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Holly Thompson

August 19, 2024

Degrees

2022, BA English, Belmont University

2024, MA English, Wake Forest University

Bio

Holly (she/her/hers) is a Ph.D. student and Teaching Fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, with a focus in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy. Her primary interests are in disability studies, the rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM), health humanities, and composition pedagogy.

Recently, Holly’s research has focused on the discursive construction of psychiatric diagnoses and neurodivergent identities. Her first refereed article, forthcoming in the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, investigates so-called “Aspergian” positionalities as ideal products of the technocapitalist dystopia in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy.

In composition studies, Holly focuses on writing transfer, writing in the disciplines (WID), and writing about writing (WAW). She has a particular interest in the interpersonal dynamics of writing instructors and students, with a focus on the impact of these dynamics on student perceptions of competence and confidence in writing tasks. Through her work as a Writing Center tutor in her Master’s program, Holly developed specialties in working with students who self-identified as neurodivergent and/or learning disabled. As a Teaching Fellow, Holly strives to use those pedagogical strategies to create learning opportunities that are accessible and equitable for a diverse population of students.


Publications:

  • Thompson, Holly. “‘Demi-autistic, genetically speaking’: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and the ‘Aspergian’ Loop.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. In press.

Awards

  • Erika Lindemann Fellowship, 2025
  • Gordon A. Melson Outstanding Master’s Student Award, Wake Forest University, 2024
  • Richter Scholarship Travel Fund, Wake Forest University, 2023
  • James and Sarah King Writing Award, Belmont University, 2022

Yang Yang

July 29, 2024

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.


Faith Rush

July 22, 2024

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).

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 focuses on the production and circulation of narrative, ideology, and meaning through the digital technologies and platforms that facilitate (and condition) communication today. He is particularly interested in how specific “genres” of online content cluster together and provide important sites of agency wherein individuals and communities both re-envision and reproduce culture.


Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Xochi-María Ramos-Lara

July 20, 2023

Degrees

2023, B.A. Gender Studies / English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

 

Bio

xochi-maría ramos-lara (she/they) is a doctoral student in english and comparative literature. her main research interest focuses on the (lacanian) subjectivity of gay latinx poets as they wrote during the american aids epidemic of the 80s and 90s, taking into account the presence of the hiv virus itself as an important character. besides this, x. is interested in non-white marxist critiques of the state, hegemonic ideologies, and culture; anti-white violent resistance via brown power (ex. the palestinian intifadas); queer performances of subversion in the american drag and ballroom scenes; and the power dynamics of bareback subculture in gay pornography.

outside of the academy, x. loves writing poetry, collective education on critical ethnic studies, participating in local political action, and going to gay clubs as a form of praxis.


Publications:

  • “i planted some lavender in my front yard saturday morning,” SAGE, 2024.
  • “afuera,” Screen Door Review, 2023.
  • “white mother,” Carolina Muse: Literary & Arts Magazine, 2023.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Joshua Cody Ward

September 8, 2022

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 will engage with Articulations of Appalachia, both scholarly and literary, centering on the political and aesthetic stakes of defining the Southern Appalachian range across the 20th century into the contemporary.

He is currently a Digital Content Coordinator for the Latina/o Studies Program, a Junior Coordinator for the Critical Speakers Series, a Graduate Lecture Series coordinator, and a Board Member (2023-2026) for the Thomas Wolfe Society. He is also on the committee for the 2024 Durham, NC conference for the Thomas Wolfe Society, and 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.
  • “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 27th 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 23rd 2023, 44th Annual SWPACA Conference.
  • 2021 Graduate Student Essay Award Recipient, November 12th 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 29th 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 24th 2016, Wingate University, Religious Studies Department.
  • G. Byrns Coleman Award for Excellence in Religious Studies, April 24th 2016, Wingate University, Religious Studies Department.
  • University Honors, April 24th, 2016, Wingate University.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Andreley Bjelland

August 15, 2022

Degrees

2020, MA English, Texas Christian University

2019, BA English, Texas Christian University

Bio

Andreley Bjelland is a PhD candidate and teaching fellow. Her research interests include crime, gender, and religion in the early modern period. Her dissertation explores representations of children and crime in early modern English literature, drama, pamphlets, and ballads.


Teaching Awards

  • PIT Journal and Conference Curricular Innovation Award, UNC Department of English and Comparative Literature, 2024
  • Erika Lindemann Award for Demonstrated Excellence in Teaching, UNC Department of English and Comparative Literature, 2023

Awards

  • Off-Campus Dissertation Research Fellowship, UNC Graduate School, 2024
  • Medieval and Early Modern Studies Small Research Grant, UNC MEMS, 2023
  • Druscilla French Graduate Student Excellence Award, UNC Graduate School, 2021

Izzy G. T. Howard

August 5, 2021

Degrees

2020, BA English, Trinity College Dublin

Bio

Izzy (they/them) is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. They study the relationship between the soul and body in medieval literary, aesthetic, and dramatic representations of Creation. Their dissertation, Made A Living Soul: Genesis and the Creation of the Soul in Medieval Devotional and Mystic Literature examines ideas of the soul as developed in early medieval Scholastic exegesis, and how these understandings of the soul are complicated and affirmed in medieval devotional and mystic texts.

In their research on the medieval soul and body, Izzy examines the language used to structure the corporeal, physical self and the sensing, feeling, and cognative self alongside theories of queer embodiment, affect, and representations.

Their broader interests include manuscript studies, medieval philosophy and theology, poetics, and literary criticism.


Publications:

With H.M. Cushman “Bodies on Display” in A Cultural History of Trans Lives in the Middle Ages (300-1445). Bloomsbury. Forthcoming.


Teaching Awards

Latina/o Studies Teaching Fellowship, UNC Latina/o Studies Program, 2022


Awards

Donald Howard Travel Scholarship, New Chaucer Society, 2024

Trans Travel Fund, Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, 2023

CARA Summer Scholarship, Medieval Academy of America, 2022

Internal:   

Graduate Student Excellence Award, UNC Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2024

Joseph Breen Award, UNC-Chapel Hill Dept. of English & Comparative Literature, 2023

Research Grant, UNC-Chapel Hill Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2023

Travel Award, UNC-Chapel Hill Graduate and Professional Student Government, 2023

Travel Grant, UNC-Chapel Hill Dept. of English & Comparative Literature, 2022, 2024

First Class Honours in English Studies, Trinity College Dublin, 2020


Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Colin Dekeersgieter

September 25, 2019

Degrees

2012, B.A. English, University of Vermont

2014, M.A. Modern Literature, CUNY, Graduate Center

2017, M.F.A. Creative Writing, Poetry, New York University

 

Bio

Colin Dekeersgieter studies modern poetry, poetics, and aesthetics with a focus on domesticity. His work has appeared in the North American Review, Greensboro Review, Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere.


Publications:

  • Opium and Ambergris (Kent State University Press, forthcoming 2024)

Awards

  • Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Marilyn Chin
  • Goldwater Fellowship, New York University
  • Global Research Initiative Fellowship, New York University

Paul Blom

May 6, 2019

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 intersections with the health humanities, especially literary trauma studies. He is primarily interested in the ethical and political implications of depictions of trauma in literature and other media, especially acts of violence and atrocity for both perpetrators and survivors. In addition to his scholarly work, he also teaches sections of ENGL 105 and ENGL 105i: Writing in Health and Medicine, has tutored for the athletic department, has served for several years as the Fiction Editor for The Carolina Quarterly, and currently serves as the Co-Director for UNC’s Literature, Medicine, and Culture Colloquium (LMCC), https://lmcc.web.unc.edu/. 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:


Teaching Awards


Awards


Curriculum Vitae / Resume