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Celeste Seifert

October 5, 2022

Degrees

2018, MA English, New York University

2016, BA English, University of California, Los Angeles

Bio

Celeste is a graduate student in UNC’s English and Comparative Literature Department. They work as a teaching fellow for the department, an assistant at The William Blake Archive, and for the Jane Austen Summer Program. Celeste is currently interested in exploring ideas of apocalypse and ruin in the Long Nineteenth-Century.


Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Grace Derenne

October 5, 2022

Degrees

2019, BA Classics and Literature, University of North Carolina Asheville

Bio

Grace Derenne is a first-year Ph.D. candidate and research assistant in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interests include horror studies, sexuality studies, film and media studies, and depictions of the child in literature and film.


Joshua Cody Ward

September 8, 2022

Degrees

2022, MA English, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

2016, BA Religious Studies, Wingate University

Bio

A North Carolina native, Joshua Cody Ward joined the program in Fall 2022. His field is Modern and Contemporary American literature broadly (1900-Present), specifically Literature of the American South and African American Literature. His research interests include the archive, textual studies, editorial scholarship, intertextuality, and the Novel.


Publications:

  • “From Commas to Cosmos: The Pervading Influence of Thomas Wolfe on Cormac McCarthy.” The Thomas Wolfe Review. Forthcoming.
  • “Publishing the Black Arts Movement: Editors, Anthologies, and Canonization.” South Atlantic Review. Forthcoming.
  • [album] The Boron Heist. Ridin’ Rough. Mystery School Records, April 6 2019.
  • “Light and Darkness, Sight and Blindness: Religious Knowledge in Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark.Wingate Research Review, issue 8, Fall 2016, pp. 87-106.

Awards

  • Emerging Scholar Award, Summer 2023, UNC Chapel Hill, Southern Futures program.
  • Teaching Fellow, Fall 2022-Spring 2023, UNC Chapel Hill.
  • LSP Teaching Fellowship, Spring 2023, UNC Chapel Hill Latina/o Studies Program.
  • Graduate Student Transportation Grant, Spring 2023, UNC Chapel Hill, Graduate School, “‘Writing around the edges of things’: On the Lighthouse in American Literature and in Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation.”
  • 2021 Graduate Student Essay Award, November 12th, 2022, SAMLA 94.
  • Travel Grant, Fall 2022, UNC Chapel Hill, English and Comparative Literature Department, “Charles Johnson, Ishmael Reed, and Black Women’s Writing in the 1980s: Perceptions versus Reality” & “Urban Fantasy and the Dickensian in Alex Pheby’s Mordew.”
  • The Julian D. Mason Award for Excellence in Graduate StudiesApril 29th, 2022, UNC Charlotte English Department.
  • Graduate Teaching Assistantship, Fall 2020-Spring 2022, UNC Charlotte.
  • Wittliff Collections William Hill Research Award, 2021-2022, Texas State University, For archival research conducted July 2021 in the Cormac McCarthy Papers and Woolmer Collections.
  • Anne Newman Graduate Student Travel Grant, Fall 2021, UNC Charlotte, “Is Samuel Butler’s Erewhon A Modernist Novel.”
  • Excellence in Philosophy Award, April 24th, 2016, Wingate University Religious Studies Department.
  • G. Byrns Coleman Award for Excellence in Religious Studies, April 24th, 2016, Wingate University Religious Studies Department.
  • University Honors, April 24th, 2016, Wingate University.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Lindsay Ragle-Miller

August 16, 2022

Degrees

2009, BA English with Teacher’s Certification, Eastern Illinois University

2020, MA English, Wayne State University

Bio

Originally from central Illinois, Lindsay is a PhD student and teaching fellow focusing on post-conquest (c. 1100-1300) medieval literature.  Previous research has focused on food in medieval literature, early modern broadside ballads, and perceptions of mental illness in medieval Europe.  Outside of medieval literature, Lindsay is also interested in teaching pedagogy and taught high school English and special education before returning to academia.  She has also worked extensively with a group of instructors at UNC who design coursework focusing on publication in the PIT Journal.


