Degrees

2005, BA English, Psychology, Plan II Honors, University of Texas

2008, MA Humanities, University of Chicago

Bio

Although I came to UNC to study later-Victorian monster fiction, my obsessive Star Trek fandom redirected my research interests toward science fiction television seriality. As an educator, I likewise encourage my students to leverage their passions toward their academic work. I have taught several composition courses at UNC, including Writing Across the Disciplines, Writing in the Social Sciences, and Writing in the Humanities, in addition to designing and teaching sections of Literature & Cultural Diversity and Film & Culture. I’ve also been afforded the opportunity to TA for Matthew Taylor’s Literature, Medicine, and Culture and Gregory Flaxman’s Film Analysis classes. My auxiliary interests in social justice, music, and visual art also keep me busy with a number of UNC-affiliated and community-based groups and projects.

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Teaching Awards

Betts Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2021

Undergraduate Teaching Award (SUTASA), UNC-Chapel Hill, 2020

Erika Lindemann Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2018

Erika Lindemann Award for Excellence in Teaching Literature, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2015

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Awards

Frankel Departmental Dissertation Fellowship, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2021

UNC-King’s College London Global Partnership Grant, 2019

UNC-King’s College London Global Partnership Grant, 2017

Graduate and Professional Student Federation Travel Grant, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2015

George Hills Harper Summer Research Fellowship, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2013-2014

M.A.P.H. Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2007-2008

Phi Beta Kappa, University of Texas, 2005

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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 intersection with medical humanities, especially trauma studies. He is primarily interested in the ethical and political implications of depictions of trauma in literature and other media. In addition to his scholarly work, he also teaches sections of ENGL105, tutors for the athletic department, and currently serves as the Fiction Editor for The Carolina Quarterly. 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.

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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.

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Awards

• UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Program Professional Development Award Recipient, 2021
• 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
• UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Program Professional Development Award Recipient, 2020
• UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Program Professional Development Award Recipient, 2019
• 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

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

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, BA English, Bellarmine University

2017, BA Spanish, Bellarmine Univesity

Bio

Leslie Rowen studies 20th Century American literature with a focus on the literature of war. Her research concentrates on under-studied soldier writing, with a particular interest in race, gender expression, and trauma. By nature this work relies heavily on the archive, and occasionally extends into the field of medical humanities.

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Teaching Awards

• Professional Development Teaching Award, Department of English & Comparative Literature, Spring 2021, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Latina/o Studies Program Teaching Award, Fall 2020, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 

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Awards

• Center for the Study of the American South Summer Research Grant, Summer 2021, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• James Peacock REACH Fellowship, Center for Global Initiatives, Summer 2020, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

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. His research interests include the histories of religion and emotion, occult knowledge, and literary representations of the Devil. His 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. He has previously 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 current project interrogates the relationship between the reception of Calvinist doctrine and “horror” as an affect in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century tragedy, epic, and sermons.

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Publications:

Peer-Reviewed Articles

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

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

• 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

2017, M. A. Pennsylvania State University

Bio

I’m a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My research focuses primarily upon early modern literature and in particular, the intersections of poetics and performance, the fool figure, ballads and politics. My dissertation, “Changeling Humorists: The Speech Acts of the Early Modern English Fool,” traces the intellectual history of the fool figure through the seventeenth century. It explores how the fool democratizes an access to public voice and transfers a form of sovereignty to its audience. Currently, I am also editing Robert Armin’s Quips upon Questions for Digital Renaissance Editions.

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Publications:

• Robert Armin, Quips upon Questions, in Digital Renaissance Editions. University of Victoria.
• Review of Worthen, W. B. Shakespeare, Technicity and the Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2020. In Shakespeare Quarterly (forthcoming).
• Review of Henze, Catherine. Robert Armin and Shakespeare’s Performed Songs. New York: Routledge Press, 2017. In Renaissance Quarterly. 71 No. 4 (2018): 1554-1555.
• Review of  Marno, David. Death Be Not Proud: The Art of Holy Attention. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. In Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 18 No. 2 (2018): 175-177.

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Teaching Awards

• 2020 Latina/o Studies Teaching Award, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Awards

External 

• 2020       UCLA Clark Library/Center for Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century Studies Predoctoral Fellowship
• 2019       Conference Bursary, British Shakespeare Association
• 2018       Jerry Leath Mills Research Travel Fellowship, Studies in Philology
• 2018       Conference Bursary, British Shakespeare Association
• 2018       NEMLA Graduate Student Travel Grant

Internal

• 2021       Howell-Voitle Award for Dissertation in Early Modern English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 2021       Department of English and Comparative Literature Summer Dissertation Fellowship,  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 2021       Medieval and Early Modern Summer Research Fellowship, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 2020       Eliason Dissertation Research Fellowship, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 2020       Medieval and Early Modern Society Travel Grant, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 2019       The Graduate and Professional Student Federation Travel Grant, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 2018       Travel Grant, Graduate School of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 2017       Wilma Ebbitt Fellowship in Rhetoric, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2014, BA English & Psychology, Wesleyan University

Bio

Rachel Warner is a PhD candidate and teaching fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Her research interests include twentieth-century American literature, women’s and gender studies, queer of color critique, and animal studies. She has completed two peer-reviewed publications: one explores Black feminist theories of embodiment and nature in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, forthcoming from Society & Animals; and the other offers an archival analysis of Zora Neale Hurston’s brief tenure at UNC and NCCU, published by North Carolina Literary Review in May 2020. Rachel also co-directs the graduate working group Literature, Medicine and Culture Colloquium (LMCC) which explores topics in health humanities. Finally, Rachel regularly teaches courses in rhetoric and composition, LGBTQIA+ literature and culture, and the history of horror literature and cinema. She is currently working on her dissertation, a literary and cultural history of female masculinity in American modernism.

 

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Publications:

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Awards

Eliason Dissertation Summer Research Fellowship, 2020

MLA COVID-19 Emergency Grant, Modern Language Association, 2020

Graduate Student Travel Fund, ECL Department, 2020

Paul Green Prize, North Carolina Literary Review, 2019

Student Learning Circle Grant, UNC Center for Global Initiatives, 2019

Winchester Fellowship, Wesleyan University, 2018

Deborah W. Shelton Endowment for Graduate Travel Awards, ECL Department, 2018

Winchester Fellowship, Wesleyan University, 2017

Albrecht B. Strauss SAMLA Awards Fund, 2016

Graduate Student Travel Fund, ECL Department, 2016

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