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Andrew Tran

October 10, 2022

Degrees

2016, BS, Princeton University

2020, MA, Duke University

Bio

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.


Rachel Rackham

August 3, 2022

Degrees

2021, MA English, Brigham Young University

2019, MA Library and Information Science, University of Iowa

2017, BA English, Brigham Young University

Bio

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.


Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Anna Merz

March 16, 2022

Degrees

2020, MA English Literature, Virginia Tech
2015, BA English Literature and Education, Roanoke College

Bio

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.


Teaching Awards

  • Richard Hoffman GTA Teaching Award for Excellence: Virginia Tech English Departmental Award, 2020
  • Michael J. Sandridge Education Award for Excellence: Roanoke College, 2015
  • English Department Teaching Award for Excellence: Roanoke College, 2015

Awards

  • Caroline Pace Chermside Award for Best Master’s Thesis: Virginia Tech, 2020
  • Dickens Universe Fellow, 2020
  • Phi Beta Kappa, 2015
  • Briethaupt Scholarship for the Scholarly Study of Literature: Roanoke College, 2014

Cate Rivers

September 24, 2021

Degrees

2019, BA English, North Carolina State University

Bio

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.


Ryan Carroll

August 4, 2021

Degrees

2020, BA English, George Washington University

Bio

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.


Publications:


Awards

  • 2022 Ruth Rose Richardson Award

Jonathan Albrite

September 22, 2020

Degrees

2008, BA English, James Madison University

2020, MA English, James Madison University

Bio

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.


Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Brendan Chambers

September 11, 2019
Photo of Brendan Chambers

Degrees

2019, BA English, Boston College

Bio

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.


Publications:

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

Awards

  • Phi Beta Kappa, Boston College, 2019

David Hall

August 23, 2019

Degrees

2018, BA English & Computer Science, University of Virginia

Bio

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.


Awards

  • 2019 Center for Faculty Excellence – Lenovo Instructional Innovation Grant

Nicole Berland

May 23, 2019

Degrees

2005, BA English, Psychology, Plan II Honors, University of Texas

2008, MA Humanities, University of Chicago

Bio

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.


Teaching Awards

  • Digital Ethnic Futures (DEFCon) Teaching and Capacity Building Mentorship Fellowship, 2022
  • Mellon Grant Teaching Apprenticeship, Humanities for the Public Good and Night School Bar, 2022
  • Latina/o Studies Teaching Fellowship, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2022
  • Social Justice Pedagogy Initiative Fellowship, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2021
  • Betts Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2021
  • Undergraduate Teaching Award (SUTASA), UNC-Chapel Hill, 2020
  • Erika Lindemann Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2018
  • Erika Lindemann Award for Excellence in Teaching Literature, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2015

Awards

  • Frankel Departmental Dissertation Fellowship, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2021
  • UNC-King’s College London Global Partnership Grant, 2019
  • UNC-King’s College London Global Partnership Grant, 2017
  • Graduate and Professional Student Federation Travel Grant, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2015
  • George Hills Harper Summer Research Fellowship, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2013-2014
  • M.A.P.H. Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2007-2008
  • Department of Psychology Hibbs Scholarship, University of Texas, 2005
  • Phi Beta Kappa, University of Texas, 2005

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Jessica Ginocchio

October 16, 2018

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 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.

 

 


Awards

  • UNC CSEEES Summer Research & Language Study Award, 2021
  • FLAS Fellowship, Summer 2012 (Russian)