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Thomas Eric Simonson

September 18, 2019

Degrees

2019, MA in English, Wake Forest University

2017, BA in English, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Bio

Thomas Eric Simonson divides his time between literature of the early modern era, especially drama, and 20th century transatlantic studies and literary theory.


Theodore Nollert

September 11, 2019
Photo of Theodore Nollert

Degrees

2016, BA English, Rhodes College

2019, MA English, University of Alabama

Bio

I specialize in literature, religion, and politics from 1550-1640, with expertise in lyric, dramatic, and narrative poetry from Chaucer to Milton (including Shakespeare). In addition to secondary competency in literary prose from 1500-1800, and special familiarity with the work of Laurence Sterne, I have taught courses on literature for primary and secondary schools, universities, continuing education programs, and correctional education programs. 

My dissertation will evaluate the political gist of English literary depictions of Julius Caesar in the context of more radical political theory


Awards

Mellon Fellowship (2019-2024)
Ruth Rose Richardson Award (2020)


Emily Youree

August 12, 2019
Photo of Emily Youree, taken by Katherine Stein

Degrees

2019, BA English, Samford University

Bio

Emily is a PhD candidate focusing on late-medieval Middle English literature. She is especially interested in questions of authority, counter-authority, legality, and outlawry in late fourteenth and early fifteenth century political poetry and outlaw tales, including Piers Plowman, texts in the Piers Plowman tradition, and Robin Hood traditions.


Publications:

  • “Yeoman, Outlaw, Demon: Reading The Friar’s Tale as an Outlaw Tale,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 124, no. 1 (2025). Forthcoming.

Teaching Awards

  • 2022 Doris Betts Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition, Department of English, UNC

Awards

  • 2024 Leyerle-CARA Prize, Medieval Academy of America
  • 2023 Derek Pearsall Research and Travel Grant, International Piers Plowman Society
  • 2023 Schallek Award, Medieval Academy of America and the Richard III Society
  • 2021 ARPA Graduate Degree Completion Grant, The Graduate School, UNC
  • 2020 Breen Award for Outstanding Work in Medieval Studies, Department of English, UNC

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Mandy L. Fowler

February 14, 2019

Degrees

2015, MA English, The Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies at The University of Alabama

2013, BA English, Angelo State University

Bio

Mandy L. Fowler is a PhD student specializing in early modern literature and the history of medicine. Her research interests include patient-caregiver exchanges, performances of care, and the material experiences of illness. She is more broadly interested in early modern approaches to human bodies (“be they alive or dead”) and the senses.

Her most recent presentations explore the role of the physician in Donne’s Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions the relationship between of olfaction and practices of reading in the sixteenth century.

Fowler is also interested in the medical humanities more generally and has a background in health sciences writing from her time as an editor and writer with The University of Alabama’s Institute for Rural Health Research.

She completed her master’s thesis, “They are gone to read upon me:” The Donnean Body-Text, with the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance studies.


Khristian Smith

October 2, 2018

Degrees

2017, MA English Literature, University of Virginia

2015, BA English Literature, Bethany College

Bio

Khristian S. Smith studies late medieval and early modern literature, primarily drama placed in its religiopolitical and material contexts. Their research interests include the histories of religion and emotion, occult knowledge, and literary representations of the Devil. Their most recent publication places William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in its contemporary religious and scientific contexts by exploring the toxicological roles of night, crypts, and demons in the play. They have delivered papers on the Devil and humor in Ben Jonson’s The Devil is an Ass, Paracelsianism in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and medieval theories of predestination in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde.

Smith’s dissertation project, “Horrors of the Early Modern Imagination,” argues that the roots of current understandings of the genre and experience of horror can be traced to an early modern conception of the imagination. By engaging with the early modern imagination’s power to generate, corrupt, lie, and delude, Smith contends we can understand horror, through the imagination, as onto- epistemological: a state of being and knowing. Drawing on the growing critical work on the history of affect, this project examines historical literature and cultural artifacts to comprehend how emotions and experiences have not only evolved over time but also shaped how we think and react today.


