Degrees

2022, BA English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2022, BS Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Bio

Laura is a master’s student studying Literature, Medicine & Culture. Her research interests focus on experiences of pregnancy, labor, delivery, and parenting. She is especially interested in the conjunction of broader social forces with the lived experiences of individual birthing people. Her capstone project examines the language used by birthing people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Laura received degrees in English and Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As an undergraduate student, she spent time studying early modern false pregnancies as well as gene therapeutics.

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Degrees

2021, BA English, Brenau University

Bio

Kaleigh Sullivan is a Master’s student and Graduate Research Assistant at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill. She completed a bachelor’s degree at Brenau University (Gainesville, Ga) in 2021, where she majored in English and minored in biology. Following graduation, Kaleigh spent one year teaching the Fundamentals of English as an adjunct instructor at Lanier Technical College (Gainesville, Ga). Now, at UNC-CH, she continues to explore subjects of the Health Humanities and psychopathology through the Literature, Medicine, and Culture (LMC) Program and her assistantship in the HHIVE Lab.

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Awards

Master’s Merit Assistantship, University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, 2021 Outstanding Graduate of English, Brenau University, 2021

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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.

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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

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2016, MA English, University of Missouri at Columbia

2014, BA English (French minor), Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge

Bio

I am a PhD candidate studying American literature of the long nineteenth century. In my dissertation project, “If you are always kind”: Animals and Becoming Human(e) in Nineteenth-Century American Children’s Literature, I am exploring the influence of children’s literary texts upon the development of humane education and animal welfare initiatives in the United States. I investigate how these texts were foundational in establishing definitions of the “humane” that are still very much present with us today.

In my future work, I am interested in exploring how we might connect the field of animal studies with modern veterinary science; I thus wish to connect theory with practice with respect to animal care. I am also more broadly interested in efforts to incorporate humane education within educational curriculums.

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Publications:

• “‘Our School House is the Universe’: Henry David Thoreau as Radical Educator,” forthcoming in the new proposed Oxford Handbook of Henry David Thoreau (2024)
• “A Posthumous Life: Thoreau and the Possibilities of Posthuman Biography,” The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies, Vol. 27, 2019
• Review of Antoine Traisnel’s Capture: American Pursuits and the Making of a New Animal Condition (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) for Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology (Winter 2022, Vol. 30, No. 1)
• Review of Laura Dassow Walls’s Henry David Thoreau: A Life for the Emerson Society Papers (Fall 2018, vol. 29, no. 2)
• Online Review of LeAnne Howe’s Savage Conversations for The Carolina Quarterly (March 2019)
• Online Review​ of Caleb Johnson’s ​Treeborne: A Novel f​or ​The Carolina Quarterly ​(September 2018)
• Online Review​ of Filip Springer’s ​History of a Disappearance: The Story of a Forgotten Polish Town​ for ​The Carolina Quarterly ​(April 2018)

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Teaching Awards

• Krista Turner Award for Excellence in Student Support for Spring 2022, UNC Dept. of English & Comparative Literature
• Student Undergraduate Teaching Award, UNC Chancellor’s Awards, 2022

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Awards

• Andrew Oliver Research Fellowship, 2022-2023, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston MA
• Dissertation Research Fellowship, Summer 2022, UNC Dept. of English & Comparative Literature
• Robert Bain Award for Excellence Achieved by a Second-Year Student in Pre-1900 American Literature, 2018

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2017, BA English, College of the Holy Cross

Bio

Jane McGrail is a PhD student in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies. Her research interests include the public humanities, cultural rhetorics, feminisms and rhetorics, community literacy studies, and engaged pedagogy.

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Degrees

B.A. English, 2010, University of Delhi

M.A. English, 2012, University of Delhi

M.Phil, English Literature, 2014, University of Delhi

Bio

My research focuses on environmental justice in the Anthropocene. I am interested in the convergences in the fields of ecocriticism, post-colonial theory and global socioeconomics, to examine how the effects of climate change, displacement, toxic and electronic waste, and resource extraction are differentially experienced across the Global North and South. I am also interested reading in environmental advocacy through the the intersections between art and activism in grassroots movements. I study gobal anglophone literature, with a focus on environmental justice movements in India and the U.S.A.

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Teaching Awards

• LSP Graduate Student Affiliate Teaching Award, Fall 2021

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Awards

• Centre for the Studies of the American South Summer Fellowship, 2021

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume