English Graduate Alumni
Information
Berna Artan, Ph.D.
B.A., Hacettepe University
M.A., CUNY City College of New York
Ph.D., Fordham University (2021)
Field of Study: 18th-Century British Literature
Dissertation Title
Picturing Emotions: Women Novelists and Aesthetic Theories, 1660-1820
Contact
[email protected]
Olivia Badoi, Ph.D.
B.A., University of Bucharest
M.A., Wroclaw University
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: 20th-Century American
Contact
[email protected]
Felisa Baynes-Ross, Ph.D.
B.A., Albertus Magnus College
M.A., Southern Connecticut
Ph.D., Fordham University (2017)
Field of Study: Medieval
Contact
[email protected]
Anna Beskin, Ph.D.
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: Medieval
International fellowship coordinator
Contact
[email protected]
Jamie Bolker, Ph.D.
B.A., Marquette University
M.A., Marquette University
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: Early American
Courses Taught
Composition and Rhetoric II
Dissertation Title
Lost and Found: Wayfinding in Early American Literature
Dissertation Description
My dissertation explores the relationship between human identity and navigation (wayfinding), from the time of the colonists to the publication of Henry David’s Thoreau’s landmark Walden in 1854. Examining narratives of colonial women travelers, shipwrecked sailors, frontiersmen, fugitive slaves, and surveyors, my dissertation argues that getting lost privileges a sense of selfhood that relies upon the autonomy of nature, rather than the mastery of it.
Contact
[email protected]
John Breedlove , Ph.D.
B.A., Gonzaga University
M.A., Villanova University
Field of Study: Early Modern
Contact
[email protected]
Malkah Bressler, Ph.D.
B.A., University of Chicago
M.A., University of Chicago
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: 18th-Century British and Transatlantic
Courses Taught
Composition II
Dissertation Title
Ecologies of the Novel: The British novel in Caribbean narratives
Dissertation Description
My dissertation explores the ways in which conventions of the novel - things like the picaresque, the sentimental, and the gothic - make their way into mid and late eighteenth-century Caribbean travel narratives and journals. These conventions allow Caribbean texts to challenge the social conventions of plantation society and offer a different view of the Caribbean, one in which slaves are featured as individuals with agency and one in which the boundaries between humans and animals begin to blur.
Contact
[email protected]
Steven Bruso, Ph.D.
B.A., Westfield State University
M.A., Clark University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2017)
Field of Study: Medieval
Courses Taught
Composition I
Composition II
Texts and Contexts: Return From Avalon, King Arthur in the Middle Ages
Texts and Contexts: Masculinities, Violence, and Medieval Literature
Dissertation Title
Knightly Male Bodies and Violence in Middle English Romance
Dissertation Description
Steven's dissertation explores the social significance of developed male bodies in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and argues that representations of knightly physicality in late medieval England are the vehicle for expressing anxieties about militarized bodies. His study begins with an analysis of two popular didactic texts, Knyghthode and Battaile and Secreta Secretorum, before closely analyzing three Middle English romances: the anonymous Sir Gowther, Chaucer's Knight's Tale, and Malory's Morte D'Arthure, in order to understand how and why that body and identity could register as both desirable and frightening to medieval audiences.
Contact
[email protected]
https://fordham.academia.edu/StevenBruso
@StevenBruso
www.stevenbruso.com
LinkedIn
Vernita Burrell, Ph.D.
B.A., Hunter College, CUNY
M.A., Loyola Marymount University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2016)
Field of Study: 18th-Century British
Contact
[email protected]
Alexis Butzner, Ph.D.
B.A., Eugene Lang College
M.A., Portland State
MPhil, Fordham
Ph.D., Fordham University (2016)
Field of Study: Early Modern
Courses Taught
Composition I
Composition II
Texts and Contexts: Bad Doctors: Magic, Learning, and Science in Early Modern Literature
Texts and Contexts: Morbid Desires: Death and Literature
Texts and Contexts: Human/Nature: Relating to the Natural World
Texts and Contexts: Staging Tragedy
Dissertation Title
Practice Imperfect: The Struggle for Health in Early Modern English Literature
Dissertation Description
My dissertation considers the various ways authors represent illness and dying in their work, with particular emphasis on how texts work both with and against practical models for attaining and maintaining health.
Contact
[email protected]
https://fordham.academia.edu/AlexisButzner
https://alexisbutzner.wordpress.com/
Robert Byers, Ph.D.
B.A., University of Alaska Fairbanks
M.A., University of Alaska Fairbanks
Ph.D., Fordham University (2023)
Field of Study: Medieval
Courses Taught
Composition II
Contact
[email protected]
Kyle Campbell, Ph.D.
B.A., Saint Micheal’s College
M.S., University of Edinburgh
M.A., University of Vermont
Ph.D., Fordham University (2022)
Field of Study: Early American Literature, Queer Theory, and Queer Comics
Courses Taught
Composition II
Text and Contexts: Science Fiction and Film
Dissertation Title
Natural History and the Early American Gothic.
Carolyn Cargile
B.A., Wake Forest University
M.A., The University of York
Ph.D., Fordham University (2023)
Field of Study: Medieval
Courses Taught
Composition II
Texts & Contexts: Shapeshifting in Literature
Dissertation Title
The Shape of History: Formal Variety and the Production of the Past in Twelfth-Century History Writing in England and Normandy (ca. 1120-1154)
Dissertation Description
My dissertation examines formal variety -- the appearance of different forms, styles, and registers -- in four twelfth-century chronicles written in England and Normandy. It is a multilingual dissertation; of the chronicles I research, two are Latin, one Old English, and one Old French. In it, I argue that historians in the twelfth century conceptualized history as intergeneric in nature and used diverse literary forms in order to claim truth or authority in different and multiple ways.
Contact
[email protected]
Leslie Carpenter, Ph.D.
B.A., Maryville University
M.A., Fordham University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2018)
Field of Study: Medieval
Courses Taught
Composition I and II
Texts and Contexts: Fairy Tales
Texts and Contexts: Knights at the Movies
Texts and Contexts: Arthur Through the Ages
Dissertation Title
Pointing Rhythm and Rhyme: Punctuating Verse in post-Conquest England
Dissertation Description
My work focuses on the changes of metrical form, manuscript layout, and punctuation in 11th through 13th century vernacular English poetry, bringing attention to the interplay between versification and scribal practices.
Contact
[email protected]
https://fordham.academia.edu/LeslieCarpenter
Caitlin Cawley, Ph.D.
BA, Lehigh University
MA, Carnegie Mellon University
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: 20th and 21st-Century American, Cultural Studies
Courses Taught
Composition and Rhetoric II
Texts and Contexts: Reading War: American War Literature from WWI to Iraq
Texts and Contexts: Class and American Culture: Working Class Comrades to "I'm Rich, Biatch" in 20th Century Literature
Texts and Contexts: (Re)Writing History: Postwar American Film and Literature
Texts and Contexts:What is Love? in Transatlantic Film and Literature
Dissertation Title
Occupying War: U.S. Militarism and Representing War since 1989
Dissertation Description
Her dissertation traces a cultural history of post-Cold War American militarism, specifically post-conscription professionalization and the rise of occupation-style warfare. Examining war literature and films alongside government documents, military records, and news media, She argues that the practices, logics, and aesthetics of contemporary militarism have made it increasingly difficult for American civilians to apprehend war and those who fight.
Contact
[email protected]
Clarissa Chenovick, Ph.D.
B.A., Bryn Mawr College
M.Phil., Cambridge University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2017)
Field of Study: Late Medieval and Early Modern Literature
Courses Taught
Composition I
Composition II
Texts and Contexts: Bleeding Hearts
Dissertation Title
Repentant Readers: Medical Discourses and Spiritual Self-Shaping in Late Medieval and Early Modern England
Dissertation Description
My dissertation examines the use of medical discourses in Pre- and Post-Reformation penitential writings – personal meditations, allegorical narratives, sermons, poems – in order to elucidate how devout people in both periods used reading as a means of reforming body and soul. This project gives special attention to under-used archival sources that bear witness to individual penitential reading practices.
Contact
[email protected]
Nicholas Clark
B.A., High Point University
M.A., Bowling Green State University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2024)
Field of Study: 20th and 21st-Century American, Ecocriticism, Speculative Fiction.
Dissertation Title
Nature's Dragon: The Monstrous Reptile, Genre, and Econarratology.
Contact
[email protected]
Julia Cosacchi, Ph.D.
