Degrees

2024, Honors BA English Literature and Philosophy, Marquette University

Bio

Margarita Buitrago is a PhD student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She focuses on Anglo-French-Iberian medieval literature and is especially interested in allegories and travel literature. Her research explores how the role of vernacular texts, history, translation, and visual culture shaped medieval transnational identities. 

In addition to medieval studies, Margarita is also interested in pedagogy, the digital humanities, and the history of the book. Currently, she works in writing center research and as an editorial assistant at the William Blake Archive. 

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Publications:

(co-author) Eugenia Afinoguénova and Margarita Buitrago, “Child Refugees and the Transnational Iconographies of a Better Future During the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939.” (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming 2025).

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Awards

• Doctoral Merit Fellowship, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (2024)
• Outstanding English Major Award, Marquette University Department of English (2024)
• Undergraduate Research Assistantship, Marquette University (2024)
• Honors Research Fellowship Award for Summer 2023, Marquette University Honors Program (2023)

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Degrees

2020, BA English, Dalton State College

2023, MA English, Georgia State University

Bio

Maggie is a second-year Ph.D student in English literature. Her interests lie in prosody, historical theology and philosophy, and the moral imagination of Early Modern English poets both Protestant and Catholic, namely Milton, Donne, Crashaw, Herbert, Southwell, and others.

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Publications:

“‘Not a Chaos’: The Intentionality of Music in the Gothic Novel and Film,” SAMLA News 41 (2020): 9-13.

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Awards

• Julius Sylvester Hanner Memorial Fund, The University of North Carolina, Summer 2024
• Jerry Leath Mills Research Travel Grant, Studies in Philology, Summer 2024
• Travel Grant, Department of English and Comparative Literature, The University of North Carolina, 2024
• Booker Fellowship, The University of North Carolina, Aug 2023 – May 2024
• Undergraduate Student Essay Award, SAMLA ’91 Conference, 2019

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2021, BA English, University of Virginia

Bio

Emma Bradford is a PhD student specializing in early modern literature. Her research focuses on defenses of theater and negotiations of identity in medieval and early modern drama, with special attention paid to Ben Jonson’s and Shakespeare’s later works. She is particularly interested in playwrights who practiced self-advocacy by comparing their talents to those of aristocrats, body workers, and inventors.

 

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Awards

Mellon Fellowship, Department of English & Comparative Literature, UNC Chapel Hill, Aug. 2023 – May 2029 Folger Institute Grant-in-aid, Research Course, Folger Shakespeare Library, Aug. 2024

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

MA in Literature, Wayne State University, April 2020

BA in English, with Teacher’s Certification, Minor: Medieval Studies, Eastern Illinois University, cum laude, with University Honors, May 2009

Bio

Originally from central Illinois, Lindsay is a PhD candidate and teaching fellow focusing on post-conquest (c. 1100-1300) medieval literature.  Previous research has focused on food in medieval literature, early modern broadside ballads, and perceptions of mental illness in medieval Europe.  Currently, Lindsay is working on sorrow as an affect in later medieval dream visions. Outside of medieval literature, Lindsay is also interested in teaching pedagogy and taught high school English and special education before returning to academia.  She has also worked extensively with a group of instructors at UNC who design coursework focusing on publication in the PIT Journal.

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Publications:

Miller, Lindsay, Sarah Chapman and Lynn Losh 2019. Going beyond Lear: Performance and Taming of the Shrew. Dividing the Kingdoms:Interdisciplinary Methods for Teaching King Lear to Undergraduates: Performance: Wayne State University. https://guides.lib.wayne.edu/folgerkinglear/performance

Ragle-Miller, Lindsay et. Al. The Warrior Women Project: Wayne State University. https://s.wayne.edu/warriorwomen/

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Teaching Awards

Erika Lindemann Teaching Award in Composition and Literature, 2024

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2022, MA English, Virginia Tech

2019, BA English, Virginia Commonwealth University

Bio

Kara Rush is a first-year Ph.D. student specializing in early modern literature. In particular, Rush is interested in how early modern English authors use  threatening nature and femininity to mediate anxieties concerning the preservation and contamination of English national identity. Other interests include adaptation studies and late medieval literature.

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Publications:

• “Nobility, Interrupted: The Queer Poetics of Vandana Kataria’s Noblemen.” Borrowers and Lenders. Forthcoming Fall 2024.

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Awards

• Caroline Pace Chermside Award for Best Master’s Thesis: Virginia Tech, 2022.
• Folger Shakespeare Library Grant-in aid, “An Orientation to Research Methods and Agendas,” taught by Marcy North, Claire M. L. Bourne, and Whitney Trettien, 2023.

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

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.

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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

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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

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Degrees

2022, BA English, University of Virginia

Bio

Lexi is a second-year PhD student interested in the transmission and reception of early Christian figures, texts, and theologies in the early modern period.

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Teaching Awards

• Krista Turner Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence, 2024

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Awards

• Hanes Graduate Fellowship at the Wilson Library, 2023
• Travel Award from the Department of English and Comparative Literature, UNC-CH, 2024
• Robert M. Kingdon Prize, Sixteenth Century Society, 2024

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2022, BA English, Meredith College

Bio

Krista Telford is a second-year PhD student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research examines forms of prayer in medieval and early modern literature as well as the impact of form on medieval depictions of the afterlife. She aims to take an interdisciplinary approach in her research, considering the performative aspect of many poems and prayers and drawing on musicological research. Krista’s recent and ongoing work includes a project exploring resistance to transcendence in the ending of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, which examines Chaucer’s reading of Boethius, and a paper exploring the polyphonic and dialogic nature of Francesco Suriano’s underexamined 15th century treatise on the Holy Land, Il trattato di Terra Santa e dell’Oriente.

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Awards

• Fall 2022-Present Graduate Teaching Fellow, UNC Chapel Hill, Department of English and Comparative Literature
• 2024 GPSG Travel Award, UNC Chapel Hill, Graduate and Professional Student Government
• 2024 AI. Curricular Excellence Award, UNC Chapel Hill, Department of English & Comparative Literature
• 2024 Breen Award for Outstanding Work in Medieval Studies, UNC Chapel Hill, Department of English & Comparative Literature
• 2024 Donald R. Howard Travel Scholarship, The New Chaucer Society
• 2024 LSP Teaching Fellowship, UNC Chapel Hill Latina/o Studies Program
• 2023 Travel Grant, UNC Chapel Hill, Department of English & Comparative Literature
• 2023 Ruth Rose Richardson Award for outstanding performance in the first year of graduate
  study, UNC Chapel Hill, Department of English & Comparative Literature

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2010, B.A. (Hons) Literae Humaniores, University of Oxford

2018, M.A. Ancient Greek and Latin, Boston College

Bio

Everett Lang studies Ancient Greek and Latin literature, primarily from the Roman Imperial period, and its later reception in Early Modern Britain and northern Europe.

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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.

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Publications:

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

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Teaching Awards

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

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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

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume