Degrees

2020, BA English/History, Mary Baldwin University

2018, AA Liberal Arts, Northern Virginia Community College

Bio

Toni DiNardo is a fourth year PhD student in the department of English and Comparative literature. Once described by a colleague as a “medievalismist,” her work is predominantly concerned with the mediation of medieval thought and constructions of the middle ages in modern genre fantasy. She is particularly interested in the use of what Umberto Eco called “the Middle Ages as pretext” as a backdrop for the construction and sustenance of socio-political identities, from bucolic queer medievalisms to white nationalist idealization of a putatively ethno-nationalist Middle Ages. Toni has given talks on the fraught intersection of fantasy and conceptions of “historical accuracy” and on the co-opting of popular fantasy franchises as recruiting tools by far-right groups, and in 2023 she held the Hanes Graduate Fellowship, studying the annotations and marginalia of C. S. Lewis’ personal collection of medieval and early modern texts.

Awards

• Hanes Graduate Fellowship, Rare Book Collection, Louis Round Wilson Library, 2023

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

2018, MA English, Wake Forest University

2016, BA English, Drexel University

Bio

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.

Publications:

• “Vectors and Vermin: Gendered Violence and the Role of Insects in the Arthropoetics of Natalie Scenters-Zapico.” Chiricú Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, 2022.
• “Another Way of Seeing: Ecological Existentialism in Cortázar’s ‘Axolotl’.” The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, vol. 36, no. 1, 2021.
• “Memory, Temporality, and Communal Realization: Reading the Nomadic Subject in Rivera’s ...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, 2020.

Teaching Awards

• UNC Latina/o Studies Program Teaching Award (UNC Latina/o Studies Department), Spring 2022
• Erika Lindemann Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition in English 105 (UNC Department of English), Fall 2021.
• UNC Latina/o Studies Program Teaching Award (Fall 2020)

Awards

• UNC Department of English and Comparative Literature Early Stages Dissertation Fellowship, Summer 2022
• Nominee: David D. Anderson Award for Outstanding Essay in Midwestern Literary Studies, 2021
• Ruth Rose Richardson Award for outstanding record in the first year of graduate study, (UNC Department of English), 2019-20
• H. Broadus Jones MA Student Award for Excellence in English (Wake Forest University Department of English), Spring 2018

Degrees

2012, B.A. English, University of Vermont

2014, M.A. Modern Literature, CUNY, Graduate Center

2017, M.F.A. Creative Writing, Poetry, New York University

Bio

Colin Dekeersgieter studies modern poetry, poetics, and aesthetics with a focus on domesticity. His work has appeared in the North American Review, Greensboro Review, Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere.

Publications:

• Opium and Ambergris (Kent State University Press, forthcoming 2024)

Awards

• Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Marilyn Chin
• Goldwater Fellowship, New York University
• Global Research Initiative Fellowship, New York University

Degrees

2019, BA English, Boston College

Bio

Brendan is a PhD student studying 20^th century American literature.  His interests lie at the nexus of literature and phenomenology, exploring how writers across genres represent consciousness and perception in their writing.

Publications:

• “Phenomenological Reproduction in Thompson and Mailer’s New Journalism.” Dianoia. (Spring 2019)

Awards

• Phi Beta Kappa, Boston College, 2019

Degrees

2019, BA English, Samford University

Bio

Emily is a PhD candidate focusing on late-medieval Middle English literature. She is especially interested in questions of authority, counter-authority, legality, and outlawry in late fourteenth and early fifteenth century political poetry and outlaw tales, including Piers Plowman, texts in the Piers Plowman tradition, and Robin Hood traditions.

Publications:

• “Yeoman, Outlaw, Demon: Reading The Friar’s Tale as an Outlaw Tale”, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, forthcoming.

Teaching Awards

• 2022 Doris Betts Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition, Department of English, UNC

Awards

• 2024 Leyerle-CARA Prize, Medieval Academy of America
• 2023 Derek Pearsall Research and Travel Grant, International Piers Plowman Society
• 2023 Schallek Award, Medieval Academy of America and the Richard III Society
• 2021 ARPA Graduate Degree Completion Grant, The Graduate School, UNC
• 2020 Breen Award for Outstanding Work in Medieval Studies, Department of English, UNC

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2019, BA English, Ithaca College

Bio

I am a first-year PhD student in the Department of English & Comparative Literature. My interests include 20th and 21st century American literature, transatlantic modernism, and critical theory.

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

2016, M.A.T. Secondary English Education, Duke University

2013, M.A. Slavic Languages and Literatures, UNC-Chapel Hill

2011, B.A. Slavic Languages and Literatures, UNC-Chapel Hill

Bio

Jessica’s scholarship focuses on Russian and East European fiction. Her dissertation, “Intersecting Worlds: Animal Consciousness, Reality, and Imagination in Eastern European Fiction,” analyzes and historicizes the use of animal perspective in narrative fiction from the late 19th century to the contemporary period. Her fields of interest include animal studies, environmental humanities, cognitive narratology, and language pedagogy. She is proficient in Russian, Ukrainian, and German, having studied in Russia, Ukraine, and Latvia. She has taught Russian language, Russian and German culture, and ENGL 105.

Teaching Awards

• Diane R. Leonard Award from the Department of English and Comparative Literature (for outstanding foreign language teaching by a Comparative Literature graduate student), 2022, 2024

Awards

• Stephen F. Cohen–Robert C. Tucker Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, 2024-25
• Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (Russian) from UNC Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, 2023.
• Summer Research & Language Study Award from UNC Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, 2021
• Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (Russian) from UNC Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, 2012

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2016, BA Liberal Arts, Sarah Lawrence College

Bio

Emma is a Comparative Literature student interested in ancient Greek philosophy.  Her work explores the relationship between philosophy and poetry in Plato and Aristotle.  She is also interested in language, specifically metaphor and simile.