Degrees
2020, BA English, Trinity College Dublin
Bio
Izzy (they/them) is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. They study the relationship between the soul and body in medieval literary, aesthetic, and dramatic representations of Creation. Their dissertation, Made A Living Soul: Genesis and the Creation of the Soul in Medieval Devotional and Mystic Literature examines ideas of the soul as developed in early medieval Scholastic exegesis, and how these understandings of the soul are complicated and affirmed in medieval devotional and mystic texts.
In their research on the medieval soul and body, Izzy examines the language used to structure the corporeal, physical self and the sensing, feeling, and cognative self alongside theories of queer embodiment, affect, and representations.
Their broader interests include manuscript studies, medieval philosophy and theology, poetics, and literary criticism.
Publications:
With H.M. Cushman “Bodies on Display” in A Cultural History of Trans Lives in the Middle Ages (300-1445). Bloomsbury. Forthcoming.
Teaching Awards
Latina/o Studies Teaching Fellowship, UNC Latina/o Studies Program, 2022
Awards
Donald Howard Travel Scholarship, New Chaucer Society, 2024
Trans Travel Fund, Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, 2023
CARA Summer Scholarship, Medieval Academy of America, 2022
Internal:
Graduate Student Excellence Award, UNC Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2024
Joseph Breen Award, UNC-Chapel Hill Dept. of English & Comparative Literature, 2023
Research Grant, UNC-Chapel Hill Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2023
Travel Award, UNC-Chapel Hill Graduate and Professional Student Government, 2023
Travel Grant, UNC-Chapel Hill Dept. of English & Comparative Literature, 2022, 2024
First Class Honours in English Studies, Trinity College Dublin, 2020