Richard Allberry

Graduate Student

• rallberr@indiana.edu

Richard Allberry is a PhD student studying Victorian literature and culture. Before joining the graduate program at IU, he studied English at the Community College of Rhode Island and the University of Rhode Island. His primary research interests are cultural attitudes surrounding and literary representations of gambling in the Victorian novel and evolutionary theory's influence on novelistic form. His dissertation aims at once to account for the ostensible Victorian aversion to and marginalization of gambling through contemporaneous cultural anxieties surrounding changing, slippery conceptions of causality, and to examine the formal affordances these conceptions made available to novelists such as George Gissing, Thomas Hardy, and George Eliot. 

Amber Alsaigh

Graduate Student

• amalsa@iu.edu

Amber Alsaigh is a Literature M.A./Ph.D. student with interests in Victorian literature, women writers, and the transatlantic nineteenth century. Her work is concerned especially with women’s vocality as a mechanism for female agency and creative authority. Prior to studying at IU, she received her B.A. in English from Fairfield University.

Seungmin Baek

• seunbaek@iu.edu

Seungmin is a PhD student studying British Romantic poetry and particularly its interaction with its contemporary discourses in the "life sciences." While her primary research interest lies in the Romantic period, she is more broadly interested in how literature has affected or have been affected by various scientific discoveries in the early modern period. She would like her research to shed light on how bodily feelings have and continue to relate to cognition, and furthermore to both the reception and production of literature. She holds a BA and MA in English from Yonsei University.

Shataparni (Titir) Bhattacharya

Graduate Student

• shabhat@iu.edu

My preferred name is Titir and I'm a 3rd year PhD student in Literature. My pronouns are she/they. I work on Restoration and Eighteenth Century drama, with a focus on women's theatrical collaborations, their personal and professional networks, and their negotiation of a political subjectivity and identity in play-texts and on stage. I am also interested in how inherited histories contribute to our critical perceptions of early theatre women, and how hegemonic structures serve to create, obfuscate or maintain certain types of attitudes, assumptions and binaries pertaining to these early female theatre professionals.I also serve as the International Student Liason on GSAC with the aim of fostering a culture of mutual collaboration and community among the international grad students in the department, ensuring smooth transitional processes for incoming international grad students and securing more equitable access to insitutional resources.

Amber Bowes

Graduate Student

• arbowes@iu.edu

Amber Bowes is a PhD student at IUB, where she also works in reference for special collections at the Lilly Library. She is currently one of two graduate Book Review Editors for Victorian Studies.

Amber studies nineteenth-century literature and culture, and is especially interested in masculinity and book history. Her most recent public scholarship project, a virtual map of nightlife in 1840’s London, is available online here: https://arcg.is/zCmr5.

Anne Boylan

Graduate Student

• anboylan@iu.edu

Anne Boylan is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in Victorian literature with interests in gender, sexuality, and cultural studies. She is currently working on a dissertation on manifestations of liberal gender ideology in Victorian literature and its persistence in Western neoliberal feminism. She is currently managing editor of Victorian Studies and has worked as manuscript assistant at the Lilly Library since 2018. She received a B.A. from Bard College in 2013 and before coming to IU she was marketing manager for Boston Review.

Martha Clare Brinkman

Graduate Student

• mcbrinkm@iu.edu

Clare Brinkman is an English Literature PhD student. She focuses primarily on Victorian Literature, with a particular interest in the poetry of Robert Browning. Her general interests include religion, morality, and feminist criticism. Prior to attending IU, she earned her BA in English, with minors in Creative Writing and Medieval/Early Modern Studies, from Florida Gulf Coast University and her MA in English from the University of Denver.

Hrishita Chatterjee

Graduate Student

• hchatte@iu.edu

Hrishita is a Literature PhD student with contemporary autobiographical studies as her prime focus. She is interested in mapping how transgender identities are shaped through social performances and visible spaces (like pride walks and nightclubs) that are reflected in the autobiographies that they write. She delves into the cultural spectrum of "desire" and the rudiments of "life-worlds" of the transgender communities and in the grand scheme of her research would want to make a paradigm shift from mainstream autobiographies and probe into the undocumented life narratives of the subaltern queer. Before joining Indiana University, Bloomington, Hrishita completed her B.A in English from Lady Brabourne College in Kolkata, India and her M.A in Literatures in English from The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. Hrishita is an Associate Instructor of Composition at IU, Bloomington and is an ardent reader of postcolonial literature of the Indian diaspora. Some of her favorite authors are Jhumpa Lahiri, Ania Loomba, Mahashweta Devi and Amrita Pritam. During her free time, Hrishita scribbles verses and poems on paper that she calls "artistic rants".

Sam Chirtel

Graduate Student

• schirtel@iu.edu

Sam is an MA/PhD student, science fiction writer, and former biophyicist. His research will probably focus on late twentieth century and early twenty-first century British and American science fiction, particularly space-noir, the Singulatiy, and cosmic horror, but who can predict the future? He is also developing an interest in Victorian Spiritualism to round things out. Before coming to IU, Sam received a B.A. in Biophysics from The John Hopkins University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from The University of Colorado Boulder. A lifelong animal lover, Sam dreams about the giant squid, misses the moose in Colorado, and is the proud parent of a three-year-old American Bulldog named Panda Bear. 

Kyung Cho

Graduate Student

• kyuncho@iu.edu

Kyung Cho is an early modernist and a Ph.D. student in Literature at IU. Before studying at IU, she earned her B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from Ewha Womans University in South Korea. Her primary research focuses on English Renaissance literature, with particular emphasis on themes related to race, postcolonialism, and body politics. 

Abby Clayton

Graduate Student

• aclayto@iu.edu

Abby Clayton is a PhD candidate in English Literature. Her dissertation project examines the ways in which nineteenth-century abolition activism was fueled by a transatlantic media exchange network and its multidimensional revisions of nationalist ideals. She has been the recipient of research fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the University of Manchester in the UK, and the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals. She has presented her work at conferences across the US and UK, and her work on nineteenth-century humbugs has been published Victorian Review (Fall 2023).

Thade Jude Correa

Graduate Student

• tcorrea@iu.edu

My scholarly interests are centered on modern/contemporary poetry and poetics, with emphases on poetic thought, literature and cognition / embodiment, and the interrelationships among the arts and critical theory. I am also a writer--of poetry, primarily--and a musician and composer. A previous graduate of IU Bloomington (B.A. in English & music, 2006) as well as University of Chicago (M.A., 2010) and University of Notre Dame (M.F.A. in Creative Writing / Poetry, 2013), I taught English classes at IU Northwest in Gary in addition to private music lessons before returning to IUB's English Department in 2021. 

Raheem Elmore

Graduate Student

• rtelmore@iu.edu

I am a dual Ph.D. student in the departments of English and African American and African Diaspora Studies. I specialize in African American Literature and 20^th and 21^st century American Literature. I received my B.A. in English: Pre-Education from the Ohio State University and my M.A. in English: Teaching from the University of Dayton. I am a former k-12 educator. My research is interested in examining relationships between and developments in multicultural and Black-centered educational models. I am interested in understanding how literature choices, pedagogical approaches, and literary interpretations influence the teaching and learning experiences of educators and students in the English and Language Arts classrooms at k-12 schools that implement culturally sustaining and multicultural pedagogies.   

Zachary Engledow

Graduate Student

• zacclift@iu.edu

Zachary Engledow is a native of Alabama where he received an Honors B.A. in English Literature from the University of Montevallo. While at Montevallo, he completed an Honors thesis exploring moments of beheading, penetration, and castration as queer, suggesting that the medieval romance is in itself a queer genre. He is a medievalist in the M.A./Ph.D. program and his research interests include: medieval romance, queer theory/history, and the relationship between modern queer identity and the medieval past. He is also interested in exploring Germanic and North Sea literature and culture in relation to queerness and transmission. 

