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.
2013, AS in Fashion Management, Bay State College
2019, BS in Fashion Merchandising & Management, Southern New Hampshire University
Dailihana Alfonseca is a Puerto Rican and Dominican-Northern American writer in a Southern World. Her Afro-Caribbean and Spanish linguistic origin help serve as the inspiration for both her research and her written works.
She is currently attaining her M.A. in English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Her Research focuses on finding the intersection of the literature of colonial/western assimilation, the psychological scope of depression and anxiety (sometimes registered as insanity) in the narrative illness of the stories, books, and poems of women writers, and finding ways to view the cultural impacts of the assimilative trauma experience through immigrant Latina/o literature so that we may better be prepared to intervene on behalf of those seen as the marginalized “other” in westernized societies.
African American Literature | Comparative Literature | Creative Writing | Critical Race Studies | Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Feminist Historiography | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Latina / Latino Literature | Literature of the Americas | Literature, Medicine and Culture | Poetry and Poetics | Women Writers
2021, BA English, Brenau University
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.
Master’s Merit Assistantship, University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, 2021 Outstanding Graduate of English, Brenau University, 2021
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
2022, MA English, Virginia Tech
2019, BA English, Virginia Commonwealth University
Kara Rush is a first-year Ph.D. student specializing in early modern literature. In particular, Rush is interested in how early modern author’s used nature, elements, and bodies to speak against political authority norms and to interrogate the parameters of British national identity. Other interests include adaptation studies, late medieval literature, post-colonial theory, and critical race studies.
British Literature from 1485 to 1660 (including Milton) | British Literature from its beginning to 1485 | Critical Race Studies | Drama | Early Modern Literature And Culture | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Film and Media Studies | Literature and History | Literature and Science | Post-Colonial Literature and Theory | Queer Theory | Women Writers
2020, MA English, Texas Christian University
2019, BA English, Texas Christian University
Andreley Bjelland is a PhD student and teaching fellow. Her research interests include crime, gender, and religion in the early modern period.
2022, BA English, University of Virginia
Lexi is a first-year PhD student interested in the reception and evolution of early Christian figures, texts, theologies, and tropes through the late Middle Ages into the Early Modern period in both literature and art. Her research interests also include the diverse roles of women in religious settings in these and the creation of apocryphon in these periods.
2020, BA English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne
Lara is a PhD student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature studying women writers and controversial texts of the Early Modern period. More specifically, she is interested in the ways that controversies and social norms outside of texts affect literary meaning within those texts. Other areas of interest include feminist theory, the occult in literature, Marxist theory, and classical Greek.
British Literature from 1485 to 1660 (including Milton) | Comparative Literature | Contemporary American Literature | Creative Writing | Digital Humanities | Digital Rhetorics | Early Modern Literature And Culture | Feminist Theory And Gender & Sexuality Studies | Film and Media Studies | Women Writers
2022, BA English, Meredith College
Krista Telford is PhD candidate in the English and Comparative Literature department at UNC Chapel Hill with a focus on medieval literature. She is interested in antifeminist representations of tropes and myths in medieval literature, the authors that lived and wrote contrary to such representations, and the ways Christian and pagan theology interact with portrayals of women in medieval literature. Krista received her BA in English from a historically women’s college and credits her unique undergraduate experience with sparking her interest in early women’s writing and feminist theory.
2020, MA English Literature, Virginia Tech
2015, BA English Literature and Education, Roanoke College
Anna Merz is a second year PhD student interested in literature of the long, undisciplined nineteenth century, Anna’s past research projects have centered literary depictions of Victorian education and childhood. Her early-stage dissertation research focuses on depictions and illustrations of “bad” children in Victorian literature, especially the ways in which “badness” as a label is often gendered and racialized.
At UNC, Anna works closely with the Jane Austen Summer Program, a public humanities outreach program, and in the William Blake Archive—a Digital Humanities project cataloguing Blake’s works.
British Literature from 1660 to 1789 | British Literature from 1789 to 1900 | Critical Race Studies | Depictions Of The Child | Digital Humanities | Literature and Education | Narrative Theory | Pedagogy | Post-Colonial Literature and Theory | Queer Theory | The Novel | Transatlantic Studies | Women Writers
