Travis Adams is a doctoral student in Rhetoric and Composition. He grew up in Eagle River, Alaska and came to UNL after completing an MA at Boise State University. Travis' primary research interest is the status of reading in English studies and the use of reading in composition courses. Travis currently teaches Reading Theory and Practice and works as a Writing Center consultant.
Ryan Aiello is a second year doctoral student in American Literature and Film Studies. Before joining the Husker nation, he received his BA and MA from California State University, Chico. Ryan’s research interests are interdisciplinary, and include an array of contemporary and ethnic texts; however, he has a particular affinity for The Wire. He currently teaches ENG 101 with a focus on film, television and media as texts. In his spare time, Ryan enjoys captaining the Andrews Hall Intramural basketball squad, the Great Plains Poets.
Aimee M. Allard is a PhD student at UNL who has an MA in English from Florida Gulf Coast University. She has published essays such as "A Legacy of Word−Music: The Synthesis of Blues and Voice in Rita Dove´s Thomas and Beulah" and poetry including "Pendulum" and "Anatomy of the Gaze." Her scholarly presentations include the Popular Culture Association in the South and the FGCU Interdisciplinary conferences. Ms. Allard´s fields of interest lie in late 19th century through 20th century American Literature and in women´s studies. aimee.allard@huskers.unl.edu.
DeAnn Allison−Cudly, a 2006 UNL graduate, worked last year as an English teacher and writing tutor for Southeast Community College. Her primary interest is the myriad ways that people communicate. She enjoys incorporating various communication themes into presentations. Last year she researched, wrote, and performed a presentation based on the linguistic tendencies of women. Her plan is to pursue her Masters degree with a focus on Rhetoric and Composition.
Lindsay Andrews-Mennenga earned her B.A. in English and double minored in Art History and American History from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Fall 2011 marks her second year in the Ph.D program studying American Literature and Art History with a specialization in nineteenth century studies. Her research interests include Willa Cather, museumology, Gilded Age constructions of class and nationhood, and visual culture. In her spare time she volunteers as a curatorial intern and gives tours as a student docent at the University's own Sheldon Museum of Art. She also acts as the project manager emeritus of the Willa Cather Foundation's forthcoming "Virtual Cather" website. She currently works as the assistant to the undergraduate Advisor, Kelly Payne, and can be contacted at lmennenga@huskers.unl.edu.
Kim Banion is a PhD student in Nineteenth-Century Studies. She received an MA in British and American Literature from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a BA in English from Missouri State University. Her research focuses on early American and antebellum literature, and she is especially interested in the ways in which historical figures and events are represented in early nineteenth-century fiction and poetry. Other interests include women's literature and depictions of poverty in the nineteenth century. Kim is also passionate about teaching and literary pedagogy. She may be reached at kim.banion@gmail.com.
Lesley Bartlett is a PhD Student with an MA in English (University of Kansas) and a BA in English (Arkansas Tech University). Lesley specializes in rhetoric and composition with an emphasis in women´s and gender studies. She is also interested in service−learning and composition pedagogy.
Anastasia Bierman is a first-year MA student who has recently earned her bachelor's degree from McKendree University in Illinois. She is specializing in Medieval and Early Modern literature, and also has an interdisciplinary interest in Medieval and Renaissance studies.
Jennifer Bryan is a second year Ph.D. student in creative writing. She has an MFA from Bowling Green State University where she taught fiction and composition. Her interests focus on gender and class in contemporary literature. Her fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, LIT, The Madison Review and other literary journals. She also received the 2011 Kimmel Foundation Award for an emerging writer.
Janel Cayer is a doctoral student specializing in nineteenth-century American literature and culture, with an emphasis on the antebellum period. Janel's doctoral research approaches literatures of the U.S. War with Mexico from an interdisciplinary perspective, examining the ways in which this war shaped the nineteenth-century American cultural and literary imagination. In addition to teaching composition and literature courses, Janel serves as an editorial assistant at the Whitman Archive and Civil War Washington.
