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. 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• “Possets, Drugs, and Milky Effects: A Look at Recipes, Shakespeare’s Plays, and Other Historical References,” Shakespeare and Beyond, February 2020.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, 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, BA English and History, Grinnell College

Bio

Eleanor Griggs is a doctoral student studying Medieval Literature. Her work focuses on ecology, historiography, and time in Middle English poetry, romance, and encyclopedic writing.

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Publications:

“The Orchard and the ‘Ympe Tre’: Gardening, Mastery, and Ecology in Sir Orfeo” Comitatus 50:1 (2019): 97-118.

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Awards

2018 Joseph Breen Award for Outstanding Work in the Field of Medieval Studies

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Degrees

MA in Comparative Literature, University of Iceland

BA in Comparative Literature, University of Iceland

Bio

Kristján studies problems of grace and cultural continuity in Renaissance literature.

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Publications:

Hannesson, Kristján. “Making Sense of Form: The Semantic Implications of Structure in Petrarch’s Double Sestina.” MLN, vol. 135, no. 1, 2020, pp. 34-54.

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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

2015, BA English and French, Harding University

2017, MA English, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

Bio

Eric Bontempo is a third-year PhD student and Graduate Teaching Fellow in the Department of English & Comparative Literature. His interests include nineteenth-century poetics, British Romanticism, aesthetic theory, and postsecular studies.

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Publications:

• “In Memoriam:  Reader-Response and the Virtual Construction of Consolation.” The International Journal of Critical Cultural Studies, vol. 14. no. 4 (2016), pp. 11-18.

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Awards

• UNC Center for Global Initiatives REACH Fellow, Summer 2018

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2017, MA English, University of Virginia

2014, BA English, The College of William and Mary

Bio

Rory Sullivan studies medieval literature, with a focus on the visual and spatial elements of poetry. He is particularly interested in the intersections between literature and the visual arts.

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Awards

• Balch Prize for a Masters Student in English, University of Virginia, 2017

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume