and Ethnicity, Poetry and Poetics, Psychoanalysis, Queer Theory
Nisenson, Sarah
she/her/hers
3rd-year PhD
Field: 20th/ 21st-century American literature
Areas of Interest: post-1945 American literature, feminist new materialism, eco-criticism
Pan, Phoebe
3rd-year PhD
Field: Renaissance/early modern literature
Areas of Interest: poetry & poetics, consciousness, queer ecologies
Ramirez, Jessica
PhD Candidate
Field: 20th/21st-century Anglophone literature
Areas of Interest: Latinx studies and multiethnic poetry, interdisciplinary approaches to race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality studies
Rips, Avey
5th-year PhD
Field: American literature
Scharfenberg, Katherine
PhD Candidate
Field: American literature
Areas of Interest: Early/19th-century American literatures, Indigenous studies, geography, narrative incoherence, nationalism
Schell, Cameron
PhD Candidate
Field: 18th-century/Romantic British literature
Sears, Sof
Shou Li, June
1st-year PhD
Field: Contemporary American literature
Areas of Interest: critical theory, liberatory affects, radical whimsies, disaster writing, proleptic imagination, metamodernism and racial orientations
Singh, Angad
3rd-year PhD
Syvertsen, Adam
PhD Candidate
Field: American literature
Areas of Interest: 18th/19th-century utopian fiction, 18th/19th-century political economy, critical theory, history/philosophy of science
Talbott, Tyler
PhD Candidate
Field: 19th/20th-century British literature
Areas of Interest: Victorian and postcolonial British literature, ethnonationalism, postcolonial studies, undisciplining Victorian studies, theories of writing and pedagogy
Taveras, Emely
Vieytez, Maria
PhD candidate
Field: Medieval literature
Areas of Interest: Narratology, critical race studies, and affect theory
Williams, Heather
1st-year PhD
Areas of Interest: Medieval lit., Material Texts/History of the Book, Animal Studies
Winter, Elizabeth
she/her/hers
PhD candidate
Field: 19th-century British literature
Areas of Interest: transatlantic literary exchange, feminist theory, and critical race theory
Xu, Han
MA student
Areas of Interest: Early Modern lit., Critical Race Studies, Critical Theory
Xu, Olivia Lingyi
PhD Candidate
Field: 19th-century British literature
Areas of Interest: 19th-century British Literature; Modern Chinese Literature; Translation Studies; History of the Novel; Asian Diasporic Studies; Global Anglophone and Sinophone Studies; Critical Race Studies; Postcolonial Studies
Yarberry, Smith
they/them/theirs
PhD Candidate
Field: Poetry & Poetics
Areas of Interest: prosody, romanticism, Blakean studies, twenty-first century poetry & poetics, trans(gender) literature, avant-garde traditions
Yen, Sreddy
they/them/theirs
PhD Candidate
Field: 20th/21st-century Anglophone literature
Areas of Interest: contemporary African literatures, humanism, relationality, identity politics
Yoon, Yasmin
she/her/hers
3rd-year PhD
Field: Contemporary Asian American literature
Areas of Interest: Eco-criticism, New Materialism, Affect Theory, Posthumanism
Zalokostas, Anna
she/her/hers
PhD Candidate
Field: 20th/21st-century American literature
Areas of Interest: multiethnic US literature and culture since 1900, especially post-1965, Marxist theory, especially feminist theories of social reproduction, transnational labor and migration
