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Grad Interest: Aesthetics

Valerie Burgess

August 7, 2024

Degrees

2021, BA English, University of Southern California (with Honors)

2021, BA Cognitive Science, University of Southern California

Bio

Valerie Burgess is a first-year Ph.D. student and Research Assistant in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a dual Bachelors of Arts in English and Cognitive Sciences. While delving into two distinct fields, she developed an interest in the representation of mental health and feminine labor in women’s writings.

Her current research interest is investigating the intersection of psychology and literature to shed light on the depiction of mental illness in 20th—and 21st-century American Literature. Furthermore, she plans to engage in the Department’s interdisciplinary Health Humanities consortium to increase public engagement in the humanities and foster meaningful conversations across disciplines.

Awards

May 2021, Renaissance Scholar, University of Southern California

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Contact

email |

Office: Greenlaw 311

Research Interests

Aesthetics | American Literature to 1900 to the present | Contemporary American Literature | Digital Humanities | Disability Studies | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Literature and Religion | Literature, Medicine and Culture | Women Writers

Isabel Spencer Landis Doss

July 24, 2024

Degrees

2024, M.A. English, University of Georgia

2020, B.A. English cum laude, Willamette University

Bio

Spencer Doss is a first-year PhD student and teaching fellow in UNC’s Department of English and Comparative Literature. She studies nineteenth-century British literature, with a focus on Victorian women writers and their responses to patriarchal authority. Spencer’s master’s thesis, “Styling Society: Medicine, Art, and Sarah Grand’s New Women,” investigates how male characters in Grand’s oeuvre view women with a gaze that is at once aestheticizing and anatomizing. This phenomenon demonstrates the convergence of the institutions of art and medicine at the fin-de-siècle, with artists and doctors alike appraising women according to a patriarchal style that emphasizes their physical form, or bodies, over their subjective content, or their identities. Much of her research has centered understudied nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century feminist authors, including Catherine Carswell, Ella Hepworth Dixon, H.D., and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. In addition, Spencer is intrigued by how Victorian medical models manifest in the novel and their capacity to pathologize female bodies, especially in Gothic and sensation fiction.

As an instructor of writing, Spencer is passionate about establishing a classroom environment where students are empowered to explore and define their identities as writers. Her background as a writing center consultant informs her approach to instructor-student communication, which prioritizes one-on-one conferencing in addition to an interactive classroom model. Courses she has taught have involved the interplay of public and private memory and fictional texts that define and redefine the natural, from Beowulf to the present.

 

Awards

  • Christy Desmet Memorial Fund Award, University of Georgia, 2024
  • Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, inducted 2024
  • Research Out of State Tuition Award, University of Georgia, 2022
  • English Department Honors, Willamette University, 2020
  • John Dryden Award, Willamette University, 2020

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Contact

email |

Office:

Research Interests

Aesthetics | American Literature to 1900 to the present | British Literature from 1789 to 1900 | British Literature from 1900 to the Present | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Literature, Medicine and Culture | Science Writing | The Novel | Visual Culture and Arts | Women Writers

F. Tyler Elrod

July 19, 2024

Degrees

2015, BA English, University of Georgia

2022, MA English, Georgia State University

Bio

F. Tyler Elrod works among the intersections of critical theory, ecology, and early American literature.

Publications:

  • “‘The State of Their Stomachs’: the Politics of Consumption in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.” Poe Studies: History, Theory, Interpretation, vol. 57 (2024)

Awards

  • 2022 Nichols Graduate Award for Best Graduate Student Paper, British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Contact

email |

Office:

Research Interests

Aesthetics | American Literature from 1789 to 1900 | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Literature and Science | Literature, Medicine and Culture | Posthumanism

Steve Henry-Liu

July 19, 2024

Degrees

2023, BS English and Environmental Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Bio

Steve is a PhD student researching conviviality, energy, and degrowth. His research revolves around how the humanities can be applied as a force for social change. In particular, he’s been working to develop pathways for individuals and communities to move away from violent patterns of capitalist extraction and accumulation.

Contact

email |

Office:

Research Interests

Aesthetics | Comparative Literature | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Literature and Religion | Literature and Science | Queer Theory | Social Justice | Visual Culture and Arts

Alex Story

October 26, 2023

Degrees

2017, BA English, University of Florida

2021, MA English, University of Colorado Boulder

Bio

My scholarship explores how trauma, mental illness, and suicide affect intrafamilial and interpersonal relationships. Working with representations of the American generational family in popular media, I examine the ways by which narrative-based signifying practices in contemporary American culture harness generic discourses of horror and its adjacent genres to reify interpersonal trauma through depictions of extreme violence and negative affect.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Contact

email |

Office: Greenlaw 447

Research Interests

Aesthetics | American Literature to 1900 to the present | Comparative Literature | Contemporary American Literature | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Film and Media Studies | Genre Theory | Media Studies | Narrative Theory

Emily Waller Singeisen

July 26, 2023

Degrees

University of Pennsylvania, M.A., Liberal Studies
Palm Beach Atlantic University, B.A., Religious Studies

Bio

Emily Waller Singeisen is a PhD student and teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a graduate of the Masters of Liberal Arts program at the University of Pennsylvania where her research concentrations included the ancient literature and its reception, gender and queer theory, and psychoanalysis. Her published work has examined the formation of gendered subjectivity in the ancient novel through the framework of Freud’s female Oedipus complex, and she continues to investigate the ways in which contemporary theory might enrich our reading of ancient literature. Her current research focuses on receptions of classical literatures from the early twentieth century to the present that mobilize ancient texts for the representation of bodies and sexualities that defy heteronormative ideals.