Sarah A. Chavez is a third year PhD student in creative writing (poetry) with a specialization in Ethnic Studies, and an emphasis in Latina/o and Chicana/o literature. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Ball State University and a BA from California State University, Fresno. Her poetry has appeared in CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, Blood Lotus, and The Battered Suitcase among others. She was the recipient of the 2011 Vreeland Award and an honorable mention from the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Competition. Aside from teaching at UNL, she also facilitates writing workshops in the greater Lincoln community. Her creative and scholarly interests include issues of gender, class, labor, and their effects on the body. She is the Assistant Director of the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference.
Maggie Christensen, a PhD student in Composition and Rhetoric, is primarily interested in the intersections of writing and technology, and she has presented her work at several national and regional Computers and Writing conferences. She is also a full-time faculty member in the Department of English at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Contact: mchristensen@unomaha.edu
James Crews was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his work has appeared in Columbia, Crab Orchard Review, Best New Poets 2006 and 2009, as well as other journals. His manuscript, The Book of What Stays, won the 2010 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and was recently published by the University of Nebraska Press. He is Assistant Editor of basalt magazine (www.basaltmagazine.com) and contributes regularly to the Poem-of-the-Week feature for the Times Literary Supplement.
Jaclyn Cruikshank Vogt is PhD student, focusing on mid-nineteenth to late twentieth century American literature, with a specialization in Women's and Gender Studies. Her dissertation research centers on images of women who kill in American fiction and the role of violence in writing by culturally marginalized women. She teaches literature and composition, and is a research assistant with the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities.
Deborah Derrick is a doctoral student in Rhetoric and Composition and Place-Based Studies. She works as a technical and grant writer at the Peter Kiewit Institute. Her interests include scientific and technical writing, WAC/WID, and interdisciplinary perspectives to enhance understanding of science and technology. She is co-editor of a national bridge design manual and has been published by the National Research Council, Plains Song Review and other journals. dderrick@unomaha.edu
Oumar Diogoye Diouf is a PhD student specializing in Postcolonial Studies at UNL. His dissertation project centers on the postcolonial and affective moves in trans-Atlantic African Diaspora novels. His interests include literary theory, American pragmatism, and transnational feminism. Oumar is a Fulbright fellow from Sénégal. He received his BA, MA, and Postgraduate Diploma (DEA) from Cheikh A. Diop University of Dakar and an ESL/EFL Teaching Certificate from Ecole Normale Supérieure (Sénégal).
Cameron Dodworth is a PhD student working in the Nineteenth−Century Studies program. His main interests within the 19th century are Victorian literature, history, and art. Within those fields, Decadence, Naturalism, Gothicism, Women´s Literature, and also Charles Dickens are of particular interest. Cameron is also very much interested in Shakespeare, African−American Literature, and 19th Century French and American novels. He received his first MA in English from UNL in 2002 and a second MA in Victorian Studies from the University of Leicester (UK) in 2003.
Amanda Drake is a PhD student specializing in Gothic British Literature and Nineteenth−Century Studies at UNL. Her dissertation will focus on the comic and humorous in gothic romances of the 18th and 19th centuries. She recently presented a paper on Ann Radcliffe's poetry at Indiana University's graduate student conference and hopes to revise and publish the paper. She plans on developing publishable material from her master´s thesis on The Monk and Dracula as well. She received her MA and BSE from the University of Central Missouri (formerly Central Missouri State University).
Krista Ferguson is a 5th year PhD student with an emphasis in creative writing (fiction), 20th century American fiction, and women's and gender studies. She is currently working on a historical novel. You can email Krista at krista.ferguson@gmail.com.
Megan Gannon, a PhD student, graduated from Vassar College (BA) and The University of Montana (MFA). The recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize and an individual artist´s grant from The Arizona Commission for the Arts, her poems appear in Pleiades, Ploughshares Third Coast, Crazyhorse, Seneca Review, Verse Daily, Poetry Daily, as well as The Best American Poetry 2006 and The International Journal of Feminist Politics.
Crystal Spring Gibbins is a PhD student in Creative Writing-Poetry. She holds a BFA from Bemidji State University and an MFA from Minnesota State University-Moorhead. Her poetry, comics, and collaborations have appeared in Word For/ Word, Free Verse, dislocate, The Meadowland Review, and other journals. At the 2011 ASLE conference, she received Honorable Mention for her creative paper “Come Hell and High Water: Poems of Natural Hazards, Disasters, and Survival in the Red River Valley." Her research interests include ecocriticism, North American nature writing, and American poetry after WWII. Crystal also serves as an editorial assistant for American Life in Poetry.
Christina Harding Thornton is a third-year Ph.D. student whose focus is creative writing. She holds a BFA in fiction writing from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle, where she taught fiction and composition courses and worked closely with writer Charles Johnson. She is currently completing a creative nonfiction account about having walked Nebraska's Cowboy Trail from Norfolk to Valentine. The book is reflective of Harding Thornton's academic and personal interests in Nebraska history, literature, and culture.
Claire Harlan-Orsi (claireharlanorsi@huskers.unl.edu) is a first-year PhD concentrating in fiction writing. She grew up in Bloomington, IN, and received a BA in History and Literary Arts from Brown University. After college, Claire worked as a college adviser for first-generation college-bound high school seniors in Providence, RI, and maintains an interest in issues of class and college access. In 2008, Claire was a writer in residence at Artcroft and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She currently works as a research assistant.
Jackie Harris is a PhD student in 19th-century British literature with specializations in Nineteenth-Century Studies and Women's & Gender Studies. She is a graduate of Brigham Young University (BA) where she specialized in creative writing and Utah State University (MS) where she focused on both writing and literature. Her publications include academic book chapters, photography, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Jackie has presented at conferences both nationally and internationally and enjoys interdisciplinary and cultural studies. Her current work focuses on female coming-of-age literature.
Whitney Helms (B.A., Univeristy of Minnesota; M.A., University of Nebraksa-Lincoln) is a Ph.D. candidate who studies Victorian literature and culture and specializes in Dickens's novels. She is particularly interested in the authorial celebrity and the 19th-century literary market. Her article, "Appropriating Maternal Authority and Politicizing the Domestic: Anna Barbauld and Children's Literature" appears in Volume 6 of Eighteenth-Century Women, and her article "Aesthetics, Artistry, and Gothicism: George Eliot and 'The Lifted Veil'" will be appearing in the George Eliot--G. H. Lewes Studies journal. Among other conferences, Whitney recently presented her essay "Dickens Commodifying, Dickens Commodified" at the University of Exeter's "Instruction, Amusement, and Spectacle" international conference and will be presenting at the Rocky Mountain MLA this October.
Jason Hertz is a first-year PhD student in Literature Studies. He grew up in Willow River, Minnesota, and came to UNL after completing an MA at Western Carolina University. His primary research interests are in eco-criticism and place-based literature. He has published poetry in Headwaters, The Blotter, and Nomad. Jason currently works as a teaching assistant.
Aaron Hillyer is a PhD student with a research focus on contemporary American fiction and critical theory. Theorists that are currently informing his thinking and writing include Giorgio Agamben, Gilles Deleuze, Walter Benjamin, and Henri Lefebvre. Aaron is interested in theorizing the implications of Agamben´s messianic conception of language and history for the study of literature.
Laurie Zum Hofe is a third year PhD student in Composition and Rhetoric. She is most interested in putting past educational experiences in dialogue with present classroom teaching moments and understanding more about how this kind of recursive inquiry may shape teaching, learning, and scholarship. She received her MA in Writing Theory and Pedagogy from DePaul University in Chicago, IL.
Gabriel Houck is a Doctoral student in creative writing with a concentration in Nonfiction. He grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, and studied writing at Johns Hopkins University, where he earned his BA in 2001. He has an MFA in writing from California Institute of the Arts and an MFA in Nonfiction from the University of Iowa, and has published a handful of short writing in journals such as Drunken Boat and Flyway. He is currently working on a manuscript about a Creationist museum in Kentucky, and is proud papa to a crazy old dog named Logan. (ghouck@huskers.unl.edu)
John Philip Johnson is a first year master’s student in poetry. He has had poems recently published in Southern Poetry Review, Rattle, Word Riot and elsewhere, including genre work in Dreams and Nightmares and Astropoetica. Some of his published poems can be seen at www.johnphilipjohnson.com, where there is also some quirky personal stuff. He earned a BA in philosophy and English from UNL, and lives in Lincoln with his wife Sue and their five children.
Hye-Ran Jung is a PhD student in Literature. She earned an MA in English from Korea University. She presented "Remembering and Mapping," a critical paper on Nuruddin Farah’s Maps at the English Language and Literature Association's annual conference in South Korea in 2007. Her specific interest centers on 20th-century ethnic and postcolonial studies. She plans to delve into theoretical interests and literary narratives that articulate the experience of marginalized and disempowered subalterns in the context of contemporary transnational capitalism. She is also interested in the writing experience of in-betweens as intermediary agents situated in a border space between two or more different worlds. She works in the Writing Center.
Adrian Gibbons Koesters is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in poetry and fiction; she holds an MFA in poetry from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. A multi-genre writer, her scholarly interests include creative writing pedagogy, historical developments in literary and critical theory, spirituality in American fiction and contemporary poetry, early modernism, and the works of G. M. Hopkins, Denise Levertov, and Richard Wilbur. She is author of the nonfiction book Healing Mysteries, published by Paulist Press in 2005.
Jeff Kosse, a PhD student, is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs. He has presented conference papers on works by Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and Toni Morrison; currently teaches composition and multicultural and African American literature; and is pursuing scholarship regarding representations of jazz in American fiction. Office phone: (712) 325−3709. Email: jkosse@iwcc.edu
Kate Kostelnik is a fourth year Ph.D. student in Creative Writing. Her fiction, which earned a 2007 New Jersey State Arts Council Fellowship, has appeared in 42 Opus, Invisible Insurrection, Hayden’s Ferry, Superstition Review, and Fifth Wednesday. Her scholarship, "Revisions from Within: the Potential of Ph.D.s in Creative Writing" was published in Creative Writing Teaching: Theory and Practice. She’s working on a novel, a story collection, and a chapter for A Guide To Creative Writing Pedagogies that explores writing center theory in Creative Writing classrooms. Her research interests also include the contemporary female gothic, post-postmodern American literature, and the evolving discipline of Creative Writing Studies. She can be reached at katekostelnik@gmail.com.
Kathryn Brigger Kruger (B.A., Iowa; M.T.S., Harvard) is interested in the crosscurrents of religion and literature in the nineteenth-century British novel. She is the recipient of UNL's Woodberry Prize for a paper on Robert Louis Stevenson's proto-modern approach to temporality, and she received the department's John W. Robinson Prize for a paper on Walt Whitman's apostrophic address. Her publications include a forthcoming article on Whitman and Emanuel Swedenborg in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review and book reviews in the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association and in the online edition of Nineteenth-Century French Studies. Besides teaching composition and literature classes, Kathryn serves as an assistant editor at the Whitman Archive.
Marianne Kunkel is a third-year Ph.D. student in poetry, specializing in women’s and gender studies, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She holds a MFA from the University of Florida. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in 32 Poems, Columbia Poetry Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, New South, Poet Lore, River Styx, and elsewhere. Her poetry has twice been nominated for Best New Poets, and her chapbook The Laughing Game was a finalist for the 2011 Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Chapbook Competition. She currently is preparing a full-length poetry manuscript about girlhood. She is the Interim Managing Editor of Prairie Schooner.
Kathleen Lacey is a fourth year PhD student in literary studies. She holds Bachelor's degrees in English and Humanistic Studies from the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay and both an MA and an MFA in fiction from Minnesota State University in Mankato. At UNL, she intends to study girlhood in women's multiethnic American literature and how those models disrupt popular notions of girlhood experiences. Her current projects include an exploratory essay examining the field of African American literature in the academy and an article linking the Women in Print movement to the 'Zine Movement of the 1990s. Kathleen can be reached at kathleen.lacey@huskers.unl.edu.
