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Maggie Miller

July 19, 2023

Degrees

2020, BA English, Dalton State College

2023, MA English, Georgia State University

Bio

Born and raised in Georgia, Maggie is a first-year and first-generation Ph.D. student in English literature. Her focus lies in prosody and the poetic imagination of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly in expressions of theological and philosophical ideas and aesthetics in the poetry of Milton, Donne, Spenser, Vaughan, Herbert, and others.

Apart from this focus, Maggie enjoys the work of Dostoevsky, O’Connor, Hardy, and many other thinkers in whose work the human condition unites or collides with Logos. Striving toward a career in teaching, Maggie introduces students to literature that helps them understand themselves in the same way it has helped her.


Publications:

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


Awards

  • Booker Fellowship, Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina, 2023-24.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Lindsay Ragle-Miller

August 16, 2022

Degrees

2009, BA English with Teacher’s Certification, Eastern Illinois University

2020, MA English, Wayne State University

Bio

Originally from central Illinois, Lindsay is a PhD student 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.  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.


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/


Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Rachel Rackham

August 3, 2022

Degrees

2021, MA English, Brigham Young University

2019, MA Library and Information Science, University of Iowa

2017, BA English, Brigham Young University

Bio

As a PhD student at UNC-Chapel Hill, Rachel studies British Victorian literature. Specifically, she is interested in ruins, material culture, and imperialism in the Victorian era, interests which were shaped by her studies in literary tourism and heritage in her MLIS degree. She plans to expand her studies in these topics by exploring print media and culture, industrialization, commodity culture, memory, and nostalgia in nineteenth-century Britain.


Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Everett Lang

September 20, 2021

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.


Timothy Gress

August 19, 2021

Degrees

2019, BA Philosophy and Religious Studies, Manhattan College

2021, MA English and American Literature, New York University

2021, MLIS Rare Books and Special Collections, Long Island University

Bio

Tim Gress is a PhD student and Graduate Teaching Fellow in the department of English & Comparative Literature. His research focuses primarily on the literary and cultural history of Britain during the 19th century, especially as it relates to the history of the book. Other interests include lesser-known woman writers of the late-Romantic and early-Victorian periods, the history and development of the novel in English, descriptive bibliography, and book collecting. Tim also works as a Graduate Assistant in the Rare Book Collection at Wilson Special Collections Library.


Publications:

  • A Collector’s Zeal: Treasures from the DeCoursey Fales Collection at Manhattan College. (Riverdale, New York: Manhattan College, 2020).

Awards

  • William T. Buice III Scholarship, Rare Book School, University of Virginia, 2020
  • Director’s Scholarship, Rare Book School, University of Virginia, 2019
  • Edward Branigan Scholars Grant for Research in the Humanities, Manhattan College, 2018

Isabel Grace Thomas Howard

August 5, 2021

Degrees

2020, BA English, Trinity College Dublin

Bio

Isabel (they/them) is a second-year PhD student at the University of North Carolina. Their research examines representations of embodiment and the soul in Middle English, Anglo-Norman, and Latin religious texts, considering how structures between the corporeal, physical self and the sensing, feeling, and immaterial self can be read alongside theories of queer embodiment, affect, and representations.

In this framework, Isabel is concerned with how language informs depictions of physical and metaphysical identity and how these identities are often unsettled and displaced through language. In their reading of queerness in medieval texts, Isabel desires to experiment with how we recognize and interpret ‘queerness’ not as a fixed phenomenon, but an amalgamation of acts, events, and performances in dialogue with identity-formation.

They are currently working on two projects: one entitled ‘I kan nat glose’: Queering Illegible Signification in Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale,’ which analyzes the infamous pear tree sex scene in Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale as a culmination of unintelligible semiotic exchanges of letters and of sexual organs, and the other, “Needle as Queer Instrument of Authorship in Chrétien de Troyes Yvain,” which considers the implications of the textile worker as auctor.


Awards

  • Joseph Breen Award, UNC Chapel Hill Department 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 Department of English & Comparative Literature, 2022
  • CARA Summer Scholarship, Medieval Academy of America, 2022
  • First Class Honours in English Studies, Trinity College Dublin, 2020

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Elisabeth McClanahan Harris

June 15, 2021
Photo of Elisabeth McClanahan

Degrees

2019, MA English, George Washington University

2012, BA Humanities, Columbia International University

Bio

Elisabeth studies 19th century American literature and medicine, focusing on how changing theories of mental illness and its treatment were encoded in congregate care institutions over the course of the century. Her research, which draws on a varied archive of patient memoirs, journalistic exposes, and fictional depictions of congregate care, investigates entanglements of race, gender, and disability in questions of mental healthcare.


Publications:

“Conversion and Countermemory: Jarena Lee, Maria Stewart, and the Spiritual Motherhood of Mary Magdalene.” Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and Theologies of the Afterlife: A Step Closer to Heaven, edited by Emily Hamilton-Honey and Jennifer McFarlane Harris, Routledge, 2021.


Awards

  • Robert Bain Award for scholarship in American Literature, UNC English Department, 2021
  • Southern Futures Graduate Award, 2020
  • McCandlish Endowment Fellowship, 2017-2019
  • PEO Continuing Education Grant, 2018

Jillian Kern

August 19, 2019
Photo of Jillian Kern

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

Erica Sabelawski

August 12, 2019
Photo of Erica Sabelawski

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.


Margaret Maurer

November 19, 2018

Degrees

2015, M.Phil. Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Cambridge University

2014, Pedagogy, Brooklyn College (non-degree)

2013, A.B. English Literature & Theater, Brown University

Bio

Margaret Maurer’s research focuses on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature and science, especially alchemy and chymistry. She explores the interaction between literature and science through manuscript and print culture, the material book, and book history.


Publications:


Teaching Awards

  • Student Undergraduate Teaching Award, UNC Chancellor’s Awards, Spring 2021
  • Erika Lindemann Award for Demonstrated Excellence in Teaching, UNC English and Comparative Literature Department, Spring 2020
  • Professional Development Award, UNC Writing Program, Fall 2018-Spring 2021

Awards

  • Allington Fellow, Science History Institute, 2022-2023
  • Dissertation Fellowship, Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, 2022-2023
  • Dean’s Fellowship, UNC Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Spring 2022
  • Off-Campus Dissertation Fellowship, UNC Graduate School, Fall 2021
  • Jerry Leath Mills Research Travel Grant, Studies in Philology, Spring 2020
  • Medieval and Early Modern Studies Research Grant, UNC MEMS, Spring 2020
  • Pre-Dissertation Exploration Award, UNC Center for Global Initiatives, Spring 2020
  • The Languages of Nature: Science, Literature, and the Imagination Travel Grant, Folger Shakespeare Library, September 2019
  • Ruth Rose Richardson Award for Outstanding Record in the First Year of Graduate Study, UNC Department of English and Comparative Literature, August 2018
  • A Folger Orientation to Research Methods and Agendas Travel Grant, Folger Shakespeare Library, May 2018
  • Incubator Award, UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries, 2018
  • Digital Rolls and Fragments Graduate Workshop, Beineike Library, November 2017
  • Medieval and Early Modern Studies Small Research Grant, UNC MEMS, 2017
  • Millie Helen Hicks Premium, Brown University, 2013