Degrees

2022, MA English, Saint Louis University

Bio

Simone (they/them/theirs) is a Ph.D. student and Teaching Fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Their focus on multimodal rhetorics seeks to expose the persuasive ontologies of surveillance capitalism, particularly regarding scientific experimentation at public housing sites, speculative fiction, and visual media. Their research broadly articulates the relationship of aesthetics, rhetoric, and politics vis-a-vis the surveillance assemblage, towards the effort of assisting artists, activists, and scholars with building community power.

You can read their writing in Contemporary Music Review, Belt Magazine, The Midwest Arts Quarterly, and forthcoming in Rhetoric Society Quarterly.

---

Awards

Erika Lindemann Fellowship, (2024)

Graduate Diversity Fellowship, (2020)

Washington University American Culture Studies Research Grant (2024)

Washington University English Department Research Grant (2024)

Washington university Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity Research Grant (2024)

Washington University Center for the Humanities Research Grant (2024)

Saint Louis University English Department Research Grant (2024)

Saint Louis University Compass Lab Research Grant (2021 and 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

---

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

Degrees

2019, B.A. English, Clemson University

2023, M.A. English, Wake Forest University

Bio

Jenny is a Ph.D. student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill. Her scholarship focuses on the rhetoric of health and medicine and bodily rhetoric. She is particularly interested in the language surrounding the treatment of mental and physical health disorders affecting women and the related ways in which women use writing to assert autonomy in literary and popular culture contexts.

Jenny worked as a writing tutor for many years while completing her undergraduate and master’s degrees in English, and now she enjoys helping college students hone their reading and writing skills as an English 105 teaching fellow.

---

Awards

• Erika Lindemann Ph.D. Fellowship in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies, 2024
• Graduate Assistant of the Year Award, Wake Forest University Writing Center, 2023

---

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

BA English, Andrews University

MA English, University of Oklahoma

 

Bio

I am currently interested in video game studies, digital rhetoric, and digitial composition pedagogy. My previous work looked at the horror video game Amnesia: The Dark Descent and its uses of virtual spaces to generate affects of fear and anxiety. Currently, I’m interested in studying competitive e-sports titles such as League of Legends and Starcraft II to understand how their fast-paced forms of gameplay require and generate new forms of literacies.

---

Publications:

Lee, Charles (2021), ‘Running scared: Fear and Space in Amnesia: The Dark
Descent’, Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 13:1, pp. 93–112.

---

Degrees

2018, BA English & Computer Science, University of Virginia

Bio

DA Hall is an English & Comparative Literature PhD Candidate and Assistant Director of the Critical Game Studies Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Their dissertation centers questions of historical development of genre, queer narrative temporalities, and radical community meaning-making within a genealogy of Japanese video games. DA Hall has written and presented extensively on FromSoftware’s Soulsborne series, and is currently co-organizing a volume that explores Japanese video game perspectives on Western worlding as aesthetic navigations of the contested cultural situation of Japan in the wake of World War II. As Assistant Director of the Critical Game Studies Program, they have worked to build the Greenlaw Gameroom, a game-focused classroom which centers accessibility and critical pedagogy, as well as the proposed Critical Game Studies Minor within the English & Comparative Literature department.

---

Publications:

• Hall, DA, “A Beginner’s Guide to Painted Worlds: The Haunted Mansion, Dark Souls III, and the Playground of Interpretation,” Proceedings of Digital Games Research Association, 2024.
• Hall, DA, “The Fallen Leaves Tell a Story: Elden Ring and the Emergence of the Soulslike Genre,” New Formations of Game Genres, Approaches to Digital Game Studies, Bloomsbury Publishing, forthcoming.
• Hall, DA, and Jones, Nicholas, “A War Without End: Industrial Warfare and the Negation of Individual Agency in Edward Berger’s Im Westen nichts Neues” Screening War: Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front in Context, forthcoming.

---

Teaching Awards

• Guest Instructor Award, 2023 – Department of American Studies, UNC
• Critical Game Studies Award, 2021 – Department of English & Comparative Literature, UNC

---

Awards

• 2024 Institute for the Arts and Humanities – King’s College London Collaboration Grant
• 2022 National Endowment for the Humanities – Humanities Initiative Grant: “Integrating Storytelling & Critical Game Studies into the Curriculum.”
• 2019 Center for Faculty Excellence – Lenovo Instructional Innovation Grant

---

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

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:

• 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.
• See also https://pauleblom.com/research-and-other-works/publications/.

---

Teaching Awards

• Member of Peer Mentoring Committee (PMC) for graduate student instructors, UNC-Chapel Hill, Dept. of English and Comparative Literature, Writing Program, 2023 – 2024
• ENGL 105 Programmatic Assessment Professional Development Award recipient, UNC-Chapel Hill, Dept. of English and Comparative Literature, Writing Program, 2023
• UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Program Professional Development Award Recipient, 2021
• UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Program Professional Development Award Recipient, 2020
• UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Program Professional Development Award Recipient, 2019

---

Awards

• GPSG Travel Award recipient for travel to preside over a panel at MLA’s Annual Convention, 2023 in San Francisco, CA in Jan. 2023, Graduate and Professional Student Government (GPSG) at UNC-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 2023
• Departmental Travel Grant Award recipient for travel to preside over a panel at MLA’s Annual Convention, 2022 in Washington, DC in Jan. 2022, Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 2020
• 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
• 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

BA English, Clemson University

Bio

Matt Duncan is a second-year PhD student and teaching fellow at the UNC Chapel Hill. His research explores the unique role of digital tools in shaping the composition classroom, with an emphasis on a low-bridge approach to the application of technology in writing curriculum. He is also Co-Editor of Fiction for Carolina Quarterly and is a Carolina Digital Humanities Initiative Project Management Fellow.

---

Awards

• CDHI Project Management Fellowship
• CDHI Recruitment Fellowship
• Fred W. Shilstone Memorial Award
• Lucy K. Rollins Award

---

Curriculum Vitae / Resume