Publications:

Peer Reviewed Articles

Waller Singeisen, E. (Forthcoming). “Watched Men and Phallus-Wielding Women: Aubrey Beardsley’s Reception of Juvenal’s Sixth Satire” in Classical Receptions Journal. 

Waller, E. (June 2022). “Gender Constitution and Reversible Potentiality: The Making of the Masculine Subject in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe” in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 33, no. 1.

Essays

Waller Singeisen, E. (June 2024). “Trojan Horse Universities: How Tech Billionaires and Alt-Right Figures Legitimise Intolerance in Classics.” Working Classicists. https://www.workingclassicists.com/post/trojan-horse-universities-how-tech-billionaires-and-alt-right-figures-legitimise-intolerance-in-cla.

Awards

UNC Graduate Essay Prize in Comparative Literature, 2024. 

Society for Classical Studies’ Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities Grant Recipient, 2022.

Lambda Classical Caucus Graduate Student Paper Award Nominee, 2021.

University of Pennsylvania Liberal and Professional Studies Award for Outstanding Achievement in a Capstone Project, 2021.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Contact

email |

Office: Greenlaw 509

Research Interests

Aesthetics | Comparative Literature | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Film and Media Studies | History of the Book | Queer Theory | Visual Culture and Arts

Kyle Cunningham

July 25, 2023

Degrees

2018, BA English, University of Florida

Bio

Kyle Cunningham is a doctoral student at UNC Chapel Hill. His research explores the intersections of platform studies, fan studies, and narrative and literary theory, focusing on how communities reproduce themselves through digital communication infrastructures. He is particularly interested in tracing the organizational logics and discursive practices of online communities that develop around decentralized, peer-produced narratives and hermeneutic practices.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Contact

email |

Office:

Professional Website

Research Interests

Aesthetics | Contemporary American Literature | Creative Writing | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Digital Humanities | Digital Rhetorics | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Film and Media Studies | Genre Theory | Media Studies | Narrative Theory | Philosophy Of Language | Visual Culture and Arts

Madison Storrs

July 24, 2023

Degrees

2017, BA English, Florida State University

2021, MA English, North Carolina State University

 

Bio

Madison Storrs is a first-year PhD student and Teaching Fellow in the Department of English & Comparative Literature. Her research focuses on the intersections of literature, botany, and art of the long 19th century in Britain. In particular, she considers how women incorporated botanical studies into their writing and art practices. She is also interested in British Romanticism, ecocriticism, ontology, aesthetics, design, and visual culture.

Awards

Teaching Assistantship, First-Year Writing, North Carolina State University, 2020–2021.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Contact

email |

Office:

Research Interests

Aesthetics | American Literature from 1789 to 1900 | British Literature from 1789 to 1900 | British Literature from 1900 to the Present | Children’s Literature | Depictions Of The Child | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Literature and History | Literature and Philosophy | Poetry and Poetics | Science Writing | Travel Writing | Visual Culture and Arts | Women Writers

Satoshi Ohnishi

July 20, 2023

Degrees

2018, BA Literature, the representative of the graduates, Waseda University

2020, MA Education, Waseda University

Bio

Satoshi Ohnishi is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature.  His research focuses on the relationship between 19th-century American literature and visual media, including the camera obscura and early photographic media. Additionally, he is currently interested in the representation of aging in American literature and African American literature.

Awards

  • Okuma Memorial Scholarship, Waseda University, 2018
  • Fulbright Scholarship (Fulbright Foreign Student Program), the Japan-United States Educational Commission, 2023-2025
  • Graduate Tuition Incentive Scholarship, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2024–25

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Contact

email |

Office:

Research Interests

Aesthetics | African American Literature | American Literature from 1789 to 1900 | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Film and Media Studies | Literature and Science | Literature, Medicine and Culture | Media Studies | Poetry and Poetics | Visual Culture and Arts

Maggie Anne Miller

July 19, 2023

Degrees

2020, BA English, Dalton State College

2023, MA English, Georgia State University

Bio

Maggie is a second-year Ph.D student in English literature. Her interests lie in prosody, historical theology and philosophy, and the moral imagination of Early Modern English poets both Protestant and Catholic, namely Milton, Donne, Crashaw, Herbert, Southwell, and others.

Publications:

“‘Not a Chaos’: The Intentionality of Music in the Gothic Novel and Film,” SAMLA News 41 (2020): 9-13.

Awards

  • Julius Sylvester Hanner Memorial Fund, The University of North Carolina, Summer 2024
  • Jerry Leath Mills Research Travel Grant, Studies in Philology, Summer 2024
  • Travel Grant, Department of English and Comparative Literature, The University of North Carolina, 2024
  • Booker Fellowship, The University of North Carolina, Aug 2023 – May 2024
  • Undergraduate Student Essay Award, SAMLA ’91 Conference, 2019

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Contact

email |

Office: Greenlaw 323

Research Interests

Aesthetics | British Literature from 1485 to 1660 (including Milton) | Early Modern Literature And Culture | History of the Book | Poetry and Poetics