Maggie Ephraim

Graduate Student

• mephraim@iu.edu

Maggie Ephraim’s research focuses on women who resist gender roles and social convention in literature of the British Isles. She is an English Literature Ph.D. student who earned her B.A. in English from DePauw University in 2021, where she also completed a minor in Ancient Greek. Maggie’s current research focuses on how stories change—or don’t change—through translation, time period, and adaption. 

Samuel Evola

Graduate Student

• sevola@iu.edu

Samuel Evola is a PhD candidate studying English and cognitive science. He is broadly interested in the question of how narratives influence readers in the real world. His dissertation uses empirical methods typical of the social sciences to analyze the ways that character and plot are negotiated by readers of Victorian multiplot fiction. Other projects include examining the role of foreshadowing in shaping the reading experience and investigating how readers consider multiple, incompatible possibilities while reading. A former high school teacher, he has an abiding interest in curriculum and pedagogy, especially interdisciplinary approaches and those that situate the unique contributions of the humanities within a broader educational context.

Renissa Gannie

Graduate Student

• rrgannie@iu.edu

Renissa R. Gannie earned her BA in English Literature and distinction in History from the University of Denver. She continued her studies at the same university, obtaining her MA in English Literature, focusing on Native American Studies. Renissa is a Ph.D. student at Indiana University studying Victorian literature. She focuses on blending British and Caribbean literature of the century and breaking down traditional views of gender, race, and colonialism.

Maggie Gilchrist

Graduate Student

• magilch@iu.edu

Maggie Gilchrist is a PhD student specializing in late medieval literature. Her work primarily deals with representations of death and the (un)dead, especially with regards to the ways in which dead and dying bodies convey meaning to and for the living​. In addition, her research explores the corpse as a site for working through both personal and cultural traumas.  

Lindsay Gill

Graduate Student

• lg8@iu.edu

Lindsay Gill is a PhD student in English and Medieval Literature. She has an MLitt from the University of St Andrews in Medieval English, after which she taught at Tougaloo College. She is interested in how language, literature, and material objects (such as manuscripts) develop out of cultural and historical forces across a dynamic space and time. Her research critically examines intersections and mutuality through feminist, post-colonial, and materialist theory. She likes long walks and a spontaneous road trip. 

Tess Given

Graduate Student

• tjgiven@iu.edu

Tess J Given is a PhD student of English literature and associate composition instructor. They graduated Grinnell College with a BA in Biology and English, and have a MA from the University of Kentucky in English. They focus on cyborg studies of the transatlantic eighteenth century and contemporary SF genre, focusing on reproduction and futurity through the lens of queer theory, new materialisms, and trans- and post-humanisms. They try to bridge contemporary theoretical conversations with texts across their archive, and with their pedagogical practice. 

Emma Gorman

• epgorman@iu.edu

Emma Gorman is an MA/PhD student from Arlington, VA specializing in Medieval and Renaissance literature. Her research interests include Biblical literature and translation, Old English poetry, Milton, and the history of the book. She is especially fascinated by the ways in which Biblical translation and creative reimagining may become intertwined. Before coming to IU, she received her BA in English and Music from the University of Virginia.

Helen Gunn

Graduate Student

• gunnhe@iu.edu

Helen Gunn is an English PhD student specializing in modern drama. Her interests include theories of temporality, language, and trauma, along with playwrights such as Beckett and Churchill. Before attending IU, she earned her BA from Rice University and her MA from Boston College. 

Milo Hicks

Graduate Student

• milohick@iu.edu

Milo Murphy Hicks is a PhD candidate in English, with a minor in Cognitive Science, who studies 20th and 21st century writing that exists at the limits of genre. Their master’s work at McGill University was in British modernism but has recently shifted to a Post45 American context with the stories of Diane Williams and other writers influenced by Gordon Lish. Milo's research is informed by the phenomenology of reading; consciousness, affect, perception, and sensation; philosophies of mind, language, and embodiment; the unit of the sentence in short stories; as well as formal experimentation.​ Milo is also part of Fritz Breithaupt's Experimental Humanities Lab.

Benjamin Hiskes

Graduate Student

• bhiskes@iu.edu

Ben Hiskes is a joint PhD student in English literature and Cognitive Science. His research focuses on the seventeenth century, particularly on wonder as both a historical concept and cognitive process. Currently, he is trying to connect renaissance poetry and modern models of creativity and curiosity to come to ecological and historically-relevant understandings of the processes of discovery and invention. He is part of the Experimental Humanities Lab at Indiana University, where he conducts research on the psychology of narrative. 

Benjamin Hoover

Graduate Student

• bhhoover@iu.edu

Ben Hoover is a PhD student in English at Indiana University, Bloomington, with degrees in Classics and Art History (BA) and English (MA). His research focuses on how late medieval writers, particularly of drama and performance texts, receive and reckon with a diverse array of literary forms. Such adaptive acts demonstrate how performance fashions agential space, while varyingly revealing resistance to or complicity in forms of structural inequality and violence. 

Christina Irmen

• cirmen@iu.edu

Christina is a Literature PhD student focusing primarily on 20th century American literature and Reception Theory/the Phenomenology of forms. Her research interests center on adaptations of canonical literature, from page to stage and screen, with a particular affinity for The Great Gatsby. Prior to IU, Christina received an MA in Theatre & Performance Studies from Washington University and a BA in English from University of Pennsylvania.

Daeun Kim

Graduate Student

• dki2@iu.edu

Daeun Kim is a Ph.D. student in English at Indiana University Bloomington. Her research interests lie in British Romanticism poetry and contemporary comics and graphic novels. She focuses on comprehending Romantic literature from postsecular and feminist theological perspectives. She is also searching for human and nonhuman solidarity Romantic writers imagine by recognizing mutual recognition and interdependence of marginalized beings on earth, in which she finds a space for new materialistic thinking. For South Korea’s newspaper Women’s News, Daeun writes monthly feminist critiques of Korean women artists’ webtoons (online comics) on various topics, including woman labor, domestic violence, lesbian desire, religion, colonialism, veganism, and more.

Hoi Na Stephanie Kung

Graduate Student

• hkung@indiana.edu

My research examines the intersections between embodiment and citizenship in twentieth-century century African American and Asian American literature. Drawing upon affect theory, theory of the senses and critical race theory, I investigate the ways in which embodied subjects maintain desire, attachment, and sense of belonging to the national body-politic in the face of ongoing material, political, and psychic exclusion. I am also interested in considering alternative models of citizenship that do not deny and disavow embodied existence, but turn to embodied acts as contestations of exclusion. My research also asks after the political significance of American ethnic texts beyond their representative value. To this end, I attend to ethnic texts with modernist and postmodernist aesthetics in order to explore how the materiality of sights and sounds of a text can express political agency and resistance.

Ryan Lally

Graduate Student

• rlally@iu.edu

I am a Literature M.A./Ph.D. student with a B.A. in English from Samford University. My research interests include genre conventions in twentieth century American poetry, with a particular focus on odes. Prior to enrolling at IU, I was a Writing Coach and developmental English lab instructor at Southern Union State Community College in Opelika, Alabama.  

Yi-Chen Andrea Lay

Graduate Student

• yilay@iu.edu

Yi-Chen Andrea Lay is a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature with a minor in Victorian Studies. As a Victorianist, she is primarily interested in material culture, the British Empire, formation of national and imperial identities, and gender. Her dissertation project, engaging with food studies and scholarship on the embodied British Empire, explores late-nineteenth-century imaginations of the imperial body through the lens of alimentary practices. Prior to studying at IU, she received a B.A. and an M.A. in Foreign Languages and Literatures from National Taiwan University. 

