Degrees

2018, MA English, Wake Forest University

2016, BA English, Drexel University

Bio

Krysten Voelkner is a PhD candidate in the department of English and Comparative Literature. Her primary interests reside at the intersection of environmental humanities and contemporary Latinx literature. Recent publications of hers can be found in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, and Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures. She is currently at work on her dissertation, which investigates the ways in which Latinx writers experiment with aesthetics of horror, dread, anxiety, and other ‘bad’ affects associated with the climate crisis. In this regard, she hopes to explore the affective ecologies of Latinx environmental literature and film as they offer ways of thinking within and beyond the Anthropocene.

Publications:

• “Vectors and Vermin: Gendered Violence and the Role of Insects in the Arthropoetics of Natalie Scenters-Zapico.” Chiricú Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, 2022.
• “Another Way of Seeing: Ecological Existentialism in Cortázar’s ‘Axolotl’.” The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, vol. 36, no. 1, 2021.
• “Memory, Temporality, and Communal Realization: Reading the Nomadic Subject in Rivera’s ...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, 2020.

Teaching Awards

• UNC Latina/o Studies Program Teaching Award (UNC Latina/o Studies Department), Spring 2022
• Erika Lindemann Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition in English 105 (UNC Department of English), Fall 2021.
• UNC Latina/o Studies Program Teaching Award (Fall 2020)

Awards

• UNC Department of English and Comparative Literature Early Stages Dissertation Fellowship, Summer 2022
• Nominee: David D. Anderson Award for Outstanding Essay in Midwestern Literary Studies, 2021
• Ruth Rose Richardson Award for outstanding record in the first year of graduate study, (UNC Department of English), 2019-20
• H. Broadus Jones MA Student Award for Excellence in English (Wake Forest University Department of English), Spring 2018

Degrees

2019, BA English, Boston College

Bio

Brendan is a PhD student studying 20^th century American literature.  His interests lie at the nexus of literature and phenomenology, exploring how writers across genres represent consciousness and perception in their writing.

Publications:

• “Phenomenological Reproduction in Thompson and Mailer’s New Journalism.” Dianoia. (Spring 2019)

Awards

• Phi Beta Kappa, Boston College, 2019

Degrees

2019, BA English, Ithaca College

Bio

I am a first-year PhD student in the Department of English & Comparative Literature. My interests include 20th and 21st century American literature, transatlantic modernism, and critical theory.

Degrees

2010, MA English, DePaul University

2008, BA English, Birmingham-Southern College

Bio

Originally from LaGrange, GA, Paul is primarily interested in American literature from 1865 to the present and its intersection with medical humanities, especially trauma studies. He is primarily interested in the ethical and political implications of depictions of trauma in literature and other media. In addition to his scholarly work, he also teaches sections of ENGL105, tutors for the athletic department, and currently serves as the Fiction Editor for The Carolina Quarterly. He also writes original pieces of fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and drama as well as scripts for promotional videos and short narrative or documentary films.

Publications:

• Smith, Jonathan and Paul Blom. “Those Who Don’t Return: Improving Efforts to Address Tuberculosis Among Former Miners in Southern Africa.” NEW SOLUTIONS: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, vol. 29, no. 1, May 2019, pp. 76-104.
• Blom, Paul. “‘It wasn’t any good diving unless you had a big hammer’: Psychoanalyzing Hemingway’s ‘After the Storm.’” The Sea in the Literary Imagination: Global Perspectives, edited by Ben P. Robertson, Ekaterina V. Kobeleva, Shannon W. Thompson, and Katona D. Weddle. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Jan. 2019.
• Blom, Paul. “‘A trap of our own making’: Mark Twain and the Mechanized Warfare of King Arthur’s Court.” War, Myths, and Fairy Tales, edited by Sara Buttsworth and Maartje Abbenhuis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, Jan. 2017.

Awards

• UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Program Professional Development Award Recipient, 2021
• Departmental Summer Fellowship Service Award to provide administrative support at the Digital Literacy and Communications Lab, 2020
• Departmental Travel Grant Award Recipient for travel to present at annual MELUS Conference in New Orleans, LA, April 2020
• UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Program Professional Development Award Recipient, 2020
• UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Program Professional Development Award Recipient, 2019
• Recipient of multiple grants for “Popular Narratives and the Experience of War,” UNC-Chapel Hill, from The Graduate School; Humanities for the Public Good; The College of Arts & Sciences, Division of Fine Arts & Humanities; The College of Arts & Sciences, Division of Social Sciences & Global Programs; Carolina Veterans Resource Center; Department of English and Comparative Literature; Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense; Department of History; and Center for the Study of the American South, 2019

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2016, B.A. English modified with Philosophy, minor in Ethics, Dartmouth College

Bio

Carly Schnitzler is a PhD candidate and teaching fellow studying digital rhetoric and computational arts and poetics.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2017, BA English, Bellarmine University

2017, BA Spanish, Bellarmine Univesity

Bio

Leslie Rowen studies 20th Century American literature with a focus on the literature of war. Her research concentrates on under-studied soldier writing, with a particular interest in race, gender expression, and trauma. By nature this work relies heavily on the archive, and occasionally extends into the field of medical humanities.

Teaching Awards

• Professional Development Teaching Award, Department of English & Comparative Literature, Spring 2021, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Latina/o Studies Program Teaching Award, Fall 2020, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 

Awards

• Center for the Study of the American South Summer Research Grant, Summer 2021, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• James Peacock REACH Fellowship, Center for Global Initiatives, Summer 2020, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2018, BA German Literature, Philosophy, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin

Bio

I study twentieth-century German, Russian, and American literature & film. My current research interests lie in Horror and Liminality, Critical Theory, and Film Studies. Currently I am researching depictions of space and time, as they relate to constructions of gender and sexuality.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

BA of English Literature, Auburn University, 2017

Bio

Hannah (they/them) is a scholar of Black and African American literature and film of the 20th and 21st centuries with a scholarly focus on Black LGBTQ film, literature, and archives.

Publications:

• PEER REVIEWED JOURNALS
• • As Hannah Skjellum. “ ‘Can’t be no worse out here’: Radical queer Black ecologies in Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight,” Black Camera, vol. 14, no. 1, 2022, pp. 284–306, doi:10.2979/blackcamera.14.1.16.
• BOOK REVIEWS
  • As Hannah Skjellum. “Alien Stories: A Review.” The Carolina Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 2, Wntr 2022, pp. 104-106.
• ONLINE
  • “ ‘A long time coming’: Inheritance director Annalise Lockhart talks new Afrofuturist film,” Outtake Magazine, http://outtakemag.co.uk/interviews/2021/07/19/annalise-lockhart-inheritance-afrofuturism/, July 2021
  • “Inheritance review – surreal Afrofuturist interrogation of America’s living ghosts,” Outtake Magazine, http://outtakemag.co.uk/reviews/2021/07/09/inheritance-afrofuturist-short/, July 2021
  • “Mandabi: a post-colonial critique and its present-day relevance,” Outtake Magazine, http://outtakemag.co.uk/features/2021/06/11/mandabi-colonialism-critique-senegal/, June 2021

Awards

• Early Stages Departmental Dissertation Fellowship, UNC-Chapel Hill Department of English and Comparative Literature, Summer 2021, $5,000

Degrees

2013, BA English, Hendrix College

2016, MA Social Sciences, University of Chicago

Bio

My work centers on questions of subjectivity, agency, and desire in twentieth-century American literature and global cinema. Most recently, I have become interested in the relationship between debt and desire as dual economic and psychological forces that structure contemporary experience. Living and teaching abroad (most recently, Brazil) has shaped my approach to literature and film and has enabled me to explore transatlantic cultural and aesthetic influences on literary and cinematic forms.

Publications:

• “Pilar’s Turn Inward: Storytelling in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls,” Teaching Hemingway and War, Kent State University Press, 2015.

Awards

• Fulbright English Teaching Fellowship, Brazil, 2014
• FLAS Fellowship, Brazil, 2018

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2014, BA English, University of Oregon

Bio

I study late medieval English and Italian literature, focusing primarily on the works of Dante and Chaucer. I’m also especially interested in folk music, vernacular and vulgar literary traditions, and religion.