Andrea Comiskey Lawse is a Ph.D studying 19th and early 20th century Transatlantic literature, and specializing in science, ecofeminism, place studies, and sustainability. She is currently revising her essay, "The Embodied Mind, Quantum Theory and 'Kubla Khan': Coleridge's Reconciliation of Mind, Body, and Spirit?" for publication. Other publications include "Willing to Lead": Education for a Green, Sustainable Future," forthcoming in Creighton Magazine, and a published book review in New Hibernia Review. She will be presenting papers ("Eating Nature: Ecological Reflections on Science, Consumption, and Spirituality" and "Situating Anarchy: Networks of Science and Culture in Le Guin's The Dispossessed") at MMLA and Marquette University this fall. She is a Teaching Assistant at UNL.
Ashley Lawson is a second-year doctoral student specializing in the study of early 20th century literature, Modernism, and women's writing, with an interdisciplinary interest in 20th century visual arts and gender studies. She received a BA in English and Women's Studies from West Virginia University and a MA in English from the University of Rochester. Before coming to UNL, she taught composition, literature, and gender studies at West Virginia Wesleyan College for three years. She is also a teaching assistant for the department and an editorial assistant at the Walt Whitman Archive.
Caitie Leibman is pursuing her MA in creative writing. A Nebraska native, she received her BA in English from Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. Caitie works as a copy editor at the Nebraska Transportation Center and also serves as an assistant coach for the Doane speech team. Her interests lie in both fiction and nonfiction, and the theoretical parameters of each.
Amber Harris Leichner is a PhD candidate in 20th-century American Literature with a specialization in Women's and Gender Studies. Her research interests include Cather/Wharton Studies, multi-cultural 20th-century women writers, and the teaching of writing and literature. Amber's work has appeared in Cather Studies 9 (2011) and Teaching the Harlem Renaissance (2008). Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Dos Passos Review and Relief, and she is the author the chapbook Just This Proof (FootHills Publishing, 2006). Amber teaches courses in writing, literature, and women's and gender studies.
Yulia Levchenko is a PhD student in Nineteenth-Century Studies. She received an MA in British Literature from University of Nebraska, Lincoln under Fulbright scholarship; and a BA from Kursk State University, Russia. Yulia specializes in British Romanticism (poetry in particular) and intercultural connections between Britain, Russia, and France at the time. Her other interests include translation theory and visual arts.
Susan Martens is a Ph.D. student in Composition and Rhetoric. As a former Co-Director for the Nebraska Writing Project, she currently organizes writing retreats and writing marathons for this professional network of teacher-writers. She also works closely with UNL's secondary English education program and teaches a class for pre-service high school English teachers called Reading Theory and Practice. Susan is a native of Fremont, Nebraska, a graduate of Wayne State College (B.A.E.) and the University of South Dakota (M.A.), and a veteran high school English teacher. Her research centers around the intersections of teaching writing, place-based education, and ecocomposition. She has written for English Journal and the National Writing Projects and has presented at national conferences for the National Council of Teachers of English, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the Rhetoric Society of America, the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the National Writing Project. She may be reached at susan.r.martens@gmail.com.
Lindsay Mayo Fincher is a second year PhD student in nineteenth-century British literature. She has received an MA in English from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette and a BA in English from Texas Tech University. Her writing examines the intersections of place and modernization as informing ideas of selfhood and identity. Particularly, she is interested in travelogues and industrial novels as sources in which conflicting notions of self and society emerge. She works as a copy editor for the Nebraska Transportation Center. Email: lindsay.m.fincher@gmail.com
Jill McCabe Johnson is a PhD student whose scholarship centers on Ecocriticism, Place Studies, Nineteenth Century Studies, and literature of the Nineteenth Century to present. Jill has served as Publications Manager for the Gates Foundation, and is currently director of Artsmith, a non-profit to support the arts. She is the editor of the forthcoming anthologies Becoming: What Makes a Woman and Being: What Makes a Man, and her creative work has appeared in such journals as Third Coast, The Los Angeles Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, and Harpur Palate. Honors include the Paula Jones Gardiner Poetry Award from Floating Bridge Press, the Editor's Choice Award from ScissorTale Review, four Pushcart nominations for poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, a Deborah Tall Memorial Fellowship, and two research grants from the Center for Great Plains Studies. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University.
