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Kyle Cunningham

July 25, 2023

Degrees

2018, BA English, University of Florida

Bio

Kyle Cunningham is a doctoral student at UNC Chapel Hill. His research explores the intersections of platform studies, fan studies, and narrative and literary theory, focusing on how communities reproduce themselves through digital communication infrastructures. He is particularly interested in tracing the organizational logics and discursive practices of online communities that develop around decentralized, peer-produced narratives and hermeneutic practices.


Curriculum Vitae / Resume

xochi-maría ramos-lara

July 20, 2023

Degrees

2023, B.A. Gender Studies / English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

 

Bio

xochi-maría ramos-lara (she/they) is a doctoral student in english and comparative literature. her main research interest focuses on the (lacanian) subjectivity of gay latinx poets as they wrote during the american aids epidemic of the 80s and 90s, taking into account the presence of the hiv virus itself as an important character. besides this, x. is interested in non-white marxist critiques of the state, hegemonic ideologies, and culture; anti-white violent resistance via brown power (ex. the palestinian intifadas); queer performances of subversion in the american drag and ballroom scenes; and the power dynamics of bareback subculture in gay pornography.

outside of the academy, x. loves writing poetry, collective education on critical ethnic studies, participating in local political action, and going to gay clubs as a form of praxis.


Publications:

  • “i planted some lavender in my front yard saturday morning,” SAGE, 2024.
  • “afuera,” Screen Door Review, 2023.
  • “white mother,” Carolina Muse: Literary & Arts Magazine, 2023.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Carson Watlington

September 20, 2021

Degrees

2020, BA English and Visual Arts, University of Richmond

Bio

Carson Watlington is a PhD student in the department of English & Comparative Literature and the Graduate Assistant for Film Studies. Her work is rooted in 20th/21st century American Literature, with a particular attention to minority and ethnic texts.


Izzy G. T. Howard

August 5, 2021

Degrees

2020, BA English, Trinity College Dublin

Bio

Izzy (they/them) is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. They study the relationship between the soul and body in medieval literary, aesthetic, and dramatic representations of Creation. Their dissertation, Made A Living Soul: Genesis and the Creation of the Soul in Medieval Devotional and Mystic Literature examines ideas of the soul as developed in early medieval Scholastic exegesis, and how these understandings of the soul are complicated and affirmed in medieval devotional and mystic texts.

In their research on the medieval soul and body, Izzy examines the language used to structure the corporeal, physical self and the sensing, feeling, and cognative self alongside theories of queer embodiment, affect, and representations.

Their broader interests include manuscript studies, medieval philosophy and theology, poetics, and literary criticism.


Publications:

With H.M. Cushman “Bodies on Display” in A Cultural History of Trans Lives in the Middle Ages (300-1445). Bloomsbury. Forthcoming.


Teaching Awards

Latina/o Studies Teaching Fellowship, UNC Latina/o Studies Program, 2022


Awards

Donald Howard Travel Scholarship, New Chaucer Society, 2024

Trans Travel Fund, Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, 2023

CARA Summer Scholarship, Medieval Academy of America, 2022

Internal:   

Graduate Student Excellence Award, UNC Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2024

Joseph Breen Award, UNC-Chapel Hill Dept. of English & Comparative Literature, 2023

Research Grant, UNC-Chapel Hill Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2023

Travel Award, UNC-Chapel Hill Graduate and Professional Student Government, 2023

Travel Grant, UNC-Chapel Hill Dept. of English & Comparative Literature, 2022, 2024

First Class Honours in English Studies, Trinity College Dublin, 2020


Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Amy Yue-Yin Chan

August 5, 2021

Degrees

2018, BA Classics, minors French & English, summa cum laude, University of Pennsylvania

Bio

I study classics and American poetry. My dissertation considers how and why Black American poets from the Revolutionary Era to the Harlem Renaissance received the classics. Through case studies of four poets, Phillis Wheatley, George Moses Horton, Countee Cullen, and Melvin Beaunorus Tolson, I argue that, over time, Black writers naturalized the classics, encoded as a White discourse in earlier American traditions, as Black, thus demonstrating the spaces within classics that resonated with Black experiences and exposing the construction of classics as White.

My general interests are in poetry and poetics (American; 19th– and 20th– centuries French; and ancient Greek and Latin lyric) and classical receptions, especially Black classicisms.


Publications:

Scholarship:

  • “Review of The Oxford Handbook of Emily Dickinson.” Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin 35.1 (2023), 19-20.

Poems et al.:

  • “On Hudson River.” Bayou (forthcoming).
  • My Mother Says.” Rattle 83 (2024).
  • Flux. BlazeVOX: Fall 2021, 412-18.
  • Lai-jee.” Indiana Review 43.1 (2021), 85-92.

Teaching Awards

  • Doris Betts Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition, 2023

Awards

External:

  • Graduate Student Conference Paper Award, Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, 2023
  • Dickinson Critical Institute Grant, Emily Dickinson International Society, 2022

Internal:

  • Bain Award (Excellence in Pre-1900 American Lit.), UNC-CH DOECL, 2023
  • Travel Grant, UNC-CH DOECL, 2023
  • Transportation Grant, UNC-CH Graduate School, 2022
  • Travel Award, UNC-CH Graduate & Professional Student Government, 2022
  • Booker Fellowship, UNC-CH DOECL, 2021
  • Inclusive Excellence Top-Up, UNC-CH Graduate School, 2021

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

Emma Duvall

October 16, 2018

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.