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.
2021, MA English, Brigham Young University
2019, MA Library and Information Science, University of Iowa
2017, BA English, Brigham Young University
As a PhD student at UNC-Chapel Hill, Rachel studies British Victorian literature. Specifically, she is interested in ruins, material culture, and imperialism in the Victorian era, interests which were shaped by her studies in literary tourism and heritage in her MLIS degree. She plans to expand her studies in these topics by exploring print media and culture, industrialization, commodity culture, memory, and nostalgia in nineteenth-century Britain.
Aesthetics | British Literature from 1789 to 1900 | Digital Humanities | History of the Book | Literature and History | Narrative Theory | The Novel | Travel Writing | Visual Culture and Arts
2020, MA English Literature, Virginia Tech
2015, BA English Literature and Education, Roanoke College
Anna Merz is a second year PhD student interested in literature of the long, undisciplined nineteenth century, Anna’s past research projects have centered literary depictions of Victorian education and childhood. Her early-stage dissertation research focuses on depictions and illustrations of “bad” children in Victorian literature, especially the ways in which “badness” as a label is often gendered and racialized.
At UNC, Anna works closely with the Jane Austen Summer Program, a public humanities outreach program, and in the William Blake Archive—a Digital Humanities project cataloguing Blake’s works.
British Literature from 1660 to 1789 | British Literature from 1789 to 1900 | Critical Race Studies | Depictions Of The Child | Digital Humanities | Literature and Education | Narrative Theory | Pedagogy | Post-Colonial Literature and Theory | Queer Theory | The Novel | Transatlantic Studies | Women Writers
2019, BA English, North Carolina State University
Cate Rivers is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature. She graduated from North Carolina State University in 2019 with a BA in English and minors in history and Japan studies. Her main area focuses are the Southern United States and Japan. Her interests span trauma studies, nationalism, memory, gender and critical race theories, modernism, cultural representations of mental illness, mysticism, and Buddhist literature. Her ongoing research project frames 20th century Japanese novels and novels from the Southern Renaissance as social histories, with particular attention to war memory, family history, culpability, the construction of “family,” and the relation between national identity and self-conception.
African American Literature | American Literature to 1900 to the present | Asian American Literature | Comparative Literature | Contemporary American Literature | Contemporary Multiethnic American Literature | Critical Race Studies | Disability Studies | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Literature and History | Literature and Religion | Literature, Medicine and Culture | Modernism | Narrative Theory | Pedagogy | Post-Colonial Literature and Theory | Social Justice | Southern Literature | Transatlantic Studies
2020, BA English, George Washington University
Ryan Carroll is a PhD student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. He is interested in information, documentary storytelling, and truth-telling in 19th-century British and Transatlantic literature. He works to read these issues in light of contemporary polycrisis, information overload, and activist action.
Outside of academia, Ryan writes on theology, particularly queer and liberation theologies. His work has been published by theology publications and the Jesuit Conference of Canada and North America.
Aesthetics | American Literature from 1789 to 1900 | British Literature from 1789 to 1900 | British Literature from 1900 to the Present | Comparative Literature | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Media Studies | Modernism | Narrative Theory | Post-Colonial Literature and Theory | Queer Theory | The Novel | Transatlantic Studies
2008, BA English, James Madison University
2020, MA English, James Madison University
I am a doctoral candidate and teaching fellow in the Department of English & Comparative Literature at UNC. I am currently at work on my dissertation, tentatively titled “No Judgment: The Aesthetics of Neutrality in the Postwar American Novel,” which examines the productive tension that arises between neutral narrators and snobby characters in the decades immediately following the Second World War. More broadly, my research concerns expressions of taste and aesthetic judgment in American literature and film as they relate to discourses on race, gender, sexuality, and class. I also work on topics, including climate change and posthumanist aesthetics, related to the environmental humanities, and have taught courses on contemporary literature, film, and composition.
Aesthetics | African American Literature | American Literature from 1789 to 1900 | American Literature to 1900 to the present | Contemporary American Literature | Contemporary Multiethnic American Literature | Critical Race Studies | Disability Studies | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Film and Media Studies | Modernism | Narrative Theory | Posthumanism | Queer Theory | Southern Literature
2019, BA English, Boston College
Brendan is a PhD student studying 20th 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.
Aesthetics | American Literature to 1900 to the present | Contemporary American Literature | Contemporary Multiethnic American Literature | Digital Humanities | Literature and History | Literature and Philosophy | Media Studies | Modernism | Narrative Theory | Philosophy Of Language | Southern Literature | The Novel
2018, BA English & Computer Science, University of Virginia
The focus of my studies in the English Department is on video games and understanding how stories get told in this new, developing medium. I am particularly interested in questions of agency, empathy, and virtuality in video game narratives, and how these questions provide interesting and useful lenses outside of the video game medium. I also work on questions of legitimacy and pedagogy surrounding games, and how the physical space of gameplay is important to the inclusion of video games into the academic sphere.
2005, BA English, Psychology, Plan II Honors, University of Texas
2008, MA Humanities, University of Chicago
I am doctoral candidate and teaching fellow in the Department of English & Comparative Literature at UNC, Chapel Hill. My research concerns contemporary television, narrative theory, science fiction, digital pedagogy, and cultural and media studies more broadly. My dissertation, Watching the Watchers: Contemporary Television, Complex Seriality, and Media Literacy, uses contemporary TV to address the proliferation of serialized storytelling—a form that dominates our media landscape. How did this phenomenon develop? In what ways does the serial form both shape and respond to both commercial and aesthetic demands? And why is serialized storytelling intoxicating?
This topic grew out of my passion for science fiction TV (especially Star Trek) and a recognition that we urgently need to encourage better media literacy. As an educator, I likewise encourage my students to leverage their natural curiosities toward their academic work. I have taught several composition courses at UNC, including Writing Across the Disciplines, Writing in the Social Sciences, and Writing in the Humanities, in addition to designing and teaching sections of Literature & Cultural Diversity and Film & Culture. I’ve also been afforded the opportunity to TA for Matthew Taylor’s Literature, Medicine, and Culture and Gregory Flaxman’s Film Analysis classes. My auxiliary interests in social justice, community education, music, and visual art also keep me busy with a number of UNC-affiliated and community-based groups and projects.
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
Jessica’s research focuses on late 19th and early 20th century Russian and German fiction, with special interests in the depictions of animals and death in literature. Key authors for her include Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Mann. She has been studying Russian since 2007 and has studied in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kiev. She has taught Russian language courses and TA’d for Russian and German culture courses in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, as well as tutors for the new UNC Russian Flagship Program.
Comparative Literature | Literature and History | Literature and Philosophy | Modernism | Narrative Theory | Posthumanism | The Novel