Carmen McCue is a second-year Ph.D. student at UNL. Her interests lie in late 19th century and early 20th century American literature with a focus on sexuality and gender identity. Carmen was born and raised in Nuremberg, Germany, but comes to UNL from Colorado Springs.
Kevin McMullen is a second-year MA student specializing in 19th century American literature, with a particular focus on Walt Whitman and his influence on the landscape of American poetry. He also hopes to pursue a specialization in Digital Humanities. Kevin hails from the far-away land of Bettendorf, Iowa, and received a BA in both English and Journalism from the University of Iowa. Although he now resides in Husker country, he still considers himself a Hawkeye. Kevin is in his second year of a research assistantship at the Walt Whitman Archive. He can be reached at: mcmullen.kevinm@gmail.com
Marcus Meade is a PhD student studying Composition and Rhetoric. His specific focus is Writing Center studies, but he delights in working with multiple fields inside and outside of Comp./Rhet. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Journalism and a M.A. in English from Northwest Missouri State University. In his spare time he watches and plays sports, reads, and plays a really terrible piano.
Michelle Menting is a PhD student in Creative Writing. Her poems, stories, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Ascent, Bellingham Review, Silk Road Review, The Prose-Poem Project, Pank, Diagram, Midwestern Gothic, Quarter After Eight, and other journals. She focuses on rural literature, ecocriticism, and place-based writing. Seasonal non-agricultural migration (tourism), journey narratives, and representations of family also appear in her creative work. She’s especially interested in the history of the essay, as well as in hybrid forms of literature and writing, including the prose poem, the lyric essay, flash fiction and flash nonfiction.
Danielle Metcalf is an MA creative writing student from Norfolk, Nebraska, specializing in fiction. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. She has recently spent significant time abroad in India and has interests in fighting for international justice, especially in the area of human trafficking.
Kelly Meyer is a Ph.D. student in Composition and Rhetoric. A former middle school English teacher, Kelly works closely with the UNL English Education program, tutors in the writing center, and teaches composition courses in the English department. She is a native of Chicago, but moved to St. Louis shortly after receiving her BA at McKendree University, and taught in north St. Louis County, earning her MA in Composition/Rhetoric at the University of Missouri—St. Louis along the way. Kelly’s research focuses on literacy studies, community service learning, and teacher pedagogy and preparation for the classroom. She has presented at a number of national conferences in the field of Composition Studies, and is a member of the Midwest Modern Language Association and the National Council for Teachers of English. Kelly enjoys world travel and has spent her summers in recent years trekking across the United Kingdom, Western Europe and Australia with elementary and high school students through her affiliation with People to People Ambassador Programs. Kelly can be reached at kelly.meyer22@huskers.unl.edu.
Trey Moody, a PhD student, earned a BA and an MFA from Texas State University-San Marcos. He is the author of two chapbooks, Climate Reply (New Michigan Press, 2010) and Once Was a Weather (Greying Ghost Press, forthcoming), and his writing has been or will be published in Best New Poets 2009, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Sonora Review, and Washington Square. At UNL, he has been awarded a Gaffney/Academy of American Poets Prize and a Susan Atefat Peckham Fellowship. With Jeff Alessandrelli, he co-curates The Clean Part Reading Series.
Nima Najafi Kianfar (B.A., UCLA; MFA, Saint Mary's College of California) is a PhD student specializing in Post-War American and Iranian Poetics. He is also working toward a certification in Nineteenth-Century Studies, as well as a collateral field in Film Theory/Studies. His creative and scholarly work deals with Iranian (and Oriental) representation within western media, film, and literature, especially from the nineteenth-century onward. Nima also works in the Walt Whitman Archive as a transcriber and encoder of Whitman's body of work.
Cindy Nelson, a PhD student, is a graduate of Chadron State College and UNL. Her areas of specialty are 19th century British literature and interdisciplinary 19th century studies. Cindy loves the Brontes and wrote her master´s thesis on the philosophy of death in Emily Bronte´s poetry. She taught high school English (all courses and grades) for two years and is currently teaching at Southeast Community College.
Daniel Nyikos earned his MA at Utah State University. He is a second-year PhD student studying Creative Writing, focusing on Fiction. Born in Germany and ethnically Hungarian, he is interested in ethnicity, the impact of history on identity, the problem of self, and marginal and liminal subcultures. His areas of literary curiosity include Victorian literature and weird fiction.
Wendy Oleson is a third-year PhD student in Creative Writing. She has a BA from Amherst College and an MFA from Oregon State. Her fiction appears/is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, SmokeLong Quarterly, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Hobart (online), and McSweeney's Internet Tendency. Her poetry appears in the delinquent and is forthcoming in Rattle. In 2010 Wendy was a finalist for Hunger Mountain's Katherine Paterson Prize. At UNL she teaches composition, creative writing, and literature, and studies Gothic and Children's Lit. She's currently at work on novels for children—both YA and MG readers—and a novel and story collection for adults. She can be reached at weoleson@huskers.unl.edu.
Bernice Olivas is a direct admit doctoral student in Rhetoric and Composition. She grew up in Idaho, moving from small rural towns like Rupert, Idaho and eventually settling in Boise, Id. She plans to complete both her MA and her PhD at UNL. Bernice's primary research interest is centered around retention of underrepresented students in the composition course. Bernice currently teaches English 151: Rhetoric as Argument.
Bobbi Olson is a PhD student in Composition and Rhetoric. She received her MA in English from the University of Nebraska-Omaha, along with earning a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) Certificate. In addition to teaching first-year writing, she has acted as the Associate Coordinator of the Writing Center. She is particularly interested in studying the role of the Writing Center in English Language Learners' academic literacies.
Kelly Payne (B.A., Saint Mary’s College; M.A., University of Nebraska-Lincoln) is a Ph.D. student and academic advisor in the Department of English at UNL. She is interested in the economic dimensions of humanitarian reform efforts in nineteenth-century American Literature. She received an Honorable Mention recognition for the Woodberry Prize for an essay on Jewish-Anglo manners in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. Her publications include a book review in the online edition of Nineteenth-Century French Studies. She has presented conference papers on Lydia Maria Child, George Eliot, and Frances Willard. Kelly also has presented papers on pedagogical topics related to undergraduate student success.
Megan Peabody is a Ph.D. candidate in 19th and early 20th century American literature, with a particular interest in African-American and women writers. She has a chapter appearing in We Wear the Mask: Paul Laurence Dunbar and the Politics of Representative Reality (Kent State UP, 2010) and presented most recently at the 2009 Society for the Study of American Women Writers conference.
Casey Pycior is a first-year PhD student in creative writing-fiction. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Wichita State University and an MA in Literature from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is currently revising his MFA thesis manuscript, a novel tentatively titled Until the Water Settles. His work has most recently appeared in REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters (September 2011). He is also interested in contemporary American Literature, the short story, and literature of place. Casey can be reached at casey.pycior@huskers.unl.edu.
James Madison Redd, a preacher’s son with a voice booming just as loud. At Mississippi State University, he wove seven yarns into a thesis called Living Without: Stories from Vandler County. One thread was nominated for Best New American Voices 2008. 2010 marks his first year at the UNL creative writing Ph.D. program. Talk to him at jimmyredd66@gmail.com
Beverley Rilett, a PhD student, has a research focus in 19th− and early 20th − century British and American literature. For the past two years she has been most interested in the lives and work of T.S. Eliot, Willa Cather, Virginia Woolf and George Eliot, especially in reading their literary works in conjunction with their social, historical, and biographical contexts to find instances where the authors´ actual experiences become interrelated with or mapped onto their creative work.