B.A., Boston College
MEd, Providence College
M.A., DePaul University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2020)
Field of Study: 19th-Century American
Courses Taught
Composition II
Dissertation Title
The Self-Made Woman in American Literature, 1820-1880
Dissertation Description
The period from 1820-1880 witnessed the rising popularity of the self-made man in America as a culturally and nationally significant type in both literature and daily life. At the same time, the nation's culture also bred a burgeoning women's rights movement and its popular literature was dominated by female voices. This project looks at the points of contact and of friction between these various movements to consider the presence and significance of the discourses of self-making and success primarily in writing by and/or about American women.
Contact
[email protected]
Anthony Michael D'Agostino, Ph.D.
B.A., Sarah Lawrence College
M.A., NYU
JD, Fordham Law
Ph.D., Fordham University (2017)
Field of Study: The Victorian Novel, Queer Theory, Critical Theory, Feminism, Speculative Fiction, Law and Literature
Courses Taught
Composition II
Texts and Contexts: Telepathy in Literature
Dissertation Title
Queer Privilege: Reading Telepathy in the Victorian Novel
Dissertation Description
My dissertation analyzes depictions of mind-to-mind contact, feeling at a distance, and thought-reading in the mid-to-late Victorian Novel as tropes and strategies of queer identification and desire.
Contact
[email protected]
Jessica D’Onofrio
B.A., St. John's University
M.A., Hunter College, CUNY
Ph.D., Fordham University (2022)
Field of Study: 19th-Century American; African American
Courses Taught
Composition I
Composition II
Texts & Contexts: Slave Narratives & Neo-Slave Narratives
Dissertation Title
"Fictions of Literacy in Nineteenth-Century American Literature"
Contact
[email protected]
Bronwen Durocher, Ph.D.
M.A., Fordham University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2023)
Courses Taught
Texts & Contexts
Contact
[email protected]
William Fenton, Ph.D.
B.A., Rollins College
MA and MPhil, Fordham University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2018)
Field of Study: Early American
Courses Taught
Composition II
Dissertation Title
Unpeaceable Kingdom: Fighting Quakers, Revolutionary Violence, and the Antebellum Novel
Dissertation Description
My dissertation examines the discrepancy between fictional representations of fighting Quakers and their historical practices of pacifism and political participation.
Contact
[email protected]
Alexandra Finn-Atkins
B.A., Providence College
M.A., Clark University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2022)
Field of Study: Early Modern
Courses Taught
Composition I
Composition II
Texts and Contexts: Running in Literature
Dissertation Title
The Extracurricular Renaissance: Hunting, Dancing, and Bowling in Early Modern English Literature.
Contact
[email protected]
Madison Forbes, Ph.D.
B.A., Bridgewater State University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2023)
Field of Study: Early Modern
Contact
[email protected]
Angela Furry
B.A., University of Nebraska-Lincoln
M.A., Cornell University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2022)
Field of Study: Early Modern
Dissertation Title
Power and Intersubjectivity in Renaissance Rhetoric.
Contact
[email protected]
Callie Gallo, Ph.D.
BA, University of Richmond
MA, Hunter College, CUNY
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: Modern American
Courses Taught
Composition II
Contact
[email protected]
Patricia Grisafi, Ph.D.
B.A., Skidmore College
M.A., Ph.D., Fordham University
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: 20th-Century American
Courses Taught
Composition I
Composition II
Texts and Contexts: Horror and the Gothic Representations of Mental Illness
Countercultures and Bohemians
Texts and Contexts: Modern American Novel
Dissertation Title
The Sexualization of Mental Illness in Postwar American Literature
Caroline Hagood, Ph.D.
B.A., Vassar College
M.A., SUNY Buffalo
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: 20th Century American
Courses Taught
Composition II
Texts and Contexts: Writers Who Like to Watch--Beat Writers and Film
Courses Taught
Composition II
Texts and Contexts: Writers Who Like to Watch--Beat Writers and Film
Dissertation Title
Women Who Like to Watch: 20th Century American Cinema Poetry
Dissertation Description
The project follows female poets responding to, and revising, the work of male filmmakers, and it pays special attention to the effects of cinematic theme and form on the poetry of H.D., Adrienne Rich, and Theresa Cha.
Contact
[email protected]
http://www.carolinehagood.com
Lunatic Speaks
Making Maxine's Baby
Sharon Harris, Ph.D.
BM, Brigham Young University
M.A., University of Chicago
Ph.D., Fordham University.
