AY 2022 - 2023

PhD Candidates

Aleks Galus

• Program Area: Contemporary American Literature
• Research Interests: Haunted Houses, Ghosts, and Narrative Theory
• Degrees: BA in Art and English from Elmhurst College (2010)

Brittany Martin

• Program Area: Early Modern Literature
• Research Interests: Shakespeare, Ethics, Philosophy, and Drama
• Degrees: BA in English from Brigham University (2010); MA in English from Brigham University (2016)
• Dissertation Summary: 
  Brittany’s dissertation explores the intersection of modern psychology and Shakespeare. Specifically, she uses the lens of cognitive dissonance to help explain why Shakespeare’s characters act the way that they do. Cognitive dissonance refers to the internal conflict or anxiety resulting from inconsistencies between one's beliefs and one's actions or other beliefs. Shakespeare’s characters suffer from this dissonance (just as we all do) when they are faced with decisions to act. To relieve this dissonance, characters often act unethically. Thus, this dissertation seeks to explain the cognitive motivations for characters’ often reprehensible and indefensible behavior. 

Danielle Richards

• Program Area: Modern Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: British Modernism, Victorian Literature, Ecology, Object Oriented Ontology, Animal Studies, and Digital Humanities
• Degrees: BA in English Writing from Dordt University (2013); MA in Literature from Northern Arizona University (2016)
• Dissertation Summary: 
  Vital Environs: Ecologies of Modernism and the Nature Tradition follows the ways British authors around the turn of the 20th century modified existing perceptions about “Nature” and the role of humanity within Nature. The dissertation investigates how this new understanding of Nature changes the land rhetoric of rural England, London urbanity, the seaside, and the Lakes District through cultural artifacts and the writings of Richard Jefferies, Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, H. D., and Daphne du Maurier, among several others.

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Emily Datskou

• Pronouns: she, her, hers
• Program Area: Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: The Long Nineteenth Century, Victorian Novels, the Gothic, Queer Theory, Gender Studies, Modernism, and Digital Humanities
• Degrees: BA in English from American University (2009); MA in English from Boston University (2012); Concentration in WSGS from Loyola University Chicago (2016)

Emily L. Sharrett

• Pronouns: she, her, hers
• Program Area: Early Modern Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Intersections of animal studies, ecocriticism, and posthumanism with early modern literature that represents classical themes, figures, and settings; Shakespeare Studies; Performance Theory
• Degrees: BA in Political Science and English Literature from Miami University of Ohio (2016); MA in English from Loyola University Chicago (2017)
• Dissertation Summary:
  People of all social ranks in sixteenth-century London knew that the natural world mattered and was changing. In Eternal City, Earthly City: The Reach of Rome in Early Modern English Literature, Sharrett examines texts that consider a range of environmental issues including alarming climate shifts and a dearth of natural resources. The English used literary expression to reflect on and imagine anew relationships among human and nonhuman forces, relationships encoded with political and ethical import in religious texts and secular works since antiquity. Sharrett’s dissertation illuminates the role of classical thought in social ecology debated on the page and stage in early modern England.

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John C. Hawkins

• Pronouns: he, him, his
• Program Area: Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Literature
• Research Interests: US Fiction and Media, Animal Studies, and Women's and Gender Studies
• Degrees: BA in Preseminary Studies from Cedarville University (2008); MA in English from Liberty University (2013)

Krislyn Zhorne

• Pronouns: she, her, hers
• Program Area: Early Modern Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Textual Criticism, Editorial Theory, Paratextual Studies, and Book History
• Degrees: BA in English from the Unversity of North Carolina, Wilmington (2014); MA in English from Morehead State University (2017)
• Dissertation Summary: 
  My dissertation explores a specific type of early modern paratext that was directed at consumers and commonly labeled “To the Reader,” which arose after Caxton introduced England to the printing press in the late fifteenth century. Although largely untitled in the beginning, I argue that these devices provoked a burgeoning print tradition that diversified and eventually solidified by the early seventeenth century. I not only examine the prominent thematic concerns in paratexts of this nature but also attempt to establish a narrative about the evolution of this type of preface and postface in both epistle and verse form.  

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Ray Kietzman

• Pronouns: they, them, their
• Program Area: Nineteenth-Century Literature
• Research Interests: British and American Literature, Globalization, and Occult Studies
• Degrees: BA in Biblical Studies from Wheaton College (2014); MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University (2016); MA in English from Loyola University Chicago (2018)
• Dissertation Summary: 
  My dissertation is about the birth of American horror fiction in the long 19th century out of American Gothic fiction. I argue that horror, a genre marked by a fascination with themes of fear and revulsion, serves as a laboratory to explore the crises of categorization which erupt from the failure of Enlightenment ideals in the formation of American identity. My dissertation is primarily concerned with themes of gender and race, and with how the cluster of texts I read as early American horror fiction engage in the monsterization of the racial and gendered other.

Samantha Lepak

• Program Area: Modern and Contemporary Literature
• Research Interests: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Trauma Narratives
• Degrees: BA in English from the University of Minnesota, Duluth (2014); MA in English from the University of Minnesota, Duluth (2018)
• Dissertation Summary: 
  Modernism’s Mythic Mothers: Queering Motherhood Through Classical Matrilineage
  I position this dissertation at the intersection of modern/contemporary literature, queer/feminist theory, and classics in the hopes of better understanding the spaces in which they meet, engaging with writers from the late modernist era to the present to highlight the connections between theories, themes, and practices of queerness from the modernists forward.  Using the work of H.D. and writers following in her footsteps, I argue that exploring adaptations of Greek classics written primarily by female and gender-variant authors from the modernist era forward illuminates the extent to which the classics enables writers to think queerly.  I argue instead for a palimpsestic model of lineage that follows women and mothers in order to queer the discourse with a subverted temporal perspective and focus.

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Wren Romero

• Program Area: Modern and Contemporary American Literature
• Research Interests: Alternative Archives, Spectrality, Feminist Studies, and Voices of Women of Color
• Degrees: BA in English from Regis University (2015); BA in Peace and Justice Studies from Regis University (2015); MA in English from Loyola University Chicago (2017)
• Dissertation Summary: 
  My dissertation examines ghosts in 20th and 21st century multi-ethnic American literature, specifically analyzing how ghosts work as alternative memory-keepers outside traditional historiographical paradigms. I contend that, as critical metaphors, ghosts perform an important task of expanding our ideas of permanence, authority, and legibility in the construction of historical narratives. Some of the authors featured in my dissertation are Toni Morrison, Jesmyn Ward, Ruth Ozeki, and Tommy Orange. 

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Xiamara Hohman

• Program Area: Modern Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century American Poetry, Transnational Theory, American Poetry in China, and Chinese-American Literature
• Degrees: BA in English from the University of Dayton (2008); MA in English from the University of Dayton (2010)
• Dissertation Summary: 
  In my dissertation, “China-making”: American Poetry and Chinese Mythology, I argue that by appropriating Chinese mythologies, U.S. writers and artists have colonized the imaginations of a generation of Americans and that we can see this payout in U.S. communities of Chinese immigrants, geopolitical relations, and literary trends. As I am defining it, a myth is a narrative that gives meaning to a lived experience. It explains what we commemorate and worship and renders meaningful both celebration and life. In the first half of my dissertation, I discuss the ways in which Chinese myths and cultural practices have been appropriated by American poets and artists of non-Chinese descent in order to contend with normative constructions of gender and femininity and racism against Black Americans. I then pivot to the ways in which American poets’ engagement with East Asian spiritual practices produced a cognitive disconnect that allowed the American readership to abstract itself from the plight of Chinese immigrants to the United States, even as it produced an interest in the literature, religion, and mythology of classical China.

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PhD Students

Abigail Palmisano

• Program Area: Medieval Literature
• Research Interests: Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Angelology and Hagiography, Cognition, and Old English Language and Literature
• Degrees: BA in English from Taylor University (2017); MA in English from Illinois State University (2019)

Anthony Shoplik

• Program Area: Modern and Contemporary American Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Modernism, Literature and Identity, and Poetry and Poetics
• Degrees: BA in English from John Carroll University (2018); MA in English from Loyola University Chicago (2019)

Courtney Walton

• Program Area: Modern Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Twentieth-Century African American Literature, Critical Race Theory, and Critical Whiteness Studies
• Degrees: BA in English and Secondary Education from Eastern Illinois University (2015); MA in English from Eastern Illinois University (2019)

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Emma Horst

• Pronouns: she, her, hers
• Program Area: Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Transatlantic Studies, Aesthetics, Sentimentalism, Pre-Raphaelite Art, Sensation Fiction, and Aestheticism
• Degrees: BA in English and Secondary Education from Loras College (2016); MA in English from Loyola University Chicago (2020)

Fatima Hasnain

• Program Area: Modern Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Memory Studies, Trauma Theory, Gender Studies, African-American Literature, and South Asian Literature
• Degrees: MA in English from University of the Punjab (2017); MPhil in English from Forman Christian College (A Chartered University) (2019)

Jack O'Briant

• Program Area: Modern Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Contemporary Literature, and Religion and Secularity in Modernist and Postmodern Fiction
• Degrees: BA in Christian Studies from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor (2014); MA in English from Azusa Pacific University (2019)

Joe Hansen

• Pronouns: he, him, his
• Program Area: Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Queer Theory, the Gothic, and Ecogothic
• Degrees: BA in English with a Creative Writing emphasis from Carthage College (2020); MA in English from Loyola University Chicago (2021)

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Jonathan Chang

• Program Area: Modern Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Modernism(s) and Modernity, Poetry and Poetics, Cognitive Narratology, and Memory Studies
• Degrees: BA in English and Philosophy from the National Chengchi University (2016); MA in English Literature from the National Taiwan Normal University (2019)

Nicole Salama

• Program Area: Modern Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Poetry and Poetics, Trauma Theory, Childhood Studies, and Textual Criticism
• Degrees: BA in English, Business, and Accounting from Baylor University (2021); MA in English from Loyola University Chicago (2022)

Victoria O'Dea

• Pronouns: she, her, hers
• Program Area: Modern Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Affect Theory, Citizenship Studies, Queer Theory, Transatlantic Studies, Temporality, Textual Studies, and Transnational Literatures
• Degrees: BA in English and History from the University of Virginia (2011); MA in English from University College London (2012)

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Will Sikich

• Pronouns: he, him, his
• Program Area: Contemporary Literature
• Research Interests: Fantasy, Medieval Folklore, Neopaganism, Occult Studies, and Film
• Degrees: BA in English and Creative Writing from Augustana College (2021); MA in English from Loyola University Chicago (2022)

MA/PhD Students

Dan Cheung

• Program Area: Modern and Contemporary American Literature
• Research Interests: Narratology, Modernist and Post-Modern Fiction, and Theory of the Novel
• Degrees: BA in English from Allegheny College (2017); MFA in Fiction from the University of Oregon (2022)

Lorrayne Broach

• Program Area: Modern Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Textual Studies, Digital Humanities, Genre Studies, and Literary Architecture
• Degrees: BA in English and Creative Writing from State University of New York at Oswego (2019)

Yasmeen Ayoub

• Program Area: Modern Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Temporality and Narrative Studies, the Southern Gothic, African American Literature, Cultural Studies, Postmodernism, and Critical Theory
• Degrees: BA in English Literature and Liberal Studies from Portland State University (2019)

MA Students

Alex Johnson

• Program Area: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature
• Research Interests: African American Literature, Critical Race Theory, and Twentieth-Century Authors such as Sylvia Path, Zora Neale Hurston, and Maya Angelou
• Degrees: BA in English Education from Millikin University (2019)

Camryn Brown

• Pronouns: she, her, hers
• Program Area: Nineteenth-Century Literary; Women's and Gender Studies
• Research Interests: Feminist Studies, Ecopoetics, Religion in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, and the Gothic
• Degrees: BA in Interdisciplinary Studies with emphasis on English, Communication, and Biblical Studies from Ouachita Baptist University (2016)

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Greg Frijia

• Pronouns: he, him, his
• Program Area: Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Modernism, Postmodernism, Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction, and Queer Theory
• Degrees: BA in English: Creative Writing and Philosophy from Loyola University Chicago (2022) 

Harper Stewart

• Program Area: Undecided
• Research Interests: Environmental Humanities, Proto-Feminist Authors in the Renaissance, Poetics, and Identity Theory
• Degrees: BA in English from Loyola University Chicago (expected May 2023)

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Maddie Belland

• Program Area: Undecided
• Research Interests: Gender Studies, Feminist Philosophy, and Poetry and Poetics
• Degrees: BA in English and Philosophy from Loyola University Chicago (expected May 2023) 

Mads Golding

• Pronouns: she, her, they, them
• Program Area: Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: British and Gothic Literature, Jewish Diaspora, Feminism, Theater, and Early Modern Drama
• Degrees: BA in English and Drama from the University of Bristol (2015) 

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Olivia Walliser

• Program Area: Undecided
• Research Interests: Poetry, Post-Colonial Theory, Feminist Studies, Jane Austen, and Toni Morrison
• Degrees: BA in German and English Language and Literature from University of Basel (2021)

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Samantha Chipman

• Pronouns: she, her, hers
• Program Area: Undecided
• Research Interests: Bioethics and Health/Medical Humanities, Disability Studies, Death and Dying, Feminist Theory, Digital Humanities, and Chinese Language and Culture
• Degrees: BA in English with Minors in Philosophy and Chinese from Loyola University Chicago (2022)

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Sandra Gonzalez

• Pronouns: she, her, hers
• Program Area: Medieval and Renaissance Literature; Nineteenth-Century Studies
• Research Interests: Romanticism, Gothic Novels, Literature and Medicine, Occult Studies, Authors such as John Milton, Christopher Marlowe, Jane Austen, and Mary Shelley, and Poets such as William Blake, John Keats, and Byron
• Degrees: AA in English from San Antonio College (2019); BA in English from Loyola University Chicago (2022)

Sarah Pobuda

• Pronouns: she, her, hers
• Program Area: Nineteeth-Century Literature and Culture
• Research Interests: Poetry, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Female Authorship, Feminist Literary Theory, Historical Literary Theory, and Romanticism
• Degrees: BA in English from Kalamazoo College (2019); M.Ed from University of Florida (2020); MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing from DePaul University (2022)

Sara Subotić

• Program Area: Medieval and Renaissance Literature
• Research Interests: Chivalric Romance, Shakespeare, Ancient Philosophy (particularly Platonism and Renaissance Neoplatonism), Occult Studies, and Political Theory
• Degree: BA in English and Philosophy with a Minor in Political Science from Loyola University Chicago (expected May 2023)