Sarah Le

Graduate Student

• hble@indiana.edu

I focus primarily on 16th and 17th century British drama and poetry, with emphasis on texts that deal with intersecting issues of colonialism, race, gender/sexuality, subjecthood, power, and agency. I am also interested in pop culture Shakespeare and theories of adaptation, cultural commodities, performance, and visual culture.

Evan Leake

Graduate Student

• ejleake@iu.edu

Evan Leake is a PhD candidate specializing in nineteenth century American literature. He is primarily interested in the relationship between literature, photography, and collective memory. His dissertation examines how literary and visual representations of the U.S. Civil War shaped understandings of national identity and democratic citizenship in the postbellum period and subsequently laid the ideological foundations for imperialist interventions in Cuba and the Philippines. He also serves as the Book Review Editor at Victorian Studies. Prior to coming to IU, Evan received his B.S. from West Point.

Rebekah Leake

• rlippens@iu.edu

Rebekah Leake is a medievalist interested in late medieval hagiography, manuscript culture, and childbirth rituals. Before coming to IU, she received an MPhil in medieval literature from the University of Cambridge and a BA in English and Religious Studies from the University of Chicago. Rebekah is also the Lead Academic Advisor for the Media School.

Haein Lee

• hl135@iu.edu

Haein Lee is a Ph.D. student in English at Indiana University Bloomington. Her current research focuses on contemporary American poetry, with a particular interest in ecopoetry, ecocriticism, and environmental philosophy. Her research seeks to examine how literature, especially poetry, can serve as a medium for conceptualizing anti-dualistic and non-binary human and non-human relationships. She is also interested in anti-pastoral and anti-picturesque aesthetics, particularly those involving dead and rotting bodies, to better understand these complex human-non-human relationships. Before joining IU, she earned her B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from Chung-Ang University, South Korea.

Hoon Lee

Graduate Student

• jle30@iu.edu

Hoon Lee is a PhD candidate in English and Associate Instructor at Indiana University Bloomington. His focus is contemporary American poetry, poetry and institution, lyric theory, popular music, and sound studies. He is specifically interested in how poetry and institution—especially higher education—not only go against but often necessitate each other and how their fraught interface creates spatial and temporal alterity, offering us alternative forms of living and survival. He holds a BA in English Education and an MA in English Literature, both from Seoul National University, South Korea.

Sara Loy

Graduate Student

• sarloy@iu.edu

Sara Loy is a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature with a minor in Rhetoric/Composition. A Victorianist, her dissertation is titled, “Practice Imperfect: Agential Repetition in the Golden Age of Children’s Literature” and examines the ways in which nineteenth-century childhood agency was figured as an ongoing, constitutive act developed through play. She is currently teaching "Think of the Children! Banned Books and Youth Activism." In her time at Indiana University, she has been Book Review Editor for Victorian Studies and an associate instructor of composition. Further interests include vampires and popular culture, writing pedagogy, and feminist theory.

John Manley

Graduate Student

• jomanley@iu.edu

I'm a doctoral candidate in English at IU-Bloomington. Though my studies primarily center on modern/contemporary poetry and poetics, I also read and write about the relationship between rhetoric and critical theory, the history of Anglo-American philosophy, and narratology. Before arriving at IU, I took an MA in English Literature at Marquette University (2015). My hobbies include long walks in the snow, unnecessarily complex board games, and pick-up hockey. 

Carolyn Marino

Graduate Student

• capmarin@iu.edu

Carolyn Marino is an English Literature M.A./Ph.D. student and the 2020-2021 Renaissance Studies fellow. Prior to attending IU Bloomington, she earned her B.A. in English Literary Studies with a minor in Religious Studies from Bucknell University. Her undergraduate honors thesis explored the conditions for martyrdom exacted through “self-homicide” in John Donne’s Biathanatos. Her primary research interests include metaphysical poetry, early modern drama, and religious tracts and publications.  

Jesse Matlock

Graduate Student

• jedmatlo@iu.edu

Jesse Matlock is an English PhD candidate at Indiana University Bloomington studying comics, metafiction, and (unnatural) narratology. His current work focuses on narrative metalepsis as emotional affect. He earned his MA in English from Arkansas State University (2019) and his BA in English from Henderson State University (2004). Superman no. 22 by John Byrne was his first comic book.

Dylan McCollum

• dylmccol@iu.edu

Dylan McCollum is an English PhD student interested in ecocriticism and the literature and languages of the medieval North Sea region. He holds a BA in History from Tennessee Tech University and a MA in English from Middle Tennessee State University, where he completed a thesis titled “Re-enchanting Nature: Mythic and Medieval Environmentalism in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium.” His current research examines human perception of and interaction with the non-human in early medieval English literature.

Robert Metaxatos

Graduate Student

• rmetaxa@iu.edu

Robert Metaxatos is an MA/PhD student whose scholarship works to develop connections between contemporary Anglophone literature and biopolitical theory. His interests in this area span the neoliberal politics of Empire; the socio-historical construction and maintenance of racial boundaries; medico-legal encounters of sex/gender transgressive people; and relations between technology, humans, and animals. Before coming to IU Robert completed a BA in English and Sociology at William & Mary, where he specialized in globalization and gendered work. 

Sean Mier

Graduate Student

• smier@indiana.edu

Sean Mier received his MA in English from University of Colorado-Boulder and is currently pursuing a PhD with emphases in Victorian literature and studies in the history of the book. His past work has considered the intersection of nineteenth-century print technologies and conventions with more embodied modes of communication, like handwriting. 

Grace Miller

Graduate Student

• gvmiller@iu.edu

Grace Miller is a PhD student who studies contemporary English Literature, specifically through the theoretical lens of the posthuman. Before attending IU, she earned a BA in English and a BA in Economics with a focus on Behavioral Cognition from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Grace’s scholarly interests can usually be found in the blurry intersection of narrative, culture, and digital media; her current research is grounded in the materiality of embodiment—especially as it intersects with narratives of belonging, both on- and off-line. 

Yuma Morooka

Graduate Student

• ymorooka@iu.edu

Yuma Morooka is a PhD student focusing on studies on sentimentalism and affect. Currently he is interested in interracial sympathy and twentieth-century African American literature in the age of racial liberalism. His article "'Too free a fancy: Reconsidering the Self in Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady" appears in Studies in English Literature (a Japanese journal). He holds a BA and MA in English and American Literature from Rikkyo University, Japan.

Lydia Nixon

Graduate Student

• lydnixon@iu.edu

Lydia Nixon is a PhD candidate specializing in 20th-21st century American literature and ecocriticism, with a minor in critical race and postcolonial studies. Before coming to IU, she taught high school English in America and Japan. Her research explores intersections between contemporary American literature, environmental justice and decolonial studies, empirical ecocriticism, and the digital humanities. Her dissertation examines climate change temporalities in contemporary ecopoetry. Her work has been published in Ecocene and Resistance: A Journal of Radical Environmental Humanities.

Jenna Novosel

• jlnovose@iu.edu

Jenna (she/her) is a Ph.D. student on the Literature track and an instructor for W131 Composition courses. Before coming to IU, Jenna received her BA in Literary Studies from Roanoke College and her MA in the Humanities from the University of Chicago. Jenna's interests primarily lie in Victorian genre fiction, especially science fiction, fantasy, and the weird. She is particularly interested in the ways the sciences and the occult converge to create unique epistemologies and affects. In addition to Victorian fiction, Jenna has a deep affinity for D&D, Classic Hollywood movies, and crochet.

Jordan Ogle

• jlogle@iu.edu

Jordan Ogle is a Ph.D. student in English literature specializing in 20th century American poetry and culture and psychoanalytic theory. Prior to coming to Indiana University, he received his B.A. in English literature from Wabash College in 2019 and his M.A. in literary criticism and theory from the University of Exeter, where he studied as a US-UK Fulbright Fellow, in 2020. His master’s thesis, “He envies the bodies, He who has no body: Divinity, Desire and the Body on Display in Anne Sexton’s Poetry,” examines the pivot away from the Eliotic figuration of the poet in mid-century America and the emergence of the poet-celebrity through the life and work of Anne Sexton.