Field of Study: Early Modern; Music and Sound Studies
Courses Taught
Composition II
Texts & Contexts: Shakespeare in London
Texts & Contexts: What is the Song Saying? Hermeneutics of Music and Its Texts
Texts & Contexts: Lyric and Lyrics, Music and English Poetry from the Medieval Period to Milton
Dissertation Title
Songs and Sonnets, Cries and Concerts: Music that Moves in Early Modern England
Rachael Hilliard, Ph.D.
B.A., Cornell University
M.A., University of York (UK)
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: Early Modern
Courses Taught
Composition and Rhetoric I and II
Texts and Contexts: Bad Boys: Renaissance Villains
Texts and Contexts: Bad Boys: Renaissance Sonneteers
Dissertation Title
Changing Modes of Encounter in Shakespearean Adaptation: The New Digital Audience
Dissertation Description
Her dissertation considers recent mediatized adaptations of three plays: a Twitter Romeo and Juliet, a Google+ A Midsummer Night's Dream, and an immersive self-driven Macbeth (Punchdrunk's "Sleep No More").
Contact
[email protected]
Work Mobile: 347-559-1623
Mahlika Hopwood, Ph.D.
B.A., Arizona State University
M.A., Arizona State University
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: Medieval and Early Modern Literature and Theology
Courses Taught
Composition II
Texts and Contexts: The Spiritual Journey
Texts and Contexts: Imagination and Reality
Dissertation Title
God, Self, and Fellow: Community in the Religious Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Dissertation Description
Mahlika's dissertation argues for the presence and relevance of human community within religious spaces of ostensible solitude.
Contact
[email protected]
Melissa Hurwitz, Ph.D.
B.A., University of Delaware
M.S.J., Northwestern
M.S., Hunter College
Ph.D., Fordham University (2017)
Field of Study: 19th-Century British; Romanticism
Courses Taught
Composition II
Dissertation Title
Dispossessed Women: Female Homelessness in Romantic Literature
Dissertation Description
This work examines the real-life reception and literary representation of female vagrants at a point in history when females out numbered men two to one in terms of homelessness. The project surveys various genres to examine how vagrant women were treated by authors as the tides of vagrant populations continued to rise after a century of famine, war, and displacement due to enclosure and industrialization. The project begins with Mary Robinson’s lyric response to Wordsworth’s “The Female Vagrant”—a point of problematic sympathy for the homeless female—and ends with Robert Southey’s nasty treatment of the vagrant woman who originally invaded the cottage in “The Story of the Three Bears.”
Contact
[email protected]
Lina Jiang
B.A., Fudan University
M.A., New York University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2024)
Field of Study: 18th-Century British Literature, British Romanticism, Natural History, the Atlantic World
Dissertation Title
Translating China in Eighteenth-Century British Literature.
Courses Taught
Composition II
Contact
[email protected]
Boyda Johnstone, Ph.D.
B.A., University of Calgary
M.A., University of Calgary
Ph.D., Fordham University (2016)
Field of Study: Medieval
Courses Taught
Composition I: Writing Culture
Composition II
Texts and Contexts: Dreaming in Literature from the Medieval to the Modern
Advanced Disciplinary Study: Dreamers and Visionaries in Medieval Literature
Dissertation Title
Immersive Reading: Dreamers and Their Books in Late Medieval England
Dissertation Description
Johnstone's dissertation examines the groundswell of interest in dreams and visions between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries in England, arguing that the multivalent realm of dreaming offered readers renewed and sometimes controversial ways of approaching their everyday lives. Her chapters span the diverse materials of dream interpretation guides, literary dream visions, apocalypse manuscripts and illustrations, and the medium of stained glass in an effort to get closer to an understanding of what dreaming meant to medieval people.
Peter Krause
B.A., Goucher College
M.A., New York University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2023)
Field of Study: 20th Century American, Contemporary War Literature
Courses Taught
Composition II
Ellis Light, Ph.D.
B.A., The New School (Eugene Lang College)
M.A., Fordham University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2023)
Field of Study: Medieval Literature
Courses Taught
Composition I
Composition II
Texts & Contexts: Werewolves in Medieval Literature and Beyond
Texts & Contexts: Villains and Villainy
Texts & Contexts: Queer Literature, Medieval and Modern
Dissertation Title
Fluxing Fellowship: Bodily Fluids and Forms of Community in Medieval Devotional Literature
Matthew Lillo, Ph.D.
