It’s been a busy few opening weeks in the English department. There’s no better report on that busyness than this list of nine of our PhD students, and their 27 mentors (OK, with some duplicates on that list) who found time during the first week of classes to get through Oral Comprehensive Exams on a very wide range of subjects.
The Orals are an important rite of passage and transitional moment for our doctoral students. Passing this exam represents the conversion of a student from their “coursework” phase to becoming an official “doctoral candidate,” – in the lingo, they have now become ABDs (“all but dissertation”).
We’ve only got one picture, courtesy of Dr. Ahmad and Kainat Cheema’s committe, but I hope you can imagine the rest.
If you have a chance, read through the list of topics, three per doctoral candidate. These topics and the rich intellectual soil that sits underneath each one, comprise an amazing portrait of the intellectual life of our department, the curiosity and ambition of our students, and the range and erudition of our faculty. They also represent the dedication of our students and faculty to hit the semester at full speed – all nine exams were taken and passed before the end of the first week of school!
We are excited about the future for these PhDs-in-training!
Dawn Cancellieri
Dr. Scott Combs—Traditional Gothic Film and Its Adapted Descendants
Dr. Rachel Hollander— Nineteenth Century Gothic Literature: Fears and Technology
Dr. Amy King—Women, Money , and Precarity in Nineteenth-century Literature
Kainat Cheema
Dr. Dohra Ahmad—Mixing Things Up: Hybridity, Ambiguity, & Everything In-Between
Dr. Stephen Alvarez—Literacy, Identity, & Power
Dr. Elda Tsou—All the Rage (or the Lack Thereof) in Asian American Literature
Jacqulyn Graber
Dr. Stephen Alvarez—Community Literacy with an Emphasis on Women & Women’s Health
Dr. Sakina Jangbar (Communications)—Women’s Rhetorical Agency and Reproductive Justice
Dr. Granville Ganter—Narratives of Reproduction & Reproductive Health Care
Kristen Hoffman
Dr. Stephen Alvarez—Writing and Trauma
Dr. Granville Ganter—Trauma Theory
Dr. Stephen Miller—Memoir and Craft
Tess Patalano
Prof. Lee Ann Brown—20th and 21st Century Experimental Poetry
Dr. Raj Chetty—Caribbean and Revolutionary Literature
Dr. Steve Mentz—Blue Humanities
Alexander Radison
Dr. Stephen Alvarez—Comp Theory: Speculative Pedagogies
Dr. Robert Fanuzzi—The Posthuman in the Anthropocene in Literature and Theory
Dr. Rachel Hollander—Monster Theory, Amalgamations, and the Gothic
Anastasia Radzievska
Dr. Robert Fanuzzi—Posthuman Studies
Dr. Amy King—Gothic and EcoGothic
Dr. Steve Mentz—Animal and Plant Studies
Andrew Schlosser
Dr. Stephen Alvarez—Critical Literacy, Pedagogy, and Theory
Dr. Raj Chetty—Critical Whiteness Studies
Dr. Anne Geller—Composition and Rhetoric, First Year Writing
Cynthia Schmidt
Dr. Stephen Alvarez—Creativity in the Composition Classroom
Dr. Granville Ganter—Intersectional Feminist Folklore
Dr. Steve Mentz—Evolving Genre Studies & Feminist Narratology
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