Jevon Osborne

• jevmosbo@iu.edu

Jevon Osborne is a PhD student studying twentieth and twenty-first century literature, especially modernism and postmodernism (with an interest in film and theory on the side). Jevon is interested in investigating what defines literary genres and forms and how deconstruction theory can be applied to the language of our technological age. Before studying at IU, he earned his B.A. and M.A. from Ball State University.

Blake Overman

Graduate Student

• blover@iu.edu

Blake is a PhD student in Literature specializing in Victorian literature. He obtained his BA in English Education (6-12) and MA in English from Wichita State University in Wichita, KS. He studies monster literature, typically texts that span the long nineteenth century. Through examining these works using intersecting theoretical lenses such as queer theory, affect theory, and narratology, he hopes to further interrogate what it means to be a monster; particularly how monsters might act as agents of empathy for the identities they represent. Adjacent interests include the grotesque and horror and giallo films of the 70s & 80s. 

Maddie Parker

Graduate Student

• mp13@iu.edu

I am an M.A./PhD candidate and a fellow of Indiana University’s Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies.  While I focus primarily on the poetry and prose of the Romantic era, I am also interested in exploring how eighteenth-century events like the French Revolution shaped the ideologies of Europe’s literati.  This correlation between literature and political thought encourages my further interest in the expatriations of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European writers to the new milieu of early America.

Claire Patzner

Graduate Student

• cpatzner@iu.edu

Claire Patzner is a literature MA/PhD from St. Paul, Minnesota. She received her BA in English from Cornell University. She is interested in comparative literature studies and translations of 20th and 21st-century ecopoetry. Her research interests also include investigating film depictions of ecological disasters transnationally.

Sarah Pedzinski

Graduate Student

• spedzins@iu.edu

Sarah Pedzinski is a PhD candidate who studies dragons in early medieval literatures. Her dissertation focuses on dragons and natural histories in the Beowulf manuscript. Sarah is also a full-time Instructional Consultant at the IU Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning where she helps faculty develop curricula that emphasize inclusive learning and student agency. 

Sarah Petras

Graduate Student

• sgpetras@iu.edu

Sarah Petras is pursuing a dual master’s degree in English literature and Library Science with a focus on early modern women’s literature and manuscript culture. Her work primarily deals with representations of gender performativity, sexuality, and consent in the 16th and 17th centuries, and interrogates the intentional absence of marginalized voices in the archive. Using feminist, queer, and critical race theories in combination with the history of the book, she seeks to uncover the lives and stories told in the margins of preserved ephemera, and question what is or is not assigned value in the creation of special collections. 

Alp Eren Pirli

Graduate Student

• alppirli@iu.edu

Alp Eren Pirli is an MA/PhD student specializing in nineteenth and early-twentieth century American prose fiction. He is interested in the boundaries of genre as defined by sociocultural, historical, and material contexts, as well as a range of authors from Horatio Alger Jr. to Edith Wharton. He holds a BA in English from Boğaziçi University, Turkey. 

Joshua Pontillo

Graduate Student

• jpontill@iu.edu

Joshua Pontillo is a fifth-year English PhD candidate at Indiana University Bloomington, with BAs in English and Religious Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill. His research focuses on the languages and literatures of the early medieval North Atlantic, especially Old English, Old Irish, and Old Norse. He engages with ecocriticism to read the giants of these literary traditions as meaningful devices for considering human-environmental relationships.

Brian Pulverenti

Graduate Student

• bpulvere@iu.edu

Brian Pulverenti is a M.A/Ph.D. student studying Victorian literature. He earned his MA in Classical Studies from the University of Notre Dame where he wrote his MA thesis entitled “Posthumanism in Odysseus’ Apologoi.” During his time there, he taught classes on both Latin and Ancient Greek. At Indiana University, his research considers Victorian reception of the classical world with a particular emphasis on the epic tradition more broadly. Currently, he is teaching “W170 - Talking Baseball,” a course he designed that teaches analytical reading and writing by examining representations of baseball in film, prose, and poetry. 

Joshua Rawleigh

Graduate Student

• jrawleig@iu.edu

Joshua Rawleigh is a literature PhD student. He received his BA in History from Gordon College  and his MSt by Research from the University of Edinburgh. His research tends to focus on the intersection between religion and literature in the long nineteenth century. In particular, he has written and taught on the Scottish author George MacDonald, patristic theology, Tennyson’s poetics, and hermetic philosophy as ways to understand nineteenth-century British society’s complex relationship with the past. 

Mikaela Renshaw

Graduate Student

• mrenshaw@iu.edu

Mikaela Renshaw is currently pursuing her PhD in English Language and Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is particularly interested in the qualities of kingship and heroism, particularly in the romance and epic genres. 

Nicole Rizzo

Graduate Student

• nrizzo@iu.edu

Nicole Rizzo is a Ph.D. candidate focusing on 20th and 21st century American and British literature, modernism, and postmodern drama. Her research interests include trauma studies, disability studies, gender & sexuality studies, queer theory, critical race theory, and performance studies. While at IU, she earned an M.A. in English and a Ph.D. Minor in Gender Studies. She earned her B.A. in English with a minor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Boston University and is an alumna of the Kilachand Honors College. Nicole is especially interested in the intersection of social activism and art as well as in how interdisciplinary collaboration can be generative for feminist discourse and action around social justice issues.

Matthew Robinson

Graduate Student

• mjr1@iu.edu

Matthew Robinson is a PhD student with interests in 20th-century American poetry. Particularly, he researches queer poets’ relationships to visual culture, transnational aesthetics, and the historical avant-garde.

Eric Rosenbaum

Graduate Student

• esrosenb@indiana.edu

My research is in late 19th and early 20th century American literature. I am especially interested in the sociology of literature, or how literary genres target and help to cohere different kinds of social groups. Authors I focus on include Herman Melville, Maria Ruiz de Burton, William James, Frances E.W. Harper, Mark Twain, and Frank Norris.

Kate Rutherford

Graduate Student

• kruther@iu.edu

Kate Rutherford is a PhD student primarily interested in 20th-century/contemporary science fiction and dystopian literature. Her other related interests include posthumanism and media studies. Kate holds a BA in English: Secondary Education with minors in History: Secondary Education, Theatre, and Global & International Studies from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI and a MA in English from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. During her undergraduate studies, Kate studied abroad at the University of Cambridge and Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom. Outside of work and school, Kate enjoys travel, fashion, fitness, theatre, live music, and anything adventurous. 

Sushmita Samaddar

Graduate Student

• ssamadd@iu.edu

Sushmita Samaddar is a PhD candidate in Literature specializing in Ecocriticism. Her research explores the production and manifestation of ecoanxiety and ecotrauma in postcolonial South Asian diaspora (human and nonhuman), and her inquiry approach is staunchly interdisciplinary. She holds an MA in Poetry and Poetics from the University of York, UK (2018) and a BSc (Hons) in Economics from St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, India (2014). She is also a former Young India Fellow (2015). 

Sarah Schmitt

Graduate Student

• sjschmit@iu.edu

Sarah J. Schmitt is a PhD student working on both seventeenth- and nineteenth-century literature. She is the current Assistant Book Review Editor at Victorian Studies. Before coming to IU, Sarah received her MA from Michigan State. 

Devan Schnecker

Graduate Student

• dlschnec@iu.edu

Devan Schnecker is pursuing a PhD in English Literature here at Indiana University with a minor in Victorian Studies. Her main area of focus is British Literature from the long nineteenth century, particularly such literature by and/or about women and queerness. She is particularly interested in the portrayal and exploration of gender and sexuality in such novels and related ephemera, along with related questions of space, place, and embodiment within an 18th and 19th century framework of colonialism and imperialism.

