2016, BS, Princeton University
2020, MA, Duke University
My research deals with the aesthetics of self-disclosure, especially in its relationship to political crisis, and for the questions of affect, queerness, and repair.
2022, MA English, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
2016, BA Religious Studies, Wingate University
A North Carolina native, Joshua Cody Ward joined the program in Fall 2022. His field is Modern and Contemporary American literature broadly (1900-Present), specifically Literature of the American South and African American Literature. His research interests include the archive, textual studies, editorial scholarship, intertextuality, and the Novel.
African American Literature | American Literature from 1789 to 1900 | American Literature to 1900 to the present | Contemporary American Literature | Creative Writing | Genre Theory | Latina / Latino Literature | Literature and Philosophy | Modernism | Poetry and Poetics | Posthumanism | Science Fiction | Southern Literature | The Novel
2021, BA Liberal Arts, Sarah Lawrence College
First-year Ph.D. student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies late nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, focusing on Southern literature and religion.
2022, BA English, Meredith College
Krista Telford is PhD student in the English and Comparative Literature department at UNC Chapel Hill with a focus on medieval literature. She is interested in antifeminist representations of tropes and myths in medieval literature, the authors that lived and wrote contrary to such representations, and the ways Christian and pagan theology interact with portrayals of women in medieval literature. Krista received her BA in English from a historically women’s college and credits her unique undergraduate experience with sparking her interest in early women’s writing and feminist theory.
2018, MA English, Georgetown University
2016, BA English, Sewanee: The University of the South
I am a first-year PhD candidate and TA in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC Chapel Hill. Prior to entering the program, I earned my MA in English from Georgetown (2018), and my BA in English from Sewanee: The University of the South (2016). From 2017 to 2019, I pursued a long-term archival research project at Yale University, supported by grants from The Cosmos Club Foundation and Georgetown University. My current research interests include 19th century American literature; literature of the sea; ecocriticism; literary theory; and philosophy.
2020, BA English, Trinity College Dublin
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.
Aesthetics | British Literature from 1485 to 1660 (including Milton) | British Literature from its beginning to 1485 | Comparative Literature | Creative Writing | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Digital Humanities | Early Modern Literature And Culture | History of the Book | Literature and Philosophy | Literature and Religion | Narrative Theory | Performance Studies | Philosophy Of Language | Poetry and Poetics | Queer Theory | The English Language
2016, BA English, Princeton University
Nathan possesses a strong interest in late 20th and 21st century American literature, with a particular focus on contemporary works with magical realist and “hysterical realist” elements. This interest has led him in the direction of postsecular theory and the philosophy of language.
American Literature to 1900 to the present | British Literature from 1900 to the Present | Contemporary American Literature | Contemporary Multiethnic American Literature | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Digital Humanities | Literature and History | Literature and Philosophy | Literature and Religion | Post-Colonial Literature and Theory | Science Fiction | The Novel
2018, AA Liberal Arts, Northern Virginia Community College
2020, BA English/History, Mary Baldwin University
Toni DiNardo is a third year PhD student in the department of English and Comparative literature. A “medievalismist,” in the words of one colleague,” Toni’s work is predominantly concerned with the reception of medieval thought and perceptions of the Middle Ages as they have been mediated in modern genre fantasy. In particular, they explore the ways in which various audiences attempt to recuperate the Middle Ages through fantasy in order to construct and sustain identities, from queer rehabilitation of the medieval to white nationalist idealization of the Middle Ages as a putative ethno-nationalist paradise. They are also interested in the subjective experience – particularly among queer players – of the tabletop fantasy role-playing game. Other interests include the role of sexuality in Jacobean historiography, the queerness of faith in Donne’s ouevre, and anything to do with Margery Kempe.
British Literature from 1485 to 1660 (including Milton) | Children’s Literature | Critical Race Studies | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Disability Studies | Early Modern Literature And Culture | Feminist Historiography | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Film and Media Studies | Genre Theory | Literature and History | Literature and Philosophy | Literature and Religion | Post-Colonial Literature and Theory | Posthumanism | Queer Theory | Science Fiction | Social Justice | Women Writers
2020, BA English, Georgia State University
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.
African American Literature | American Literature from 1789 to 1900 | Asian American Literature | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Genre Theory | Literature and History | Literature and Philosophy | Pedagogy | The Novel | Women Writers
2018, MA English, Wake Forest University
2016, BA English, Drexel University
Krysten Voelkner is a PhD candidate in the department of English and Comparative Literature. Her primary interests reside at the intersection of environmental humanities and contemporary Latinx literature. Recent publications of hers can be found in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, and Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures. She is currently at work on her dissertation, which investigates the ways in which Latinx writers experiment with aesthetics of horror, dread, anxiety, and other ‘bad’ affects associated with the climate crisis. In this regard, she hopes to explore the affective ecologies of Latinx environmental literature and film as they offer ways of thinking within and beyond the Anthropocene.
American Literature to 1900 to the present | Comparative Literature | Contemporary American Literature | Contemporary Multiethnic American Literature | Critical Race Studies | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Latina / Latino Literature | Literature and Philosophy | Literature and Science | Literature of the Americas | Post-Colonial Literature and Theory | Posthumanism | The Novel | Transatlantic Studies