Publications:

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Media & Impact

Curatorial Work


Awards

  • Eliason Early Stages Fellowship, UNC Department of English and Comparative Literature, Summer 2023
  • Jerry Leath Mills Research Travel Grant, Studies in Philology, Summer 2022
  • ARPA Graduate Degree Completion Grant, UNC Graduate School, Fall 2021
  • Eating through the Archives: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Early Modern Foodways Travel Grant, Folger Shakespeare Library, December 2019
  • Sara Malone Conference Grant, UNC Medieval and Early Modern Studies, May 2019
  • Florence Hoagland Memorial Award for Outstanding Senior English Major, Bethany College Department of Humanities, Spring 2015
  • W. F. Kennedy Prize for Outstanding Junior Man, Bethany College, Spring 2014
  • Cammie Pendleton Award for Outstanding Junior English Major, BC Department of Humanities, Spring 2014
  • Bettie Blanck Travel Award, BC Department of Humanities, Fall 2013
  • Cammie Pendleton Award for Outstanding Sophomore English Major, BC Department of Humanities, Spring 2013

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Erik Maloney

July 27, 2018

Degrees

2016, BA in English and Comparative Literature, summa cum laude, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Bio

My research focuses on exchanges among literature, science, philosophy, and theology in early modern Europe.


Awards

  • 2016-17, North Carolina Native American Incentive Grant
  • 2016-17, Ruth Rose Richardson award for the outstanding record in the first year of graduate study

Lanier Walker

April 23, 2018

Degrees

2014, BA English, Harvard University

2015, postgraduate study, History of Design, Royal College of Art/ Victoria & Albert Museum

Bio

Lanier’s research interests include early modern drama, material culture studies, and the history of the book. Her dissertation examines the epistemological value of the documentary medium in Elizabethan and Jacobean England by asking how, when, and why early moderns decided to trust the documents they encountered. Reading references to documents in period literature through the lens of contemporary material texts, she argues that the vocabulary of documents offered playwrights and poets an invaluable framework with which to explore social, political, and spiritual uncertainties.


Teaching Awards

  • James R. Gaskin Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition, 2017

Awards

  • Graduate Intern Fellowship, Ackland Art Museum, 2022-23
  • Grant-in-aid, “Teaching Intermediate Paleography,” The Folger Shakespeare Library, 2022
  • Jerry Leath Mills Grant, Studies in Philology, 2022
  • William T. Buice III Scholarship, Rare Book School, 2022
  • Newberry Renaissance Consortium Grant, “Teaching the Early Modern Book: Ways of Seeing, Ways of Thinking,” The Newberry Library, 2022
  • Grant-in-aid, “Research and Writing the Early Modern Dissertation,” The Folger Shakespeare Library, 2021-22
  • Donald Gilman Research Travel Grant, The Department of English and Comparative Literature, 2021
  • Royster Society Fellowship, The Graduate School, 2016-21

Rory Sullivan

April 9, 2018

Degrees

2017, MA English, University of Virginia

2014, BA English, The College of William and Mary

Bio

Rory Sullivan studies late medieval English literature, art, and culture, and is completing a Ph.D. in English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He teaches courses on speculative fiction, visual narrative, and composition, while also working at the Writing and Learning Center as a Writing Coach. Rory’s scholarly work is interested in the lived experiences and devotional practices of late medieval people. His dissertation, “The Virtual Imagination and the Self in Late Medieval England,” investigates the interactions between individuals and art objects, poems, performances, and manuscripts in order to understand how individuals cultivated devotional practices and experiences.


Teaching Awards

  • Erika Lindemann Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition, 2022

Awards

  • Breen Award for outstanding work in the field of Medieval Studies, 2019

  • Balch Prize for a Masters Student in English, 2017


Curriculum Vitae / Resume