Undergraduate Student Spotlight

Student Spotlight: Luna Hou
Meet Luna Hou, ECL major and winner of the competitive One Teen Story fiction contest.

Student Spotlight: Ana Hoppert
Meet Ana Hoppert, a senior ECL major focusing on media production. Hoppert is the president of the Carolina Film Association and an editor for Aspect.

Student Spotlight: Luke Morton
Meet Luke Morton, an English and Comparative Literature and Classics double major who published an article in the latest edition of UNC’s Journal of Undergraduate Research (JOURney) and recently presented for the Johns Hopkins Richard Macksey Undergraduate Humanities Research Symposium.

Student Spotlight: Elena Carabeau
Meet junior Elena Carabeau, an ECL major and Spanish and Studio Arts double minor who recently began interning with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

DOECL Undergrad Spotlight by UNC Discover
Check out the spotlight on recent DOECL grad Sonny Griffith!

2023 ECL Senior Honors Thesis Students
Congratulations to this year’s Senior Honors Thesis students!

Honors Fiction Class of 2023
Congrats to the Senior Honors Fiction Thesis students graduating this May! They will be reading from their works on April 17-18.

Alumnus Spotlight: Gavin Whitehead
Meet DOECL Alumnus Gavin Whitehead! Gavin is the host of the podcast The Art of Crime.

Student Spotlight: Drew Jones
Meet Drew Jones, a recent ECL graduate that has found meaningful ways to incorporate his skills as an English major into his career as an insurance agent.

Undergraduate Victoria Wlosok to Publish Novel
Sophomore Victoria Wlosok will be publishing her debut novel in 2023. “How to Find a Missing Girl,” is a sapphic YA thriller that follows amateur teenage detective Iris Blackthorn as she investigates the disappearance of her cheerleader ex-girlfriend—who also happens to be the creator of a notorious local true-crime podcast about Iris’s missing older sister.

Student Spotlight: Denise Stroud
Meet Denise Stroud, who recently won the spring 2022 Bland Simpson writing award!

Student Spotlight: Chelsea Deitelzweig
Meet Chelsea Deitelzweig, a pre-med English major and Morehead-Cain Scholar!

Celebrating Honors Thesis Class of 2022
Congratulations to all the ECL seniors who completed an Honors Thesis in the Department this year!

Student Spotlight: Camille DiBenedetto
“I like writing about things that are actually happening in the world that I feel are relevant. Nonfiction can actually be super interesting if you tell the story the right way.”

Student Spotlight: Latonya Dalton
As we continue to highlight the wide array of students in the DOECL, we’re turning our attention to non-traditional student Latonya Dalton,

Luisa Peñaflor wins Thomas Wolfe Scholarship
Congratulations to Peñaflor on being awarded the Thomas Wolfe Scholarship for her literary promise!

Student Spotlight: Jennings Dixon
Meet Jennings Dixon, senior double major in political science and ECL!

Congratulations 2021 Undergraduate Honors Students
Congratulations to the students who completed honors theses during Spring 2021!

Student Spotlight: Gwendalyn Flick
Gwendalyn Flick, a double major in English and Business Administration, values the interdisciplinary focus of her classes. “I feel so lucky that I am able to be a part of two programs that see the value in cross-departmental learning,” she says.

Student Spotlight: Rachel Sauls
“My experience with literature has been a willingness to sit in the discomfort of someone else’s experience… Reading and literature have helped me to seek out different ways that people contextualize and make meaning from their experiences.”

Student Spotlight: Alexis Dumain
Meet Alexis Dumain, Psychology and English and Comparative Literature double major!

Student Spotlight: Grace Morse
“It was very crucial for me to remember who I was as a writer, who I am as a person, where I want to go, who I’m looking to reach with my work—and I think that was something that I got better at understanding each English class I took.”

Student Spotlight: Laura Crook
“I’ve honestly loved every single English class I’ve taken at Carolina.”

Student Spotlight: Leticia Tuset
Meet Leticia Tuset, ECL junior, Institute for the Environment intern, and fiction editor at Arts Everywhere!

Student Spotlight: Josh Massey
Meet Josh Massey, ECL and American Studies double major and Beinecke Scholar!

Student Spotlight: Garland Rieman
Meet Garland Rieman, ECL senior and Jane Austen Summer Program intern!

Student Spotlight: Keely Hendricks
Meet Keely Hendricks, an ECL and French and Francophone Studies double major (class of 2020) who will be teaching English in Senegal thanks to an English Teaching Assistantship through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.

Celebrating Honors Thesis Students
With all that has been happening this semester, we wanted to make sure that we took a moment to give credit to ECL’s amazing honors thesis students.

Student Spotlight: Elliot Melfi
Meet Elliot Melfi, the Game Studies Specialist Intern for Digital Literacy as part of the new Greenlaw Gameroom Initiative!

Student Spotlight: Joi Dunston
Can the world of video games connect to the world of ECL? As Joi Dunston’s story demonstrates, a humanistic perspective can contribute quite a lot to the world of video games and eSports.

Student Spotlight: Sophia Purut
Meet Sophia Purut, this week’s undergraduate student spotlight! Sophia interned for W. W. Norton over the summer.

Student Spotlight: Tiffany Tran
Meet Tiffany Tran, this week’s undergraduate student spotlight! “Picking up the ECL minor helped me find new enjoyments while also improving skills that I believe are essential!”

Student Spotlight: Lydia Thompson
ECL is taking Lydia Thompson to the Happiest Place on Earth, other than Greenlaw Hall! Not only is Lydia a great student, one of the 2018-2019 “Top Ten Scholar Athletes,” but she is also now an intern at Walt Disney World!

Student Spotlight: Annabel Chung
Meet Annabel Chung, ECL and Chemistry double major and Fulbright award winner!

Student Spotlight: Andreamarie Efthymiou
Andreamarie Efthymiou, an undergraduate who had originally placed herself on the pre-med track, quickly found herself more at home in the English and Comparative Literature Department than anywhere else.

Student Spotlight: Isabella St. Onge
Isabella St. Onge, a double ECL and theatre major, demonstrates the perfect example of one student finding a way to connect two seemingly disengaged topics for the benefit of both fields.

Student Spotlight: Chris Combemale
Chris Combemale, an ECL major who consistently works in the Department of Dramatic Art here on campus, discusses how his English studies have crossed disciplines to equip him with the fundamental skills he needs to succeed.

Student Spotlight: Emily Long
Emily Long, an English and Biology double major with a minor in Medicine, Literature and Culture, offers a look at how one student has combined the two fields of study that interest her most— STEM and literature.

Student Spotlight: Danielle Kruchten
Danielle Kruchten, a double major in English and History, reveals how different majors play to each other’s strengths and can lay the fundamental groundwork for her future plans of attending law school.

Student Spotlight: Kendrel Cabarrus
For Kendrel Cabarrus, being an ECL major not only provided him with the fundamental skills he was looking for but also represented the best option in terms of diversity and flexibility in a job market that is ever changing.

Student Spotlight: Julia Whitten
Julia Whitten, a double major in English and Spanish here at UNC, demonstrates the perfect example of a student who never expected to major in the Department, but naturally found her way.