Jessica Rivera-Mueller is a Ph.D. student in Composition and Rhetoric. She is a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (M.A.) and Nebraska Wesleyan University (B.A.), and a former high school teacher for Lincoln Public Schools. Jessica is currently studying the role of agency in students’ and teachers’ development in the composition classroom.
Erica Rogers a sixth-year doctoral student studying the rhetorical traditions within the field of Composition with a focus on “personal” writing as cognitive and intellectual work. Her commitment to personal writing as discursive, autonomous, academic, communal, and professional practices that can interrupt and/or challenge privileged discourses influences her pedagogy and scholarship. Erica has presented her work at venues such as Split this Rock, the Rhetorical Society of America, College Composition and Communications Conference, as well as local readings and events in Lincoln. Erica currently teaches “Writing and Communities” as well as “Rhetoric as Inquiry.”
SJ Sindu (Sindu Sathiyaseelan; sjsindu.com) is an M.A. student in English pursuing a focus in Creative Writing, a minor in Women's and Gender Studies, and a graduate certificate in Teaching of Writing. Sindu's research, critical and creative work focuses on the hybridity of racial(ized) minority and immigrant experience, queer identity development, and gender/transgender expression. In particular, Sindu concentrates on the intersectionality of identity and lived experiences with a postcolonial lens, as expressed through fiction, non-fiction, and cultural criticism.
J. Conrad Schulze is a second-year PhD student and a Teaching Assistant at UNL. In 2008 he attended the AWP convention in New York City as a representative of the Prairie Schooner. He is currently a secondary reader for the journal and also participated in the Prairie Schooner's annual book contest as a primary reader. In March he presented an interdisciplinary paper at the CEA conference in St. Louis, Missouri. He currently has a personal essay appearing in Sub-Lit.
Hali F. Sofala is originally from Eatonton, Georgia and is in her first year of study as a PhD student in Creative Writing focusing on Poetry and Ethnic Studies. She received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Her work is most interested in exploring the ways in which culture, ethnicity, and identity collide.
Aubrey Streit Krug is a graduate teaching assistant and first year Ph.D. student in literature and Great Plains Studies. She earned her B.A. from Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas and her M.A. from UNL. Her scholarly interests include ecocriticism, agriculture, ethnobotany, Native American studies, science studies, and place conscious education. She serves on the advisory board of the Center for Rural Affairs, and has presented on the topics of Great Plains agrarianism and the fiction of Wendell Berry. Her creative work has appeared in the Land Report, Identity Theory, Visual Communication Quarterly, the Tipton Times, Precipitate, and The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011.
Carrie Walker is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is currently doing research in Kingston, Jamaica as a Fulbright Scholar. Carrie’s dissertation project, Reinventing Epistolarity: Contemporary Women Writers and Human Rights, investigates how women writers from Africa and the Diaspora revise the classic epistolary form to endorse and challenge universal human rights discourse. Carrie’s research interests include women’s literature, feminist theory, and Africana literature.
Joshua Ware is a PhD student studying poetry and poetics. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals, such as 580 Split, Bat City Review, Caketrain, Laurel Review, New American Writing, New Orleans Review, and Packingtown Review. He is the co-author of the chapbook I, NE: Iterations of the Junco (Small Fires Press, 2009), as well as the author of A Series of Ad Hoc Permutations (Scantily Clad Press) and the forthcoming Excavations (Further Adventures Press).
J. D. Wiley is a PhD student. His primary interest in the field of English is narrative−along with all the questions of art, craft, and pure visceral enjoyment involved. Currently he is at work on a group of interrelated novellas. Less cohesively, he is writing random short stories as they come to him. His fiction has appeared in the Cream City Review.
Scott Winter starts a doctoral degree this fall after enjoying a two−year MA program at UNL in creative writing. Scott has produced a short story collection and is close to polishing off a novel. He spent May at the Vermont Studio Center. His areas of interest are fiction, creative nonfiction, contemporary American South (Gothic) fiction and Russian literature (and language). Outside the department, Scott teaches in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications, where he has taught all levels and been sent to Kosovo and Ethiopia to teach graduate students.
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