Before coming to IU, Devan received her BA in English Literature and Anthropology from the Honors College of Florida Atlantic University, and her MA in English Literature with a concentration in British and Irish Literary Cultural Studies from Florida State University.

Devan also currently works part-time at the Lilly Library as a Reference Assistant, where she explores much of her own interests in the long nineteenth century and beyond. 

Ishita Sehgal

Graduate Student

• isehgal@iu.edu

Ishita comes from Kanpur, India.She did her BA in English from Ashoka University,India and her MPhil in Gender Studies from Trinity College, Dublin. Her research interests lie in Graphic Novels, Visual Literature and Ekphrasis. She is particularly inquisitive about the gutters, blank spaces and how we form our identity and memory from these spaces. Her questions of displacement and belonging are deeply influenced by colors and narratives of the graphic literature. In her fun time, she likes to read, travel and is a trained Indian Classical Dancer.

Evan Sennett

Graduate Student

• evjasenn@iu.edu

Evan Sennett specializes in nineteenth-century literature in the United States, with a special interest in the theme of place-making literature. He often uses twentieth-century nature writings as a way to envision dialogues across time. He is also a filmmaker, usually turning to Kentucky as a setting.

Katie Shy

Graduate Student

• kshy@iu.edu

I am an M.A./Ph.D. candidate focusing on 20th century British literature. Before coming to Bloomington, I completed a B.A. in English and Classics at Yale. Over the next few years, I am excited to spend time with modernist novels and realist novels, particularly exploring the depiction of domestic life, family relations, and women writers. 

Ellen Stenstrom

Graduate Student

• ekstenst@iu.edu

Ellen Stenstrom is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in Post-1945 literature and theory. Her research interests include narrative theory, trauma theory, experimental and hybrid-genre fiction, memoir and autofiction, and medical humanities, all of which play a role in her dissertation on Post-45 trauma and illness narratives that challenge the narratability of “ineffable” experiences. She holds BAs in Literature and Creative Writing from Miami University, an MA from IU, and her work has been published in OCTELA, JMMLA, and is forthcoming in the Journal of Narrative Theory (JNT) and English Language Notes (ELN). 

Jordan Strauch

Graduate Student

• jdstrauc@iu.edu

Prior to coming to IU, Jordan received his BA in English from Sonoma State University. He is an MA/PhD student specializing in theory and post-1945 American literature, particularly New Wave science fiction. He is interested in theories which investigate the construction of and relationships between the human, the nonhuman, and everything in between, including both old and new materialisms from Marx to Bennett. By reading science fictional novels, films, and performances through these lenses, his work aims to understand how the borders of the human and the other-than-human become contested ontological zones in precarious times and places. Jordan is also interested in emerging aesthetic categories which parody, disrupt, or otherwise problematize domestic senses of place such as analog horror, solarpunk, speculative ecologies, and liminal spaces. 

Emma Swidler

Graduate Student

• eswidler@iu.edu

Emma Swidler is a doctoral candidate in English Literature. Her dissertation examines the writing of British settlers in Argentina in the nineteenth century. She is interested in informal empire and its implications for how we think about nationalism and empire. Before coming to IU, Emma received her B.A. in English at Lawrence University.

Adrienne Thomas

Graduate Student

• admiharr@iu.edu

Adrienne Thomas is an English Literature Ph.D. student. Before coming to this program, she received her BA in English, with minors in history and medieval/Renaissance studies, from Hanover College and her MA in English from Indiana University - Indianapolis. She is most interested in studying early modern English drama through New Historicist and Feminist/Gender Studies lenses.

Gregory Tolliver

Graduate Student

• gretolli@iu.edu

Gregory Tolliver is a doctoral candidate in English Literature. His dissertation explores relationships between nature, "kynde," and sexuality in Late Middle English poetry. Gregory's research interests include courtly and devotional poetry, ecocriticism, literary space/time, and queer theory.

Colby Townsend

Graduate Student

• colbtown@iu.edu

Colby is a dual PhD student in English and religious studies specializing in transatlantic literature and religion of the long eighteenth century. He received two honors BA degrees in comparative literature and religious studies from the University of Utah, an MA degree in history at Utah State University, and an MA in English at IU Bloomington.

His work explores the development of biblical studies from the Early Modern Period to the present and the ways that the Bible, religion, politics, and society influence the production of new literature. He is deeply interested in the ways that readers engage with their texts as material objects. This has led him to analyze the texts of early American religious groups, like Mormonism, in the context of the development of the critical study of the Bible, the development of the novel, and the print culture of the long eighteenth century in both Great Britain and North America. 

Mary Mac Trammell

• mmtramme@iu.edu

Mary Mac Trammell is a Literature Ph.D. student studying Victorian literature and culture. Her primary interests include fin-de-siècle literature, Victorian Gothic, and the supernatural. Mary Mac’s current research focuses on the function of anachronistic temporalities and spectrality in Victorian literature, specifically exploring the abstraction and disembodiment of identity created by anachronistic temporalities and how this disrupts and destabilizes notions of identity and identity categories that were central to Victorian culture. Before attending Indiana University, she completed her B.A. and M.A. in English Literature at the University of Alabama.

Laura Tscherry

Graduate Student

• tscherry@iu.edu

I am a scholar and teacher of 20th- and 21st-century literature, media, and cultures, specializing in the intersection of literature and architecture, and queer and trans theory, with secondary interests in global Anglophone literature and disability studies. My writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Woolf Miscellany, Modernism/modernity Print Plus, and The Guardian (UK).
 
My research takes the concept of “home” and invents new familial possibilities beyond heteronormative domestic ideals. In my dissertation, “Architectures of the Queer Domestic: Intimacy and Kinship in Communal Spaces,” I explore literary depictions of communal living to uncover alternative models of kinship, intimacy, and domesticity. Drawing on queer theory, architectural theory, and kinship studies, I develop a reading of queer domesticity in modern novels that reveals the emotional and material aspects of everyday life to be deeply queer and highlights the complexity and strangeness of the spaces we think are most beholden to normative scripts and mundanity.
 
At IU, I have taught classes on urban justice, urban futurity, queer autobiography (for IU’s Collins Living-Learning Center), the global short story, intimacy, and queer and trans stories, as well as composition and professional writing. Since 2022, I have been an instructor for IU’s Groups Scholars Program, an initiative geared toward broadening educational access.

Megan Vinson

Graduate Student

• mevinson@iu.edu

I am a PhD candidate in early modern literature. My dissertation project looks at representations of women in major writers of the period and explores how they are embedded in concepts of female choice. My project is also interested in the intersection between temporal and material entanglement, and how the two are enmeshed with early modern representations of female desire. I have a book review of Melissa Sanchez's Queer Faith: Reading Promiscuity and Race in the Secular Love Tradition in the Sixteenth Century Journal. I also have an article on William Harvey & queer birds under review with the Ben Jonson Journal. Additionally, I teach a first-year writing course and tutor a mix of undergraduates and graduates at IU's writing center. When not teaching or writing, I love hiking with my dogs, reading Stephen King books and playing a lot of video games.

Erin Walden

Graduate Student

• erwalden@iu.edu

Erin Walden is an MA/MLS student interested in Victorian poetry, queer theory, excess, and the temporal changes that accompanied industrialization. She also looks at how the works (especially letters and zines) of marginalized writers have been (self-)published, distributed, and preserved. Previously, Erin studied Biochemistry and English at Brown University. 

