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Grad Interest: Science Writing

Holly Thompson

August 19, 2024

Degrees

2022, BA English, Belmont University

2024, MA English, Wake Forest University

Bio

Holly (she/her/hers) is a Ph.D. student and Teaching Fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, with a focus in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy. Her primary interests are in disability studies, the rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM), health humanities, and composition pedagogy.

Recently, Holly’s research has focused on the discursive construction of psychiatric diagnoses and neurodivergent identities. Her first refereed article, forthcoming in the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, investigates so-called “Aspergian” positionalities as ideal products of the technocapitalist dystopia in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy.

In composition studies, Holly focuses on writing transfer, writing in the disciplines (WID), and writing about writing (WAW). She has a particular interest in the interpersonal dynamics of writing instructors and students, with a focus on the impact of these dynamics on student perceptions of competence and confidence in writing tasks. Through her work as a Writing Center tutor in her Master’s program, Holly developed specialties in working with students who self-identified as neurodivergent and/or learning disabled. As a Teaching Fellow, Holly strives to use those pedagogical strategies to create learning opportunities that are accessible and equitable for a diverse population of students.

Publications:

  • Thompson, Holly. “‘Demi-autistic, genetically speaking’: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and the ‘Aspergian’ Loop.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. In press.

Awards

  • Erika Lindemann Fellowship, 2025
  • Gordon A. Melson Outstanding Master’s Student Award, Wake Forest University, 2024
  • Richter Scholarship Travel Fund, Wake Forest University, 2023
  • James and Sarah King Writing Award, Belmont University, 2022

Contact

email |

Office: Dey 339

Research Interests

Creative Writing | Digital Humanities | Digital Rhetorics | Disability Studies | Genre Theory | Literature, Medicine and Culture | Pedagogy | Rhetoric, Composition and Literacy | Science Writing | Social Justice | Writing In The Disciplines

Isabel Spencer Landis Doss

July 24, 2024

Degrees

2024, M.A. English, University of Georgia

2020, B.A. English cum laude, Willamette University

Bio

Spencer Doss is a PhD student and teaching fellow in UNC’s Department of English and Comparative Literature. She studies nineteenth-century British literature, with a focus on Victorian women writers and their responses to patriarchal authority. Spencer’s master’s thesis, “Styling Society: Medicine, Art, and Sarah Grand’s New Women,” investigates how male characters in Grand’s oeuvre view women with a gaze that is at once aestheticizing and anatomizing. This phenomenon demonstrates the convergence of the institutions of art and medicine at the fin-de-siècle, with artists and doctors alike appraising women according to a patriarchal style that emphasizes their physical form, or bodies, over their subjective content, or their identities. Much of her research has centered understudied nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century feminist authors, including Catherine Carswell, Ella Hepworth Dixon, H.D., and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. In addition, Spencer is intrigued by how Victorian medical models manifest in the novel and their capacity to pathologize female bodies, especially in Gothic and sensation fiction.

As an instructor of writing, Spencer is passionate about establishing a classroom environment where students are empowered to explore and define their identities as writers. Her background as a writing center consultant informs her approach to instructor-student communication, which prioritizes one-on-one conferencing in addition to an interactive classroom model. Courses she has taught have involved the interplay of public and private memory and fictional texts that define and redefine the natural, from Beowulf to the present.

Awards

  • Christy Desmet Memorial Fund Award, University of Georgia, 2024
  • Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, inducted 2024
  • Research Out of State Tuition Award, University of Georgia, 2022
  • English Department Honors, Willamette University, 2020
  • John Dryden Award, Willamette University, 2020

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Contact

email |

Office: Greenlaw 323

Research Interests

Aesthetics | American Literature from 1789 to 1900 | American Literature to 1900 to the present | British Literature from 1789 to 1900 | British Literature from 1900 to the Present | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Literature, Medicine and Culture | Science Writing | The Novel | Visual Culture and Arts | Women Writers

Madison Storrs

July 24, 2023

Degrees

2017, BA English, Florida State University

2021, MA English, North Carolina State University

 

Bio

Madison Storrs is a first-year PhD student and Teaching Fellow in the Department of English & Comparative Literature. Her research focuses on the intersections of literature, botany, and art of the long 19th century in Britain. In particular, she considers how women incorporated botanical studies into their writing and art practices. She is also interested in British Romanticism, ecocriticism, ontology, aesthetics, design, and visual culture.

Awards

Teaching Assistantship, First-Year Writing, North Carolina State University, 2020–2021.

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Contact

email |

Office:

Research Interests

Aesthetics | American Literature from 1789 to 1900 | British Literature from 1789 to 1900 | British Literature from 1900 to the Present | Children’s Literature | Depictions Of The Child | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Literature and History | Literature and Philosophy | Poetry and Poetics | Science Writing | Travel Writing | Visual Culture and Arts | Women Writers

Sejal Mahendru

October 9, 2018

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.

Teaching Awards

  • LSP Graduate Student Affiliate Teaching Award, Fall 2021

Awards

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

Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Contact

email |

Office: Swain Hall 213

Research Interests

American Literature to 1900 to the present | Asian American Literature | Comparative Literature | Contemporary Multiethnic American Literature | Critical Race Studies | Digital Humanities | Film and Media Studies | Literature and Science | Post-Colonial Literature and Theory | Posthumanism | Science Fiction | Science Writing | Social Justice