BM, Baldwin-Wallace University
BA, Fordham
MA, Fordham
Ph.D., Fordham University (2019)
Field of Study: Early Modern; Medieval; Theater and Performance Studies
Courses Taught
Composition I
Composition II
Writing Center Director
Dissertation Title
Rogue Music: Theatrical Synergies of English Ballads and Plays, 1500-1649
Contact
[email protected]
Rhianna Marks-Watton
B.A., Oakland University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2024)
Field of Study: Early America
Dissertation Title
An Echo of Place: Anishinaabe Ecoliteracy and Early American Nature Writing.
Contact
[email protected]
Richard Moore Jr., Ph.D.
B.A., Binghamton University
M.A., Binghamton University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2018)
Field of Study: 18th-Century British
Courses Taught
Composition II
Dissertation Title
Future Visions to Racial Apparitions: Changing Dreams in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Gothic Novels
Dissertation Description
My dissertation explores shifts in how dreams dramatize and at times satirize political anxieties concerning Great Britain's internal and external conflicts.
Contact
[email protected]
Peter Murray, Ph.D.
B.A., Clark University
M.A., Clark University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2018)
Field of Study: 20th-Century British; Postcolonial
Contact
[email protected]
Kate Nash, Ph.D.
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: 20th-Century British
Contact:
Martin Northrop, Ph.D.
B.A., Colgate University
M.A., Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: 20th-Century American
Courses Taught
Composition I
Composition II
Texts and Contexts:
Reading Underworlds
Crime in American Fiction and Film
Friendship as a Way of Life
Literary Bromance
American Writers in Paris
Post-1945 American Literature and Culture
Dissertation Title
Booked: Sexuality and Taste in American Crime Fiction
Contact
[email protected]
Sarah O’Brien
B.A., The Catholic University of America
M.A., Fordham University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2022)
Field of Study: Medieval
Dissertation Title
Transforming Man(kind): Genres of Collectivism in Late Medieval Literature.
Contact
[email protected]
Vivian Papp, Ph.D.
B.A., Columbia University
M.A., CUNY/Hunter College
Ph.D., Fordham University (2020)
Field of Study: Restoration and 18th Century
Courses Taught
Composition and Rhetoric 1 & 2
Satire & Society, and Contemporary Satire
David Pedersen, Ph.D.
B.A., Nebraska-Lincoln
MSEd, Lehman College-CUNY
M.A., York, UK
Ph.D., Fordham University (2017)
Field of Study: Medieval
Courses Taught
Composition II
Dissertation Title
Conceptualizing the Inconceivable in Anglo-Saxon Wisdom Texts
Dissertation Description
His dissertation, tentatively titled "Conceptualizing the Inconceivable in Anglo-Saxon Wisdom Texts," focuses on the effect of language and of cultural history on Christian subjectivity in Anglo-Saxon England. This project explores what it meant to an Anglo-Saxon in the century following the Alfredian Renaissance to self-identify as a Christian by examining the ways that Old English adaptations of Latin Christian philosophical and theological texts differ conceptually from the originals. David hopes, with this project, to challenge the monolithic definition of "Christian" that informs much of the modern scholarship on early medieval English Christianity.
Contact
[email protected]
Aaron Pinnix, Ph.D.
B.A., The University of Alabama, Huntsville
M.A., The University of Maine
Ph.D., Fordham University (2020)
Field of Study: Contemporary Poetry and the Ocean
Courses Taught
Honors: Writing Intensive
Honors: Rhetoric
Texts and Contexts: Literary Oceans, Economic Currents
Texts and Contexts: Science Fiction and the Social Imaginary
Composition and Rhetoric I
Composition and Rhetoric II
Dissertation Title
Subaqueous Poetics: Exploring Oceanic Depths in Modern and Contemporary Poetry
Dissertation Description
My dissertation explores thematic relationships among twentieth and twenty-first century poetic texts that invoke the oceanic depths in ways that cross linguistic, temporal, and spatial borders. Drawing on the ocean as an expansive metaphor for alterity and difference, poets such as H.D. and M. NourbeSe Phillip have constructed an aquatic other space that challenges hegemonic narratives of the ocean. Work related to my dissertation can be found in Atlantic Studies and various poetry venues.
Contact
[email protected]
www.aaronpinnix.com
Academia.edu Profile
Curriculum Vitae
Elizabeth Porter, Ph.D.
B.A., Adelphi University
M.A., Fordham University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2017)
Field of Study: 18th-Century British
Courses Taught
Disobedience in Literature
Texts and Contexts: Novel Heroines and Heroes
Texts and Contexts: Travels and Novels
Texts and Contexts: Servants in Literature
Dissertation Title
The Urban Plunge: Eighteenth-Century Novel Heroines in London
Dissertation Description
The project investigates a trend in long eighteenth-century novels: heroines visiting or relocating to the London metropolis. Each chapter focuses on a particular female-centered novel, paying special attention to shifting representations of urban space and perception, promises and perils of female mobility, and relationships among women from different social classes.
Contact
[email protected]
Christy L. Pottroff, Ph.D.
B.S., Kansas State University
M.A., Kansas State University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2017)
Field of Study: Early American
Courses Taught
LGBT Literature
Honors Integrated Writing Intensive Course
Honors Public Speaking
Composition II
Dissertation Title
Citizen Technologies: The U.S. Post Office and the Transformation of Early American Literature
Dissertation Description
At the heart of my dissertation is the premise that the U.S. Post Office Department--the nation’s first comprehensive social network and informational infrastructure--gave early Americans a way to understand national union. Not only did this early systematization of communication have a profound impact on textual circulation, but I argue that contemporary authors used representations of the postal system to negotiate the problems and promises of national union within their works. Each chapter draws upon the postal archive to argue for a range of intersections between the mail and the book. Building on recent work in print culture and temporality studies, my project draws out the geographical and temporal specifics of early American mail delivery, and theorizes how these underexamined material factors might differently orient scholars toward the study of early American literature.
Cathal Pratt, Ph.D.
B.A., University of Utah, English
M.A., New York University, Irish and Irish-American Studies (Irish Literature)
Ph.D., Fordham University (2021)
Field of Study: 20th Century British, Irish Studies, Latin American
Courses Taught
Composition and Rhetoric I
Composition and Rhetoric II
Texts and Contexts: Rebel, Rebel--Writing the Revolution
Texts and Contexts: Ancient Myths and Modern Retellings
Dissertation Title
Under the Southern Cross: The Story of Irish Literature in Argentina
Joseph Rudolph, Ph.D.
B.A., Thomas More College
M.A., Fordham, Medieval Studies
Ph.D., Fordham University (2020)
Field of Study: Medieval Literature
Courses Taught
Texts and Contexts: Monks, Nuns, and Literature
Texts and Contexts: Crime and Punishment, Sin and Redemption
Composition I
Composition II
Dissertation Title
The Poetics of Exploratory Ductus
Dissertation Description
In "The Poetics of Exploratory Ductus," I explore how monks, nuns, and other religious wrote texts that had the potential to undermine religious orthopraxis. My work focuses on the ways medieval religious appropriated secular literary modes from pagan classical authors. I look at both less well-known texts –– the Latin poems of Abbot Baudri of Bourgueil and the verse history of the First Crusade composed by Gilo of Paris –– and the Exeter Book of Old English poetry, which contains well-known poems like “The Wanderer,” “The Seafarer,” and “The Wife’s Lament.” I show how poetry served as a place for exploratory play apparently indifferent to religious goals, though often serving to accomplish those goals in roundabout, unconventional, and surprising ways.
Samantha Sabalis, Ph.D.
M.A., University of St. Andrews
MPhil, Trinity College Dublin
Ph.D., Fordham University (2017)
Field of Study: Late Medieval Literature
Courses Taught
Composition II
Texts and Contexts, Caught in a Bad Romance: Magic, Quests, Gothic Prisons and the Development of the Romance Mode
Texts and Contexts, Medieval Sin and Virtue
Dissertation Title
Pastoral Education in England and Its Impact on Fifteenth-Century Literary Culture
Dissertation Description
My dissertation focuses on how female and middle-class audiences engaged with texts of religious instruction in fifteenth-century England. I examine how these texts gave such readers spiritual and political authority, allowing them to share the Church’s role of teaching the faith and giving them more universal, Christian definitions of the political virtues of prudence and justice that made these virtues relevant to a wider audience than the ruling class.
