Degrees

2024, Master of Arts in English Literature, Auburn University

2020, Bachelor of Arts in English-Liberal Arts, Francis Marion University

2020, Bachelor of Arts in Biology, Francis Marion University

Bio

Devin Gregg is a doctoral student and Teaching Fellow in the English and Comparative Literature Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has a vested interest in feminist and queer theories and methodologies and specializes in multiethnic literature in the global south. She is particularly interested in how African American, Caribbean, and Latina/o literatures reveal the intricacies of identity, theorize and explore spatiotemporality, and negotiate historical memory.

Awards

• Graduate Teaching Fellowship, English and Comparative Literature Department, UNC Chapel Hill, Fall 2024-Present
• Noel Polk Award, Society for the Study of Southern Literature, 2024
• Travel Grant, Department of English, Auburn University, Fall 2023
• Travel Grant, Department of English, Auburn University, Spring 2023
• Graduate Student Tuition Fellowship, Department of English, Auburn University, Fall 2022-Spring 2024
• Francis Marion University English Award, 2021

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

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

Degrees

2022, BA English, University of Richmond

Bio

I am interested in global modernism, especially transatlantic literary experiments in the early twentieth century and its transformation in the latter half of the century.

Degrees

2024, M.A. English, University of Georgia

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

Bio

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

Degrees

2024, BA English, University of Pittsburgh.

2024, BA Political Science, University of Pittsburgh.

Bio

I am currently interested in the folklore and cosmological tradition of ancient African civilizations, and the transference of said traditions in modern Black diasporic rhetoric and communication. Works of interest include: Beyoncé’s 2016 album Lemonade, Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Black Death,” and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. I am keenly interested in the perseverance of Black tradition under the constraints of colonialism and slavery, and the appearance of the rhetorical traditions in modern society.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2021, MA English, Winthrop University

2020, BA English, Winthrop University

Bio

Faith Rush is a PhD student and Teaching Fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is a two-time graduate of Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. During her time there, she became interested in 19th and 20th-century American Literature with an emphasis on Black Southern writers. Faith’s research utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to analyze literature’s role in forming and reforming the Black identity. Unpacking well-known and lesser-known works by Black authors, she argues for their insertion into the racialized American literary canon.

Her current research interest is the first-known African American novelist Hannah Crafts and her autobiographic novel The Bondwoman’s Narrative. She hopes to further comprehend Crafts’s literary contributions to American literature and advocate for her placement within academic discourse.

Publications:

• Lift Up. (Rock Hill: The Anthology: Winthrop University Arts & Literary Magazine, 2021).
• Mama Said. (Rock Hill: The Anthology: Winthrop University’s Arts & Literary Magazine, 2021).
• Death of Divorce. (Rochester Hills: Oakland Arts Review, 2020).
• Songs for the People: Music’s Recreation of the Black Identity in the Works of Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin. (Rock Hill: Showcase of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors, 2020).

Degrees

2021, BA in Comparative Literature with an emphsasis in World Literature, University of California Irvine
2021, BA in Philosophy, Univeristy of California Irvine
Cum Laude

Bio

Audrey is a first year PhD student from Los Angeles, California. Audrey currently focuses in visual and cultural studies with particular interest in representation of the body politic. Her past research has explored nationalism within American superhero comics, specifically within various Captain America series. In her research with the COMICS research team at the University of Ghent, she studied colonial imagery within tropes of the mythologized west in francophone comics, primarily focusing on Franco-Belgian publications from the 1940s to 1980s.

Publications:

“Captain America: Disassembling Traditional Narratives” Johns Hopkins’ Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Humanities Research Journal

Awards

Fulbright Fellowship Grantee 2022 – 2023
Phi Beta Kappa, University of California Irvine 2021
Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research, University of California Irvine 2021

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

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

Degrees

2022, MA English, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

2016, BA Religious Studies, Wingate University

Bio

A North Carolina native, Joshua Cody Ward joined the program in Fall 2022. His field is Modern and Contemporary American literature broadly (1900-Present), and specifically Literature of the American South, the Appalachian South, and African American Literature. His research interests include the archive, textual studies, editorial scholarship, intertextuality, and the Novel, though he is also an avid scholar of Cormac McCarthy and of Thomas Wolfe. His prospective dissertation, Articulating Appalachia, argues that definitions of the region and its people are co-constructed across the 20th c. through both cultural representation (literature, film, music) and Regional and National projects for economic and social uplift.

He is currently a Digital Content Coordinator for the Latina/o Studies Program, a Senior Coordinator for the Critical Speakers Series, and a Board Member (2023-2026) for the Thomas Wolfe Society. He is an occasional Reviewer for the The Cormac McCarthy Journal. As a junior scholar, his work has been accepted or published in several journals and essay collections, and he has presented his work at over 20 academic conferences.

Publications:

• “Darkness on the Edge of Town: Beat Subject Formation, Black Ontology, and Fugitivity as Gnosis in Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree.” In This Country’s Hard on People: Cormac McCarthy and American Identity, edited by Vernon Cisney. Forthcoming.
• “Weird Object Relations, Ecology, and Apocalypse in Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger and Stella Maris.” In New Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy: Encountering The Passenger and Stella Maris, edited by Jonathan Elmore and Rick Elmore. Forthcoming.
• “A Literary Ménage à Trois: An Analysis of the Elizabeth Lemmon Collection on Thomas Wolfe, 1934-1935.” Forthcoming.
• “Publishing the Black Arts Movement: Editors, Anthologies, and Canonization.” South Atlantic Review, vol. 88, no. 2-3, 2023, pp. 157-170.
• “From Commas to Cosmos: The Pervading Influence of Thomas Wolfe on Cormac McCarthy.” The Thomas Wolfe Review, vols. 44 & 45, nos. 1 & 2, 2020 & 2021, pp. 8-25.
• [album] The Boron Heist. Ridin’ Rough. Mystery School Records, April 6 2019.
• “Light and Darkness, Sight and Blindness: Religious Knowledge in Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark.” Wingate Research Review, issue 8, Fall 2016, pp. 87-106.
• “Raison d’être.” Wingate University Counterpoint, Spring 2013, p. 9.
• “On Testing.” Wingate University Counterpoint, Spring 2013, p. 23.

Awards

• Graduate Teaching Fellow, Fall 2022-Present, UNC Chapel Hill, English and Comparative Literature Department.
• Travel Grant, Fall 2023, UNC Chapel Hill, English and Comparative Literature Department.
• Emerging Scholar Award, Summer 2023, UNC Chapel Hill, Southern Futures program.
• John R. Bittner Student Literary Prize, May 27^th 2023, Thomas Wolfe Society Conference.
• LSP Teaching Fellowship, Spring 2023, UNC Chapel Hill Latina/o Studies Program.
• Graduate Student Transportation Grant, Spring 2023, UNC Chapel Hill, Graduate School.
• Languages & Literatures Graduate Student Paper Award Recipient, February 23^rd 2023, 44^th Annual SWPACA Conference.
• 2021 Graduate Student Essay Award Recipient, November 12^th 2022, SAMLA 94.
• Travel Grant, Fall 2022, UNC Chapel Hill, English and Comparative Literature Department.
• The Julian D. Mason Award for Excellence in Graduate Studies, April 29^th 2022, UNC Charlotte, English Department.
• Graduate Teaching Assistantship, Fall 2020-Spring 2022, UNC Charlotte, English Department.
• Wittliff Collections William Hill Research Award, 2021-2022, Texas State University, For archival research conducted July 2021 in the Cormac McCarthy Papers and Woolmer Collections.
• Anne Newman Graduate Student Travel Grant, Fall 2021, UNC Charlotte.
• Excellence in Philosophy Award, April 24^th 2016, Wingate University, Religious Studies Department.
• G. Byrns Coleman Award for Excellence in Religious Studies, April 24^th 2016, Wingate University, Religious Studies Department.
• University Honors, April 24^th, 2016, Wingate University.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2020, BA English, Indiana University

2020, BA Anthropology, Indiana University

2022, MA English, Syracuse University

Bio

My area of focus is on horror, race, gender, and sexuality and how the these intersecting ties are utilized within popular media throughout American history. Specifically within film, television, novels, and video games, I am interested in how these various mediums relay American history through a horror/gothic lens.