current grad students
M.A. Students
William Broughton
I am a second-year M.A. student with a B.A. in English from Auburn University. My academic interests include authorship studies, the history of the book, eighteenth-century fiction, and literary and linguistic computing.
Ray Horton
I am a second year M.A. student with a B.A. (2010) in English from Mercyhurst College. My academic interests include 20th- and 21st- century American fiction, interdisciplinary / cultural studies and American literature, the relationship between religious studies and literature, and multiethnic / multicultural literatures.
Michelle Lyons
I am a second-year M.A. student. I have a B.A. in Humanities and a B.A. in English, both from the University of Washington (2010). My academic interests include 18th- and 19th-century English literature, gothic literature, composition, and narrative theory.
Olivia McGuire
I am a second year M.A. student and hold a B.A. in English from Kenyon College (2008). My academic interests include the relationship between religion and literature, particularly in 19th-century American literature, and composition pedagogy.
Cara Miller
I am a first year M.A. candidate with academic interest in post-structuralism, film, queer theory, and the effects of technology. I hold a B.A. in English from Ohio University (2011).
Mark Mowls
I have BAs in English and in Film Studies from Ohio State University (2002) and interests in film studies, visual culture and rhetoric, and British and expatriate American modernism.
Matthew Trammell
I'm a first year M.A. student and I hold a B.S. in English from Troy University (2009). My academic interests include post-colonial theory and literature (particularly of the Caribbean), whiteness studies, and modernism.
Ph.D. Students
Wells Addington
I'm a Ph.D. candidate focusing on contemporary American literature. I hold a B.S.S. from Ohio University in American Studies (2004), and an M.A. in English from Case Western (2007). My interests include the sociology of texts, new media studies and creative writing. My dissertation, Discipline and Publish: Creative Writing, Corporate Publishing, and the Short Story Renaissance (1975-85) examines an anomalous moment in which single-authored short story collections sold well in the literary marketplace.
Danny Anderson
A Ph.D. candidate at Case Western Reserve University, I am currently working on my dissertation, The Ivory Shtetl: The University and the Postwar Jewish Imagination. I received my undergraduate degree from Kent State and my Master's from CWRU. My research interests include: 20th-century American fiction, Jewish-American fiction, film, comics, and urban studies.
Mary Assad
Having completed doctoral coursework in WHiT at Case Western, I am now preparing for my qualifying exams and dissertation. My areas of research include medical rhetoric; visual rhetoric; and graphic novels and comics. I am especially concerned with the relationships between health/medicine and visuality. My teaching interests include ESL and Writing in the Health Professions. I have earned a B.A. in History from Baldwin-Wallace College (2006) and an M.A. in English from Case Western (2009), as well as a TESL certificate (2008).
Varsha Balachandran
I am a first year Ph.D. student at Case. I hold a B.A. in English from Mahatma Gandhi University, India, and an M.A. from The University of Akron, Ohio. My academic interests include 20th-century American literature, immigrant and cross-cultural literature, and postmodernism.
Drew Banghart
I received a B.A. (2007) and M.A. (2010) in English from Northern Illinois University. I am second year Ph.D. student at Case interested in Victorian/Edwardian law, medicine, and literature, as well as composition pedagogy.
Cara Byrne
I am a first year Ph.D. student, and my academic interests include African-American literature, gender studies, children's literature, and ESL pedagogy. I earned my B.S. in Education and my B.A. in English from Bowling Green State University (2009) and my M.A. in English from Case Western Reserve University (2011). I am also licensed to teach middle school and high school integrated language arts in Ohio.
Jason Carney
I am a third year Ph.D. student who is interested in "science fictional" aesthetics, modernist literature, and the history of Anglo-American literary criticism. I am attracted by questions of literary value, that strange divide between "high" and "low." For fun I write stories of robots, sorcerers, and other novums.
Kate Dunning
As a Ph.D. student focusing on 19th- and 20th- century American poetry, I am particularly interested in Emily Dickinson, ecocriticism, and ecofeminism. I hold a B.A. in English and French with a minor in Spanish (2008), as well as a Master’s in Library Science (2009) from the University at Buffalo. I also spent the 2009-2010 academic year teaching English at the University of Maroua in Cameroon (Central Africa) as a Fulbright grantee.
Eric Earnhardt
I hold a B.A. in English from Geneva College (2006) and an M.A. in Literary History from Ohio University (2011). I am particularly interested in American literature and rhetoric surrounding such broad topics as agrarianism, ecocriticism, economics, law, nationalism, politics, race, and religion in and of the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Nicole Emmelhainz
As a Ph.D. student focusing on writing studies, I'm specifically interested in how digital/new media technologies and feminism and gender studies influence writing classrooms. I hold a B.A. in English (Professional Writing) from Capital University, as well as a Master’s in English (General Studies) from Ball State University and a Master’s in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Ohio University.
Catherine Forsa
I hold a B.A. in English from Fairfield University and an M.A. in English from Seton Hall University. My research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, American regionalism, women’s studies, and feminist theory.
Kristin Kondrlik
I received my B.A. in English and Political Science from Canisius College (2008) and my M.A. in English from Case Western Reserve University (2011). My research interests include professional and technical communication, 19th- and 20th- century British literature, and print culture.
Marcus Mitchell
I hold a B.A. in English from Illinois Wesleyan University (2008) and an M.A. in English from Case Western Reserve University (2011). My academic interests include Victorian literature and culture, 18th- century British fiction, and chivalric romances.
Monica Orlando
I am a second-year Ph.D. student. I hold a B.A. (2005) and M.A. (2008) in English from John Carroll University, and taught high school English for two years. My academic interests include 19th- and 20th-century American literature, women in literature, and autobiographical writing.
Michael Parker
I am a Ph.D. student focusing on queer theory and late 20th-century American literature and poetry. My primary areas of interest are queer temporalities, utopias and aesthetics. I received my B.A. in Russian Language and Literature from the University of Pittsburgh in 2007 and my M.A. in English from Case Western in 2011.
Greg Summers
I earned my B.A. in English from Ohio State in 1992, my M.A. from John Carroll in 1996. I completed my coursework in 2009 and passed my qualifying exams in the spring of 2011. My dissertation will be in visual rhetoric and new media studies. I have been employed at Malone University since 2000 as an Instructor of English Studies and the Director of the Writing Center.
Scott Weedon
I graduated from Loyola University of Maryland with a B.A. in English and from Case Western Reserve University with an M.A. in English. I am a Ph.D. student and I focus on professional communication, rhetorical theory, and narratology.