Degrees

2016, BA English, Rhodes College

2019, MA English, University of Alabama

Bio

I specialize in literature, religion, and politics from 1550-1640, with expertise in lyric, dramatic, and narrative poetry from Chaucer to Milton (including Shakespeare). In addition to secondary competency in literary prose from 1500-1800, and special familiarity with the work of Laurence Sterne, I have taught courses on literature for primary and secondary schools, universities, continuing education programs, and correctional education programs. 

My dissertation will evaluate the political gist of English literary depictions of Julius Caesar in the context of more radical political theory

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Awards

Mellon Fellowship (2019-2024)
Ruth Rose Richardson Award (2020)

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Degrees

2015, English MA, California State University Los Angeles

2013, English BA, University of California Berkeley

2013, Political Science BA, University of California Berkeley

Bio

My research focuses on American Protestant missionaries in China during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I also research the history of technology.

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Teaching Awards

• Earl Hartsell Award for Teaching Excellence, UNC English Department, 2022

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Awards

• Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow, UNC Graduate School, 2015-2020
• Future Faculty Fellowship Program, UNC Center for Faculty Excellence, spring 2018
• Jamie Guilbeau and Thelma Guilbeau Collections Research Grant, University of Louisiana at Lafayette Department of History and Geography, 2017-2018
• Robert Bain Award for Excellence in Southern Literature, UNC English Department, 2016-2017
• Initiative for Minority Excellence Scholar, UNC Graduate School, 2015-2020

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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.

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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. Their research interests include the histories of religion and emotion, occult knowledge, and literary representations of the Devil. Their 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. They have 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 dissertation project, “Horrors of the Early Modern Imagination,” argues that the roots of current understandings of the genre and experience of horror can be traced to an early modern conception of the imagination. By engaging with the early modern imagination’s power to generate, corrupt, lie, and delude, Smith contends we can understand horror, through the imagination, as onto- epistemological: a state of being and knowing. Drawing on the growing critical work on the history of affect, this project examines historical literature and cultural artifacts to comprehend how emotions and experiences have not only evolved over time but also shaped how we think and react today.

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Publications:

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• “‘No healthsome air breathes in’: Spiritual Poison in Romeo and Juliet,” Poison on the Early Modern Stage: Plants, Paints and Potions, edited by Lisa Hopkins and Bill Angus with Kibrina Davey (Manchester University Press, 2023).

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

• Eliason Early Stages Fellowship, UNC Department of English and Comparative Literature, Summer 2023
• Jerry Leath Mills Research Travel Grant, Studies in Philology, Summer 2022
• 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, University of Oregon

Bio

I study late medieval English and Italian literature, focusing primarily on the works of Dante and Chaucer. I’m also especially interested in folk music, vernacular and vulgar literary traditions, and religion.

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Degrees

2009, BA English, The Catholic University of America

2012, MA English, George Washington University

Bio

Craig Mariconti focuses on Early Modern literature, with an interest in drama and religious culture.

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Degrees

2015, MA English, Claremont Graduate University

2012, BA English Literature and Political Science, Loyola Marymount University

Bio

Eddie is currently a PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A scholar of British literature of the long eighteenth century, he has particular interests in: authenticity, experimentation with literary form and genre, the Gothic, the history of the novel, influences of popular culture, the material book, and narrative performance.

His dissertation project, entitled Creating Enchantment: a History of the Gothic and Inspiring Interactive Reading, explores the history of intellectual influences on the Gothic, the creative possibilities that writers have found in the genre, and how these writers subsequently experimented with the genre to create a particular reading experience. Bringing together archival research, narrative theory, reader-response theory, and sociological history of reading practices in the long-eighteenth century, he hopes to produce a project that examines how authorial innovation, alongside history of the material book—its paratextual elements, decisions made by publishers, and popular readership—have mediated interactive reading experiences of the Gothic novel in the long eighteenth century.

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Publications:

• Yang, Edward. “Conjuring Sympathy: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Inspiring Interactive Reading.” Critical Insights: Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus. Amenia, Salem Press. (forthcoming 2024)
• Sullivan, Rory and Edward Yang. “Searching for Frankenstein: The Locales of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Then and Now.” 2018

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Teaching Awards

• Krista Turner Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2018.

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Awards

• English Teaching Assistant Award (Germany), The Fulbright Program, 2016-17.

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2014, MA English, Florida Gulf Coast University

2011, BA English, Florida Gulf Coast University

Bio

I’m a Ph.D. student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC Chapel Hill studying medieval and early modern literature. I’m specifically interested in early modern encyclopedias, epistemology, and the history of science. I’m also interested in insects, gastropods, gender and sexuality, power dynamics, amphibians and amphibiousness, fungi, and the confluence of natural philosophy/magic/religion.

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Awards

• Folger Shakespeare Library Grant-in aid, After the Great Instauration taught by Reid Barbour, 2018
• Folger Shakespeare Library Grant-in aid, Introduction to English Paleography taught by Heather Wolfe, 2016
• Folger Shakespeare Library Grant-in aid, Scale of Catastrophe taught by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 2015

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Degrees

2017, MA English, University of Virginia

2014, BA English, The College of William and Mary

Bio

Rory Sullivan studies late medieval English literature, art, and culture, and is completing a Ph.D. in English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He teaches courses on speculative fiction, visual narrative, and composition, while also working at the Writing and Learning Center as a Writing Coach. Rory’s scholarly work is interested in the lived experiences and devotional practices of late medieval people. His dissertation, “The Virtual Imagination and the Self in Late Medieval England,” investigates the interactions between individuals and art objects, poems, performances, and manuscripts in order to understand how individuals cultivated devotional practices and experiences.

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Teaching Awards

• Erika Lindemann Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition, 2022

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Awards

• Breen Award for outstanding work in the field of Medieval Studies, 2019

• Balch Prize for a Masters Student in English, 2017

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume