Degrees

2014, BA English & Psychology, Wesleyan University

Bio

Rachel Warner is a doctoral student in English and Teaching Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work lies at the intersection of queer and transgender studies, poststructuralist feminist theorizing, and American culture studies. She is particularly interested in representations of non-normative gendered embodiments and transgressive sexualities in 20^th century multiethnic American literature. In May of 2017, Rachel received the Winchester Fellowship from her alma mater to prepare for comprehensive exams and conduct preliminary research for her prospectus. She has also worked in the emerging field of health humanities by helping convene the 2016 Health Humanities Exchange conference at UNC-CH and serving as director of the of Literature, Medicine, and Culture Colloquium for the 2016-2017 academic year.

 

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Degrees

MA English, York University

BA English (Honors), University of Alberta

BA Music, University of Alberta

Bio

Christina Lee is a PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation, tentatively titled “Towards a Language of Therapoetics” constructs a language of therapeutic recovery from trauma through investigations of the late nineteenth-century writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson.

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Degrees

BA English, The Ohio State University

MTS Theology and Ethics, The Methodist Theological School in Ohio

Bio

While working on my masters at the Methodist Theological Shool in Ohio, I studied the role of narrative (especially autobiography) in religious ethics. My primary focus was on stories of marginalization; however, I became acutely aware of the theme of finitude in many personal narratives. When I came to UNC, I knew I wanted to explore these themes from a new angle. Rather than focusing on religious narratives, I investigate how people tell stories about health and the role of religion in medicine for patients, providers, and healthcare systems.

At UNC, I have studied the significance of chapels (particularly “interfaith” or psychospiritual spaces) within hospitals. Also, I was the Study Coordinator for the Writing Diabetes Study, and I have written (with my collaborators) about the impact of writing as an intervention for people with chronic illness. Finally, my dissertation investigates the rhetorical history of neonatal medicine in order to reveal the influence of antecedent religious rhetoric on the development of this subfield and to demonstrate the convergence of religion and science in contemporary accounts of premature infants.

I conceive of my research as appealing to three audiences: 1) scholars of rhetoric, 2) scholars of religion, and 3) scholars and practitioners of medicine. Thus, my research falls within the broad scope of the Medical/Health Humanities. Finally, I am exploring an interdisciplinary [or transdisciplinary] approach to rhetorical research that enacts my commitment to feminist, intersectional values.

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Publications:

• Edwell, Jennifer, Singer, Sarah, and Jordynn Jack. “Healing Arts: Rhetorical Techne as Medical (Humanities) Intervention.” Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, special issue of Technical Communication Quarterly. 27(1): 1-14. 2018.
• Edwell, Jennifer. “Medical Interiors: Materiality and Spatiality in Medical Rhetoric.” Methodologies in Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, edited by Lisa Meloncon and Blake Scott. (New York: Routledge, 2018).
• Singer, Sarah, Weed, Kym, Edwell, Jennifer, Jack, Jordynn, and Jane Thrailkill. “Advancing Pre-Health Humanities as Intensive Research Practice: Principles and Recommendations from a Cross-Disciplinary Baccalaureate Setting.” Journal of Medical Humanities, special issue on “Pre-Health Humanities Education.” First online June 2017.
• Edwell, Jennifer, and Jordynn Jack. “Gestational Diabetes Testing, Narrative, and Medical Distrust.” Bioethical Inquiry, symposium on “Public Trust in Expert Knowledge” edited by Silvia Camporesi, Mark Davis, and Maria Vaccarella. December 2016.

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Degrees

2011, B.A. Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Cornell University

2012, M.A. History, Carnegie Mellon University

Bio

Mark Collins is a PhD student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He works in the fields of contemporary American and multi-ethnic literature and women’s and gender studies. His academic interests include: feminist theory, science and technology studies, critical race theory, and cultural studies. Mark is currently working on his dissertation project, called “Nuclear Reproduction: Race, Gender, and Reproductive Control in US Cold War Speculative Fiction,” which explores the relationship between the discourses of nuclear warfare and reproduction in literary and cultural texts from the decades spanning the Cold War period.

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2012, BA English (Honors), The George Washington University

Bio

I am a PhD candidate in English who specializes in nineteenth-century American literature and poetry and poetics. I am currently completing a dissertation entitled “American Contentment (and Its Discontents),” which stages a claim for the recuperation of contentment within literary studies through an engagement with American literature from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

 

At UNC, I have taught introductory composition courses and TA’d for Professor Thrailkill’s Literature, Medicine, and Culture course.

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Publications:

• “ ‘There Is No Miracle More Cruel Than This’: Read, Relaxation, and Maternal Agency   in Plath’s Three Women” (Literature and Medicine 36.1: 2018)

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Teaching Awards

• Hartsell Award for excellence in teaching first year composition, 2015

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Awards

• Mellon Graduate Five-Year Fellowship, 2013—2018
• Robert Bain Award for outstanding achievement in nineteenth-century American literature, 2015
• Graduate School Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2018-2019

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2014, BA English, Colgate University

Bio

Carlie Wetzel studies British literature from the long nineteenth century, focusing on elegiac poetry.

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Publications:

• Age and Mourning: Complicating Grief with John Clare’s Gravesite Poetry. (The Gravestone Project: Grave Notes, Issue 1, Winter 2016-17).
• Beauty after Death: Heaven as Consolation in Beebe Eyre’s Miscellaneous Poems. (Literature and Belief, Forthcoming, Spring 2018).
• Critical summary of The Life and Extraordinary Adventures, the Perils and Critical Escapes of Timothy Ginnadrake. (The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660-1820, Forthcoming, Fall 2018).

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Teaching Awards

• C. S. Herschel Award for Course Design, English 105i: Business Composition and Rhetoric, Fall 2019
• Professional Development Award, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Fall 2018

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2011, BA English, Colby College

Bio

Michael J. Clark is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill who specializes in Renaissance drama. In his dissertation, Michael examines how trust and distrust between patients and physicians are depicted in Italian, English, and French Renaissance comedy.

As a comparatist, Michael has studied Italian, Spanish, ancient Greek, Latin, Old English, and Irish, but his primary literatures are English and Italian. His research interests include Renaissance literature, the history of medicine, classical reception, performance studies, translation studies, and pedagogy.

At UNC, Michael’s teaching experience has been cross-disciplinary and has included Italian language courses, first-year composition courses, and introductory literature courses. In addition to these teaching responsibilities, Michael has served as a coach at the UNC Writing Center.

When not teaching, writing, or conducting research, Michael likes to travel and to sing.

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Teaching Awards

• Literature Teaching Award, 2016
• Foreign Language Teaching Award, 2016
• Engaged Instructor Award, 2015

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Awards

• Future Faculty Fellowship Program, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2017

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