2018, MA English, New York University
2016, BA English, University of California, Los Angeles
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.
2019, BA Classics and Literature, University of North Carolina Asheville
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.
2022, MA English, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
2016, BA Religious Studies, Wingate University
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.
African American Literature | American Literature from 1789 to 1900 | American Literature to 1900 to the present | Contemporary American Literature | Creative Writing | Genre Theory | Latina / Latino Literature | Literature and Philosophy | Modernism | Poetry and Poetics | Posthumanism | Science Fiction | Southern Literature | The Novel
2009, BA English with Teacher’s Certification, Eastern Illinois University
2020, MA English, Wayne State University
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.
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/
British Literature from 1485 to 1660 (including Milton) | British Literature from its beginning to 1485 | Children’s Literature | Disability Studies | Early Modern Literature And Culture | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | History of the Book | Literature and Education | Literature and History | Literature, Medicine and Culture | Pedagogy | Queer Theory | Science Fiction | The English Language | Women Writers | Writing In The Disciplines
2021, English BA, Minor in Communication, Texas A&M University at College Station
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.
Digital Humanities | Digital Rhetorics | Disability Studies | Film and Media Studies | Literature and Science | Literature, Medicine and Culture | Media Studies | Rhetoric, Composition and Literacy | Science Fiction | Science Writing | The English Language | Visual Culture and Arts | Writing In The Disciplines
2016, BA English, Princeton University
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.
American Literature to 1900 to the present | British Literature from 1900 to the Present | Contemporary American Literature | Contemporary Multiethnic American Literature | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Digital Humanities | Literature and History | Literature and Philosophy | Literature and Religion | Post-Colonial Literature and Theory | Science Fiction | The Novel
2018, AA Liberal Arts, Northern Virginia Community College
2020, BA English/History, Mary Baldwin University
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.
British Literature from 1485 to 1660 (including Milton) | Children’s Literature | Critical Race Studies | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Disability Studies | Early Modern Literature And Culture | Feminist Historiography | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Film and Media Studies | Genre Theory | Literature and History | Literature and Philosophy | Literature and Religion | Post-Colonial Literature and Theory | Posthumanism | Queer Theory | Science Fiction | Social Justice | Women Writers
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.
2016, MA English, Loughborough University
2014, BA English, Loughborough University
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.
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.