Contact
[email protected]
https://fordham.academia.edu/SamanthaSabalis
David Smigen-Rothkopf
B.A., in Classics and History, Boston University
Post-Bacc Certificate in Classics, University of Pennsylvania
M.A., Fordham University, in Medieval Studies
Ph.D., Fordham University (2022)
Field of Study: Medieval
Dissertation Title
Twisting Lines: Genealogy and Legitimacy in Fifteenth-Century English Literature.
Contact
[email protected]
Danielle Sottosanti, Ph.D.
BA, University of Arizona
MSc, University of Edinburgh
Ph.D., Fordham University (2019)
Field of Study: Medieval
Courses Taught
Composition I
Composition II
Texts & Contexts: Post-Apocalyptic Literature Then and Now
Dissertation Title
The Romance of Conversion: Crossover in Late-Medieval Literature
Sean Spillane, Ph.D.
B.A., Bridgewater State University
M.A., University of York
Ph.D., Fordham University (2023)
Field of Study: Medieval
Contact
[email protected]
Kevin Stevens, Ph.D.
B.A., Seton Hall University
M.A., MPhil, Fordham University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2018)
Field of Study: 19th-Century British
Courses Taught
Composition/Rhetoric I
Composition/Rhetoric II
Texts and Contexts: Sounds of the Nineteenth Century
Dissertation Title
Hearing Unreliable Narration: Noise in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel
Contact
[email protected]
Judith Stuchiner, Ph.D.
B.A., Grinnell College
M.A., Columbia University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2017)
Field of Study: 18th-Century British
Courses Taught
Composition I
Composition II
Texts and Contexts
Dissertation Title
Religious Enthusiasm and the British Worker, from Henry Fielding to George Eliot
Dissertation Description
Her dissertation views the novel through the lens of major philosophical debates, such as revelation versus reason and faith versus works. Essentially, Judith treats the rising novel as a spiritual space for self-definition, both from the perspective of a servant, such as Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, or an artisan, such as Eliot’s Adam Bede, during a time when religion, though central, offered an increasingly confusing proliferation of philosophical world views.
Contact
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Amina Tajbhai, Ph.D.
BA, BS, Brooklyn College
MA, Brooklyn College
Ph.D., Fordham University (2019)
Field of Study: Early Modern
Courses Taught
Composition I
Composition II
Texts & Contexts: Satan in the West
Dissertation Title
Mind Your Memory: Remembering, Forgetting, and Mental Manipulation in Early Modern Literature
Contact
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James Van Wyck, Ph.D.
B.A., William Paterson University
M.A., SUNY Buffalo
Ph.D., Fordham University (2016)
Field of Study: 19th-Century American
Courses Taught
Composition I
Composition II
Texts and Contexts: God & NYC
Honors Writing Intensive
Honors Rhetoric and Public Speaking
Dissertation Title
Reading Minds, Bodies, and Souls: Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Fiction and Its Legacy
Dissertation Description
His dissertation examines the relationship between U.S. evangelical fiction and the life of the mind in the nineteenth century.
Contact
[email protected]
Twitter: @jmvanwyck
Charlotte Willis, Ph.D.
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: Modern American
Contact:
Jordan Windholz, Ph.D.
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: Early Modern
Contact:
Annalise Wolf
B.A., Brevard College
M.A., University of Kentucky
Ph.D., Fordham University (2022)
Field of Study: Early Modern
Dissertation Title
"Hospitality's Rhetoric of Salvation in Early Modern England."
Contact
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Jonathan Wolf, Ph.D.
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: Modern American
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Jihyun Yun, Ph.D.
B.A., Korea University
M.A., Korea University
Ph.D., Fordham University (2021)
Field of Study: Autobiography, Modern and Contemporary Poetry
Courses Taught
Composition I
Composition II
Texts and Contexts: Life and Narrative
Disobedience in Literature
Dissertation Title
Female Bodies in Translation: Rethinking Agency in Postcolonial Literature
Contact
[email protected]
Mira Zaman, Ph.D.
B.A., Barnard College, Columbia
M.A., City College, CUNY
Ph.D., Fordham University
Field of Study: 18th-Century British
Courses Taught
Composition II
Dissertation Title
Devilish Thoughts: Echoes of Satanic Persuasion in the 18th-Century Novel
Dissertation Description
Her dissertation examines the rhetoric of characters who invoke Satan’s deceptive tactics, while also investigating how satanic forces shape cognitive processes. Mira studies satanic persuasion in the Enlightenment novel in an effort to refine current definitions of secularity.
Contact
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