Denny Weisz

Graduate Student

• daweisz@iu.edu

Denny specializes in mid-late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century American fiction. Their interests include elocution and voice culture, particularly as these relate to racialized and gendered embodiment; discourses of orthography, typography, and dialect; and textual depictions of speech and language disorders and disfunction. They are currently Assistant Managing Editor for the journal Victorian Studies.

Caylin Wigger

Graduate Student

• cmwigger@iu.edu

Caylin is in the English Literature and Library Science Dual Master's Program. They are originally from Evansville, IN, but spent the last three years in Roanoke, VA completing their undergraduate degree in English. Caylin intends to complete a specialization in Archives and Records Management as part of their MLS, and wants to complete further study on multicultural female writers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

Adam Williams

• daw15@iu.edu

Adam Williams is a Literature PhD student who is primarily interested in early modern drama, politics, and poetics. His recent work also explores topics such as the graphic novel, adaptation studies, literary theory, and composition pedagogy. Before coming to IU, Adam earned a BA in English and Communications and an MA in English Literature from the University of West Florida.

Benjamin Yusen

Graduate Student

• byusen@iu.edu

Ben is a PhD. student studying early medieval Northern European Literature. His work focuses on pre-Christian culture, folklore, and myths of England, Ireland, and Scandinavia. He is also interested in the movement of culture through media, particularly that of medievalism in contemporary Sci-Fi and Fantasy genres. He received BA.s in English and Creative Writing, and Religious Studies from University of Iowa in 2021, and an MA. in English Literature from Western Michigan University in 2023.

Frank Zhong

• yuzhong@iu.edu

Frank Zhong is a Literature PhD student specializing in Victorian studies. He is interested in science studies in the 19th century, especially how science and technology interact with literature, and how discoveries and inventions circulate between metropole and colonies in the British Empire. Prior to attending IU, Frank earned his BA in English from Haverford College and worked as a translator for documentary series.

Montgomery Quaid Adams

Graduate Student

• mqadams@iu.edu

Quaid Adams is a PhD student of Rhetoric and Composition and is also pursuing an MA in Folklore and Ethnomusicology here at IUB. He received his BA in Secondary English Education and Folklore/Mythology from the University of Kentucky, and an MA in English from the University of Louisville. His research interests lie at the intersection of Rhetoric and Folklore concentrating on “otherness,” ethnography, and the role legend plays in our construction of time/space and our relationship to the world around us. Along these same lines, Quaid is also interested in Composition Studies and how ethnography and folklore can be used as an incredibly impactful resource within the writing classroom, particularly in first year writing courses.  

Elise Baker

• clelbake@iu.edu

Elise is an Indiana native whose writing utilizes Frankfurt School critical theories in application to contemporary sociopolitical narratives in American culture, specifically in the mediums of news and social media. She recently finished her B.A. in English at IU Bloomington and is ecstatic to continue her journey in graduate coursework. She also holds a position at the IU Center for Veteran and Military Students, working with incoming students in their transition to higher education. In her free time, Elise enjoys cooking and baking for friends and family, oil painting, and being an aunt to two nephews and one niece.

AC Carlson

Graduate Student

• anlcarl@iu.edu

AC Carlson is a Ph.D. student in Rhetoric. Before coming to IU, they earned a BA in English, a BA in Theatre, and an MA in English Literature from Northern Arizona University. AC's scholarly interests can be found at the complex intersection of rhetoric, media, and culture. Pedagogically, AC is interested in multi-modal composition and gamification in the classroom. Their current work focuses on discourses around outer space and how imaginings of the future shape practices. AC has previously examined questions of circulation in media ecologies, and they have a creative as well as academic interest in podcasting and audio fiction. When they are not working, AC enjoys video games, looking at trees, and playing with their cat, Geoff. 

Sarah Fischer

Graduate Student

• samafisc@iu.edu

Sarah Fischer is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric and winner of the 2024 Lieber Memorial Associate Instructor Award. Her research and teaching bridge the gap between academic writing and self-sponsored writing on social media. She studies the intersection of embodiment, multimedia, and feminism, as they are enacted through lifestyle vlogs on YouTube. Her dissertation, From Writers to Content Creators: Teaching, Embodiment, & Multimodal Composition, argues for vlogs as productive student assignments that increase students' rhetorical awareness and work towards equity, inclusivity, and accessibility.

Kaylie Fougerousse

Graduate Student

• kefouger@iu.edu

Kaylie Fougerousse (foo-jeh-roo) is an English Ph.D. student and associate instructor, who specializes in spatial theories of writing in Rhetoric and Composition studies. Fougerousse holds a B.S. in Secondary English Education from Indiana University and a M.A. in Contemporary Literature, Culture, and Theory from King's College London. Her thesis looked at how Diné poetics enact rhetorical sovereignty and grounded normativity in composition practices. Her current doctoral scholarship joins the National Council of Teachers of English in re-imagining potential in public pedagogy and literacy sites with oscillations of community reckoning and community repair. Fougerousse studies how asking “the so-where questions,” to recognize a place-as-composition, can guide geo-analyses of layered storying and relational spatial identities of lands, humans, and the more-than-human.

Millie Hizer

Graduate Student

• amhizer@iu.edu

Millie Hizer is a PhD Candidate in English specializing in rhetoric and composition. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of disability studies, rhetorical theory, writing studies pedagogy, and community literacy. Hizer’s dissertation examines how disabled students and faculty in higher education navigate academic ableism through embodied, rhetorical tactics of resistance. She has published her writing in The Community Literacy Journal, enculturation: a journal of rhetoric, writing, and culture, The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, and Spark: A4C4 Equality Journal. She is also the winner of the 2021 Virginia La Follette Gunderson Rhetoric Award, the Fall 2023 Culbertson Dissertation Fellowship, and has been designated as a 2023-2024 endowed scholar by the International Chapter of the P.E.O. Sisterhood.

Her work has also been featured on disciplinary podcasts such as Tell me More! and Pedagogue. As a scholar, teacher, and writer center tutor committed to principles of Disability Justice, Millie centers disability storytelling in both her research and pedagogy.

Joanna Gordon

• jorgordo@iu.edu

Joanna Gordon is a PhD student in Rhetoric & Composition. Originally from Honolulu, Hawai'i, she received her BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, and an MFA in Poetry from Western Washington University. Though she's a creative writer by trade, her research interests have turned towards decolonial rhetorics, writing pedagogy, research methodologies, place-based studies, and Pacific Islander and Hawaiian studies. Her creative work has been published with The Shore, Cherry Tree, Nimrod International Journal, Bamboo Ridge Press, and more.

Eryn Johnson

Graduate Student

• erynjohn@iu.edu

Eryn is a PhD student studying rhetoric and composition. She came to IU with a background in literary studies and communication studies. Eryn’s current research interests include the intersection of rhetoric and ethics as it comes to bear upon the narrative paradigm (and vice versa) and the role that ethics plays in rhetoric as a teaching tradition. ​ 

Lauren Keeley

• mlkeeley@iu.edu

Lauren is a PhD student in rhetoric. She is interested in the ontological poetics of rhetoric and composition in ancient Greece, the Presocratics, and the place of rhetoric in Martin Heidegger's phenomenology. She also loves creative nonfiction writing and french.

Chad Kuehn

Graduate Student

• ctkuehn@iu.edu

Chad comes to Indiana University from St. Cloud State University in central Minnesota where he earned M.A. degrees in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language), and in Writing Studies and Rhetoric, and where he taught as an adjunct in the English for Academic Purposes program. Chad is currently an English PhD student with a concentration in Rhetoric. He is interested in discourses of privilege and how they shape agency in hegemonic relationships. He aspires to effect change in how all parties more generously engage in conversations of privilege, and its dismantling. 