Publications:

Miller, Lindsay, Sarah Chapman and Lynn Losh 2019. Going beyond Lear: Performance and Taming of the Shrew. Dividing the Kingdoms:Interdisciplinary Methods for Teaching King Lear to Undergraduates: Performance: Wayne State University. https://guides.lib.wayne.edu/folgerkinglear/performance

Ragle-Miller, Lindsay et. Al. The Warrior Women Project: Wayne State University. https://s.wayne.edu/warriorwomen/


Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Adrin Martin

August 2, 2022

Degrees

2021, English BA, Minor in Communication, Texas A&M University at College Station

Bio

As a relatively new student to rhetoric and composition, my research interests are ever-evolving. My undergraduate thesis examined the implications of metaphor as used in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder treatment texts, which was a study intended to dissect language as a tool that demands authorial sacrifice. Here, I found a fascination with how meaning “seeps” from figures of speech in ways both beneficial and harmful to the reader, as well as for how engaging with language offers a view into a site of endless, yet interesting, compromises.

While my thesis oriented me within health and disability studies, my interests extend to digital rhetorics, game studies, technology discourse, and film and tv. Some topics in these fields that encapsulate my interests include the study of review scores as aggregated on websites like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, observing the rhetorical nature of industry competition (MCU vs DCEU, XBox vs Playstation, Apple vs Samsung), and discussing accessibility in near-universal technologies like streaming services, smartphones, and gaming.


Awards

  • Tarheel Writing Guide Professional Development Award
  • Undergraduate Research Scholar, Texas A&M University
  • 2021 Rhetoric and Discourse Studies Essay Contest Winner, Texas A&M University
  • Gathright Phi Kappa Phi Dean’s Excellence Award Semi-Finalist

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Nathan Andrew Quinn

January 21, 2021

Degrees

2016, BA English, Princeton University

Bio

Nathan possesses a strong interest in late 20th and 21st century American literature, with a particular focus on contemporary works with magical realist and “hysterical realist” elements. This interest has led him in the direction of postsecular theory and the philosophy of language.


Antonia DiNardo

September 28, 2020

Degrees

2018, AA Liberal Arts, Northern Virginia Community College

2020, BA English/History, Mary Baldwin University

Bio

Toni DiNardo is a third year PhD student in the department of English and Comparative literature. A “medievalismist,” in the words of one colleague,” Toni’s work is predominantly concerned with the reception of medieval thought and perceptions of the Middle Ages as they have been mediated in modern genre fantasy. In particular, they explore the ways in which various audiences attempt to recuperate the Middle Ages through fantasy in order to construct and sustain identities, from queer rehabilitation of the medieval to white nationalist idealization of the Middle Ages as a putative ethno-nationalist paradise. They are also interested in the subjective experience – particularly among queer players – of the tabletop fantasy role-playing game. Other interests include the role of sexuality in Jacobean historiography, the queerness of faith in Donne’s ouevre, and anything to do with Margery Kempe.


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

Doug Stark

July 1, 2019

Degrees

2016, MA English, Loughborough University

2014, BA English, Loughborough University

Bio

Doug Stark is a media and game studies scholar completing a Ph.D. in English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. At UNC, he works for the Digital Literacy and Communications Lab as the Game Research Coordinator and teaches courses on film, video games, and writing across the disciplines. Doug’s research concerns the aesthetics, politics, and epistemics of twentieth- and twenty-first century games. His dissertation – “Playing with Habit: The Biopolitics of Games Under Neoliberalism” – addresses the role of games in subject formation by examining the habits they promote in colonial, military, managerial, and entertainment contexts. A portion of the dissertation received the Bruns Essay Prize from the Society for Literature, Science, & the Arts in 2022. Find his forthcoming and published work on games, habit, and futurity in journals Extrapolation, Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, Post-45, Eludamos, Qui Parle, Leonardo, and Configurations, as well as collections Playing the Field, Encyclopedia of Video Games, and Depictions of Power.


Publications:


Awards

  • Digital Dissertation Fellowship, Carolina Digital Humanities, UNC Chapel Hill, Spring 2023
  • Institute of the Arts and Humanities (IAH) Grant, “Critical Game Studies Exchange,” Spring 2023
  • Richard Brooke Scholarship, UNC Chapel Hill, 2022-2023
  • The Bruns Essay Prize, Society for Literature, Science & the Arts, 2022
  • Hobby Departmental Dissertation Fellowship, UNC Chapel Hill, Fall 2022
  • IAH Grant, UNC/KCL “Media Aesthetics” Speaker Series and Working Group, Fall 2022, Spring 2023
  • Game Studies Research Award, DLC lab, UNC Chapel Hill, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
  • Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Fellow, UNC Chapel Hill, Spring 2022
  • IAH Grant, UNC/KCL “Digital Aesthetics” Speaker Series, Fall 2021
  • Games and Cultures Humanities Lab Fellow, Duke University, 2019-2020
  • Santander Postgraduate Scholarship, Loughborough University, UK, 2014-2016

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

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