Degrees

2019, BA English Literature, University of Central Florida

Bio

Teaching Awards

Fall 2021 Latina/o Studies Graduate Teaching Affiliate Fellowship

Degrees

2008, BA English, James Madison University

2020, MA English, James Madison University

Bio

I am a doctoral candidate and teaching fellow in the Department of English & Comparative Literature at UNC. I am currently at work on my dissertation, tentatively titled “No Judgment: The Aesthetics of Neutrality in the Postwar American Novel,” which examines the productive tension that arises between neutral narrators and snobby characters in the decades immediately following the Second World War. More broadly, my research concerns expressions of taste and aesthetic judgment in American literature and film as they relate to discourses on race, gender, sexuality, and class. I also work on topics, including climate change and posthumanist aesthetics, related to the environmental humanities, and have taught courses on contemporary literature, film, and composition.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2019, BA English and History, University of South Carolina Honors College

Bio

Rose Steptoe is a Ph.D. candidate and teaching fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research examines the proliferation and aesthetics of body horror in contemporary feminist cinema. More broadly, her interests include genre and horror studies, feminist film theory, age and disability studies, and sound studies. She is also interested in the scholarly and pedagogical value of videographic composition. Read more at www.rosesteptoe.com.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2020, BA English, Georgia State University

Bio

Ariannah Kubli is a third-year PhD student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC Chapel Hill, where she specializes in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature. Her scholarly interests include American literary realism and naturalism; Marxist theory; intellectual history; critical pedagogy; and the public humanities. Her current work explores the interplay between fiction, labor movements, and radical politics in the United States from 1870-1920. She’s particularly attentive to the ways literature encouraged and informed agitation for more equitable economic, political, and social systems, and the ways inequitable systems in turn inflected the period’s literary output.

Awards

• Arlene Feiner Memorial Research Grant for Women’s Studies, Working Men’s Institute, 2022
• Maynard Adams Fellowship for the Public Humanities, Carolina Public Humanities, 2021
• James E. Routh Outstanding English Major Award, Georgia State University, 2020

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.

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

2017, MSt English 650-1550, University of Oxford

2014, BA English and Medieval/Early Modern Studies, University of California, Davis

Bio

Jillian is a PhD student and teaching fellow in the department of English and Comparative Literature. She is a medievalist with a focus on the post-conquest period ca.1100-1300 whose previous research projects have centered on the lais of Marie de France and other vernacular texts. Additionally, she is interested in exploring the post-medieval transmission of medieval texts and medievalisms in contemporary genre fiction. Her research approaches include digital corpus linguistics, mapping and visualization, feminist and gender theory, cultural studies, and queer theory.

Jillian’s current research explores Celticity and genealogies of white aristocratic hybridity in medieval romance, as well as in modern genre fiction that uses the medieval setting.

In addition to research, she is passionate about teaching, pedagogy, and providing student support.

Awards

• Joseph Breen Award for Outstanding Work in the Field of Medieval Studies, 2021.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2012, BA English, Saint Michael’s College

2018, MA English, University of Colorado at Boulder

Bio

Erica studies women’s literature from the Romantic era and the American Civil War with a focus on infrastructure, the history of the book, memory and trauma studies, and intellectual history.

Degrees

2011, BA English, University of Colorado at Boulder

2018, MA English, University of Colorado at Boulder

Bio

I am interested in questions which look at memory and nostalgia and the way in which shifts in technology, political borders and intellectual thought have changed literature’s relationship to both. I’m broadly interested in modernism, 20th century literature, immigrant literature, memory studies, materiality, gender and sexuality, Jewish studies, the interplay of image and language, and critical theory.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2015, MA English, Ohio University

2013, BA English and Religion, Denison University

Bio

Emily Sferra’s research considers depictions of adolescent women who fail to follow the expected trajectory of domestication and their relationships with other young women. She is a doctoral candidate and teaching fellow, and she is also completing a graduate certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies.

Publications:

•   “One of her delusions”: Maternity, Selfhood, and Voice in Mr. Rochester. Victorians Institute Journal 17 December 2021; 48 (1): 43–64. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/victinstj.48.2021.0043

• “Portsmouth, Eveline.” The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women’s Writing. Edited by Lesa Scholl. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02721-6_325-1.

Teaching Awards

• Erika Lindemann Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition in English 105 (award Fall 2020)

Awards

• Early Stages Departmental Dissertation Fellowship, UNC Department of English and Comparative Literature (awarded Spring 2022)
• Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia (BSUVA) Scholarship, Rare Book School (awarded January 2020)
• Travel Grant, UNC Department of English and Comparative Literature (awarded Fall 2019)
• Arts Everywhere Fellow for PlayMakers Repertory Company, UNC (awarded Fall 2020)
• Humanities for the Public Good Fellowship for PlayMakers Repertory Company, UNC (awarded Fall 2019)
• Humanities Professional Pathway Award, UNC (awarded Summer 2018)
• Outstanding Master’s Essay Award, Ohio University (awarded Spring 2016)
• Distinguished Leader Award, Denison University (awarded Spring 2013)
• A. Blair Knapp Award for Dedication to the Liberal Arts, Denison University (awarded Spring 2013)
• Vinton R. Shepard Memorial Scholarship, Denison University (awarded Fall 2012)
• Mary Carr Endowed Scholarship, Denison University (2009-2013)