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.

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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

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Awards

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

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Degrees

2018, BA English & Computer Science, University of Virginia

Bio

The focus of my studies in the English Department is on video games and understanding how stories get told in this new, developing medium. I am particularly interested in questions of agency, empathy, and virtuality in video game narratives, and how these questions provide interesting and useful lenses outside of the video game medium. I also work on questions of legitimacy and pedagogy surrounding games, and how the physical space of gameplay is important to the inclusion of video games into the academic sphere.

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Awards

• 2019 Center for Faculty Excellence – Lenovo Instructional Innovation Grant

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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.

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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.

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Publications:

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• “‘No healthsome air breathes in’: Spiritual Poison in Romeo and Juliet,” Poison on the Early Modern Stage: Plants, Paints and Potions, edited by Lisa Hopkins and Bill Angus with Kibrina Davey (Manchester University Press, 2023).

Media & Impact

• “Possets, Drugs, and Milky Effects: A Look at Recipes, Shakespeare’s Plays, and Other Historical References,” Shakespeare and Beyond, February 2020.
• “How to Name Medieval Plants,” The Chapel Hill Rare Book Blog, January 2020.
• “Displaying the Body,” The Chapel Hill Rare Book Blog, November 2019.
• “Recognizing Evil: The Devil and His Horns,” The Chapel Hill Rare Book Blog, October 2019.
• “‘The Blood is the Life’: Dracula and 19th-Century Transfusions,” The Chapel Hill Rare Book Blog, September 2019.

Curatorial Work

• Narratives of Queer Identity, The Lewis Round Library Special Collections, Chapel Hill, NC, Cocurator, Online.

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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

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2018, BA English, University of Tulsa

Bio

I am a Ph.D. student studying the overlap of friendship, loyalty, and virtue in Late Medieval Romance.

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

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.

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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

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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.

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Teaching Awards

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

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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

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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.

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Teaching Awards

• Erika Lindemann Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition, 2022

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Awards

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

• Balch Prize for a Masters Student in English, 2017

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume