Graduate Student Research Interests
| Oriah Amit, University of California Los Angeles Dissertation: Tentatively titled "When Safes Stop Being Safe: Security and the Victorian Novel" Interests: The novel, crime and detective fiction, journalism and the periodical press, and representations of security in mid- to late-Victorian fiction. |
| Tali Banin, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Dissertation: "Posthuman Intimacy: The Nonhuman Turn in the Discourses of Love of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and Ford Madox Ford" Interests: Modernism, Animal Studies, Posthumanism, Philosophies of Love, Feminist Theory |
| Phillip Bax, Southern Methodist University Interests: Science and Technology Studies, Epistemology and the Novel |
| Katherine Bergevin, Columbia University Dissertation: "Clarissa's Belly: Fertility and Social Death in the Enlightenment" Interests: Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature in Britain and North America; enlightenment; coloniality; gender and sexuality; authors: John Locke, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen |
| Steph Buongiorno, Southern Methodist University |
| Rachel Cason, University of Mississippi |
| Chloe Coome, Ryerson University Dissertation: "Deconstructing Mob Mentality" Interests: I am interested in exploring how mob mentality, discrimination and the desire for a higher standard of living can lead to such immense violence as demonstrated through the Gordon Riots in Barnaby Rudge as well as how this manifests in modern times. I am also interested in supplementing my research with feminist scholars and perspective. |
| Lavaisa Ezell, Rutgers University |
| Hannah Fogarty, University of Buffalo |
| Mary Grant, Ryerson University Interests: Victorian Literature and Culture, Digital Humanities, Victorian Theatre, Shakespeare, Media Studies, Visual Culture |
| Laura Hayes, University of Iowa |
| Courtney Krolczyk, Rutgers University |
| Itar Mansour, University of Haifa Dissertation: "Binaries and Contaries in the Bible, Blake’s and Milton’s works" Interests: I have always been fascinated with the themes of binaries and contraries and self-fragmentation in different periods and fields. I have been interested in the Victorian Era, Children’s Literature, and William Shakespeare’s plays. But right now, I’m currently taking a closer look at Biblical studies, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and several works of William Blake’s. |
| Katja May, University of Kent Dissertation: "Everyday Textures: Practices of Needlework, Meaning-Making and Social Transformation" Interests: My interdisciplinary research project explores the relationship between personal and social transformation, social movements, politics and the role of everyday practices on the level of affect, knowledge and the phenomenology of making. My wider research interests include feminist theory, queer studies, material culture, affect, and activism. |
| Trevor McMichael, Indiana University Dissertation: "Revenge and British Romanticism" Interests: I am a Ph.D. Candidate who studies Romantic and Victorian literature, and my secondary research interests include (new) formalism, affect theory, gender studies, and queer theory. My dissertation examines the ways in which Romantic and some early Victorian writers, including Joanna Baillie, William Wordsworth, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and Robert Browning, theorize everyday forms of revenge as pleasurable and as possible to experience without recourse to conventional thematic and formal criteria like action, violence, and tragedy. |
| Megan O'Donnell, University of Delaware Interests: Megan's research interests include nineteenth-century speculative fiction, history of science, and ecocriticism. Her scholarship examines the relationship between nineteenth-century physics and speculative fiction to reveal how their convergence invites ecological perspectives. She is also interested in digital humanities and is currently collaborating on a project funded by the Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center using distant reading to analyze patterns between coral reef news media narratives, ecosystem state data, and conservation legislation over the past decade. |
| Sophia Panayiotou, Boston University Interests: 19th century novel, Transatlanticism, Social reform, Sentimentalism |
| Irena Rudiakov, University of Haifa Dissertation: "Fixed Fate, Free Will, Foreknowledge Absolute" – the Reading of John Milton's Paradise Lost as Family Drama Interests: I am currently working on my PhD dissertation which focuses on the psychological interpretation of Milton's Paradise Lost as a family drama. The main fields of my academic research are Early Modern poetry and Drama, English epics, religious poetry and poetry inspired by the Bible, with an emphasis on psychological analysis of the literary texts. |
| Olivia Rutigliano, Columbia University |
| Justin Thompson, University of Maryland |
| Michael Vignola, University of California Los Angeles Dissertation: "Reform Aesthetics in the Victorian Novel" Interests: 19th-Century Fiction, Political Reform, Time & Temporality |
| Hadas Wagner, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Interests: George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Feminist Criticism |
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