Raquel Arias Labrador

• rsariasl@iu.edu

Raquel Arias Labrador is a Ph.D. student with research interests spanning communication, sociology, and learning sciences. Her work is driven by questions at the intersection of meaning-making processes, Foucault’s concept of knowledge as discourse, and decolonial perspectives on power and identity.She received her B.A in Sociology from Externado University in Colombia, and her M.A in Media studies from IUB.

Sarah Lawler

Graduate Student

• salawler@iu.edu

Sarah Lawler is an English PhD candidate in rhetoric, an associate instructor of speech, and an assistant director for composition. She graduated with a BA in English Education from the University of North Dakota in 2014; in 2021, she received an MA in English with a Literacy and Rhetorical Studies minor from the University of Minnesota Duluth. In the time between these degrees, she taught English language arts in middle and secondary school settings. As a scholar and researcher, she is interested in environmental rhetoric, especially as it pertains to land equity and land-use ethics, climate diaspora and migration, and climate change discourse. Currently, her work considers rhetorics of reproductive justice through the interstices of climate uncertainty. You can find her publications in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature and Environment, Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and Peauxdunque Review.

Benjamin Luczak

Graduate Student

• bluczak@iu.edu

Benjamin Luczak is a Rhetoric PhD student whose scholarly interests include the rhetoric of space and public memory as well as theories of the public sphere. He received an MA in English with a composition emphasis from the University of Missouri-Saint Louis.

Peyton Lunzer

Graduate Student

• pllunzer@iu.edu

Peyton is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric interested in life writing, ecocomposition, and blended scholarship. Her dissertation, “Stories We Call Home,” uses ecological thinking and life writing practices to build pedagogy grounded in personal stories. She teaches classes about place, wilderness, climate writing, identity, and global stories. Peyton currently lives in Laramie, Wyoming. 

Megan McCool

• mhmccool@iu.edu

Megan McCool is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric and a recipient of the 2024-2025 John H. Edwards Fellowship. As a community-engaged researcher, her work centers around writing pedagogy and how the teaching of writing can better help students critically engage with writing’s connection to social change efforts. Inspired by her own work with community organizations in Bloomington such as Middle Way House, the City of Bloomington Commission on the Status of Women, and the Protective Order Assistance Partnership, as well as social movements such as #MeToo, Megan argues that instructors of writing need to develop more opportunities for student learning around nonviolent rhetorics and feminist approaches to writing for social change. In her dissertation, Pedagogy of Care: Nonviolence, Feminism, and Changing the Terms of Community-Engaged Writing, she uses feminist ethics of care as a theoretical framework for the teaching of community-engaged writing that helps student writers develop the habits of mind, increased ethical and critical literacies, and rhetorical knowledge about nonviolent communicative practices needed in writing for social change efforts. She also understands her work as contributing to community-based efforts to better support survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking and gender-based violence prevention.Beyond her research, Megan has taught courses in professional writing, basic writing, and community-engaged writing. She is also a current member of IU’s Service-Learning Program Advisory Board.

Chaim McNamee

Graduate Student

• mcnameek@iu.edu

Chaim McNamee (he/him, they/them) is a PhD candidate in rhetoric. His dissertation, "Skin-Tight Rhetorics," works at the intersection of disability studies and rhetoric to examine how contemporary epideictic rhetorics constitute normative subjects in ways that extend bio- and necropolitical power across bodies. His other research interests include rhetorical new materialism (RNM), rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM), and critical animal studies. Any time he does not spend writing and researching is dedicated to cooking, tattooing, and being a full-time dad to two beautiful kitties.

Jason Michálek

Graduate Student

• jasomich@iu.edu

Jason Michálek entered IU’s doctoral program in rhetoric in the fall of 2018. His research interests have been historically broad with a BA in English language & literature and linguistics from Grand Valley State University, and an MA in American Studies from The George Washington University. His dissertation project takes up a local controversy concerning transient residents without residence as a foundation for troubling rhetorics of belonging and alienation.

S. Fain Riopelle

Graduate Student

• sriopell@iu.edu

Fain Riopelle is a Ph.D. student in the Rhetoric path, coming from an English M.A. program at the University of Virginia, and before that from Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. His research focuses on cognitive theories of composition and the implications of such theories for the ways we teach writing, especially at the first-year college level. He is particularly interested in the dispositions and habits of mind that students bring to the writing process, and in bringing the research of cognitive science to bear on the matter of how students think about what writing is and how it works. Also, his last name is pronounced "Ree-oh-pell." 

Laura Rosche

Graduate Student

• lrosche@iu.edu

Laura Rosche is a PhD candidate in English, with a concentration in Rhetoric. Her dissertation examines the rhetorical strategies women use when narrativizing their experiences as survivors of sexual violation. By prioritizing diverse female voices, Rosche's research focuses broadly on the enactment of feminist ethos, the development of rhetorical listening skills, and the theorization of empathetic communicative practices. Other interests include composition pedagogies, digital rhetorics, and autobiographical rhetorics.

Kelsey Taylor Alexander

Graduate Student

• krt3@iu.edu

Kelsey Taylor Alexander is an English PhD student in Rhetoric with a minor in Cultural Studies. She currently serves as the assistant director of Public Oral Communications. She received her MA in English from the University of Georgia in 2020, culminating in her thesis exploring the commodification of exigencies in the neoliberal era. Her current research interests revolve around rhetorical economies, specifically the ways our notions of a neoliberal work ethic evolve in reaction to dominant ideologies in times of sociopolitical and economic crises. She is also interested in Marxist-Feminist approaches towards social movements and radical democracy through an interdisciplinary analysis of communication and the economy.

Joseph Vuletich

Graduate Student

• jvuleti@iu.edu

Joseph Vuletich is a PhD student in English, focusing on the rhetoric of science and technology. His research examines how positionality shapes our perceptions of what counts as knowledge and who counts as knowers. At least that’s what he’s telling himself for the moment. He’s also interested in humor, affect, and first-person narrative (even when he writes in the third person;) as technê in the rhetorical sense – techniques for crafting relationships. When he’s not busy playing with words and encouraging students to do likewise, he enjoys walking, hiking, and playing at the park with his wife and son.

Nina Boals

Graduate Student

• nboals@iu.edu

Nina Boals is a poet from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She is currently the Editor in Chief and Creative Nonfiction Editor of Indiana Review. She received her B.A. in English and social welfare with a certificate in environmental studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was poetry editor of The Madison Review. Her work has been nominated for a Puschart Prize in poetry, and it can be found or is forthcoming from Ninth Letter, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere.

Carolena Fernandez Brazfield

• cibrazfi@iu.edu

Carolena Fernandez Brazfield is a queer Latina poet who calls many places home, though she admittedly feels most homesick for Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2023, she received her BA in Professional and Creative Writing from Goucher College, where she was a Kratz Fellowship Recipient, studied as a Visiting Student at the University of Oxford, and served as Poetry Editor for Preface Literary Magazine. She writes mostly about about chronic illness, spiders killing their mates, the women she loves, and gossip.

Carlos Contreras

Graduate Student

• cafacont@iu.edu

Carlos Contreras is non-binary, Guatemalan, and an MFA candidate in fiction from Texas. They are the lead fiction editor of Alien Magazine and read prose for Chestnut Review. Their writing explores ideas of identity, helplessness, and how people and places transform over time. Their work lives at the intersection between the ordinary human condition and surreal, imaginative circumstances, heightening reality to show how absurd our lives already are. Their work can be found in The Lumiere Review, Complete Sentence, Passages North, and elsewhere. When not writing, Carlos is almost certainly in a movie theater. 

Genevieve De Gange

Graduate Student

• gdegange@iu.edu

Genevieve De Gange is an MFA fiction writer from Temecula, California. She earned her BA degree in Creative Writing and French Literature from The University of Chicago and won UChicago's 2021 Les Rivers Fellowship. Her work currently explores fragmentation, placelessness, and unfeminine, pre-feminine, and reimagined female realities. 

Diego Díaz

Graduate Student

• dndiaz@iu.edu

Diego Díaz is a fiction writer from San Antonio, Texas. He received a B.A. In English with a certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at Austin in 2023, where he was a recipient of the Roy Crane Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Literary Arts in 2021, and served as the fiction editor for Hothouse, the department's undergraduate literary journal. Díaz's writing is very much focused on his understanding of his homes and the people that inhabit them in South Texas, as well as his relationship to the South as a diverse and complicated region.

Ezra Fox

Graduate Student

• ezraxfox@iu.edu

Ezra Fox is an M.F.A. candidate in poetry. In their writing, Ezra is curious about “impermanence,” and “non-duality,” specifically, how it pertains to their subjects of lineage, queerness, and spirituality. Ezra’s poems are in or forthcoming in Poiesis, Glassworks Magazine, Sagebrush Review, Slipstream Press, and elsewhere. Apart from writing, Ezra is in the daily practice of reconnecting with their inner child: doing cartwheels, jumping rope, and sharing tea with the beloveds they have been lucky enough to come to know.

Kourtney Jones

Graduate Student

• joneskou@iu.edu

Kourtney Jones is a poet and artist from Fort Wayne, Indiana. They graduated from Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne in 2015 with a B.A. in Linguistics, a minor in Women’s Studies, and a Teaching English as a Second Language certificate. Kourtney has taught English both in and outside of the States. She can be found typing in public spaces from a typewriter with her performance poetry project known as The Poem Market. Kourtney is the author of the poetry chapbook The Mug Drops. Her current work explores the intersections of languages and dreams, the transmission between the dead and the living, and poetry as a practice for collective liberation.

William D. Landau

Graduate Student

• rebeland@iu.edu

William D. Landau is an MFA student in poetry from Berkeley, California. They received their BA in Gender Studies from Columbia University. Their work has appeared in Diabolical Plots, Sinister Wisdom, and Hanging Loose Press. Their work touches on topics including gender, magic, the Anthropocene, Judaism, and bacon. In their free time they enjoy baking, swimming, reading, and attending to their cats' every whim. 

Roey Leonardi

Graduate Student

• roeyleon@iu.edu

Roey Leonardi is a poet and writer from Charleston, South Carolina. She earned her BA in English from Harvard College, and her work has appeared in Pleiades, Bat City Review, online in The Atlantic, and elsewhere. She enjoys writing about motherhood, the American South, and origin — the people and places from which we come and to which we inevitably return.

Angela Lim

Graduate Student

• limang@iu.edu

Angela Lim is an MFA candidate in poetry. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2019 with degrees in English and Neuroscience & Behavior. Originally from Columbia, Missouri, she worked in publishing in the Twin Cities area as an editor and writer for juvenile nonfiction books. Her recent poems have played with the flow of time or focused on the transitional space between voice and being. 

Monica McDonough

Graduate Student

• monimcdo@iu.edu

Monica McDonough is an M.F.A. candidate in fiction from Rocky River, Ohio. She earned her B.A. in English and a Certificate in Journalism from Yale University. Her writing explores topics including the Midwest, belonging, religion, childhood, and what it means to grow up. Monica’s humor writing appears in The New Yorker. In her free time, she devours pop culture, calls her mom, and tells her what the kids are listening to.

Cheyenne McGuire

Graduate Student

• cheymcgu@iu.edu

Cheyenne McGuire is a poet from rural Colorado. She holds a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. Her work centers around landscape and celebrates how sound interacts with itself; she strives to make poems that snag, almost, at the truth through echoes, iambs, and endless repetitions. She is currently working on a series of love sonnets that explore how the edges of one self can merge and shape the edges of another. Her work can be found at Amethyst Review, Body Odyssey: An Anthology, and on the corners of napkins and diary entries.

Kenny Mitchell

Graduate Student

• kemitc@iu.edu

Kenny Mitchell is a fiction writer and poet from Nebraska. He holds a B.A. in Language Arts Education from the University of Nebraska at Kearney. In his work, he seeks to challenge his childhood norms through his characters' development, often using absurdist and magical realist lenses to generate questions that don't necessarily need answers.Kenny is the first to admit he is often confusing, unapologetically so. He is the co-editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Do Geese See God? His work appears in HAD, The Good Life Review, The Airgonaut, JAKE, and The Gorko Gazette. In his free time, he's still trying to figure out where Waldo is.

Al Neal

Graduate Student

Al Neal is an MFA candidate in fiction from Bloomington, Indiana. They earned their B.A. in English and Media at Indiana University. During their undergraduate studies they served as arts council chair for the Collins Living Learning Center, co-editor for Collins’ weekly art and writing zine the Collins Columns, and editorial intern for Victorian Studies. Their writing explores non-binary lesbian identity, coming of age, mental illness, and repressed Midwestern families. They are a collage artist, DIY publications enthusiast, and 1970s/80s sitcoms and cult cinema fan. 

Tyler Patton

Graduate Student

• typatt@iu.edu

Tyler Patton is a writer from Portland, Oregon. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 2012 and then lived in San Francisco for ten years. His work explores the insufficiencies of identity and identity politics. You'll probably see him biking around town.

Danielle Richardson

Graduate Student

• dansrich@iu.edu

Danielle Richardson is an MFA candidate in Fiction at IU Bloomington. She was born and raised in the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten/Saint Martin and earned her BA in English (Creative Writing) with a minor in Film Studies from Florida State University. Her writing typically uses magical realism to explore matriarchy and Black girlhood.

Mollika Jai Singh

Graduate Student

• mjsingh@iu.edu

Mollika Jai Singh is an MFA candidate in poetry from San Diego, California and Montgomery County, Maryland. They write prose poetry, slam poetry, and formal poetry, with an inclination toward golden shovels, abecedarians, and sestinas, with a desire to commit to a few words and write between the lines. Mollika completed her Bachelor of Arts in African American Studies at Princeton University, where she wrote for The Nassau Weekly, served as managing editor for The Nassau Literary Review, and co-founded Positions, an Asian/American zine. She also received the Outstanding Work by a Junior in Creative Writing award. Mollika's undergraduate thesis was a poetic and critical exploration of family abolition and critical auntie studies. They study the (self-)representation of people of color in popular culture, gendered and racial performance, beauty standards, care work, and love and desire across differences.

Teja Sudhakar

Graduate Student

• tsudhak@iu.edu

Teja Sudhakar is an MFA candidate in Poetry. A native of Chennai, India, and long-time resident of Lexington, Kentucky, their work explores queer and immigrant narratives of the transnational South. Teja’s work has been published or is forthcoming with FRONTIER Poetry, Academy of American Poets, The Georgia Review, Salt Hill Journal, and others. They have received fellowships from Tin House and The Kenyon Review. When they’re not writing, Teja is hanging out with their cat, Soup.

Santiago Valencia

Graduate Student

• svalenc@iu.edu

Santiago Valencia is a Mexican poet, editor, and spiritual worker. They received a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from Reed College, where their poetry was recognized by the Academy of American Poets. Their work develops a poetics of ritual and gnosis to explore queer embodiment, fractured ancestries, faith and mysticism, soul loss and retrieval, dreams, and death. They believe language is an alchemical tool for connecting with the sacred all around and within us, and for recovering lost enchantment. A Tin House Workshop and SAFTA alum, Santi is an Editor-at-Large for Nightboat Books. 

Cindy Yu

Graduate Student

• yuci@iu.edu

Cindy Yu is an M.F.A. candidate in fiction. She was born and raised in Texas but has spent most of her adult life on the west coast. She studied computer science, earth systems, and creative writing at Stanford University. In her stories, she is drawn to topics related to family, class, and alternative ways of knowing. In her free time, she enjoys visiting urban green spaces and spending time with her dog Maya.