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.
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.
Kim Banion is a second-year PhD student in Nineteenth-Century Studies. She recieved 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 kimberly.banion@huskers.unl.edu.
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.
Rebecca Bednarz is pursuing a PhD with emphases in creative writing (poetry) and rhetoric and composition. She is presently studying topics such as ekphrasis, women's poetry after 1960, critical pedagogy and constructivist learning theory. Rebecca has been published in The Threepenny Review and DoubleTake Magazine, among other literary journals. Her chapbook, Camera Obscura, was published this spring from Noemi Press. To contact Rebecca, her email address is rebecca.bednarz@huskers.unl.edu.
Tamy Burnett is a literature PhD student, with a specialization in Women´s and Gender Studies. Tamy holds an MA in English (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) and a BA in Secondary Education in English and Speech Communication (University of Nebraska at Kearney). Her research focuses on American literature and culture, especially women writers and women in popular culture, with an emphasis on female action heroes. Classes that Tamy teaches include first year composition, Introduction to Women´s Literature, Women Filmmakers, Women in Popular Culture, and Introduction to Women´s Studies. tburnett2@unl.edu
Sandy Byrd is a sixth−year doctoral student. Most of Sandy´s work is in British Romantic literature and Irish literature. She is particularly interested in issues of colonial power and concepts of identity in poetry. Some of her current projects include an essay in an electronic collection of Irish women poets of the Romantic era, edited by Dr. Stephen Behrendt (forthcoming), and a website of nineteenth century Irish literature.
Jennie Case is an MA student specializing in creative writing. She is currently working on a novel and a collection of poems based on her experiences with at-risk youth. Other academic interests include ecocriticism, place-based education, and creative writing pedagogy. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry East, Third Coast, and Green Hills Literary Lantern. She may be reached at jennifer@thecases.com.
Janel Cayer is a PhD student whose research currently focuses on formations of masculinity and femininity in both early and late American Literature. More specifically, Janel´s research explores formations of gender in fin−de−siecle scientific and medical professions as well as depictions of gender in relation to the domestic kitchen. Future academic projects include an analysis of contemporary kitchen culture as depicted in both popular and literary forms.
John Chávez is a PhD student in poetry and holds an MFA from New Mexico State University. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Xantippe, Copper Nickel, Tusculum Review, Palabra, Great River Review, Alice Blue and Puerto del Sol. His is the author of the chapbook Heterotopia, published by Noemi Press in 2004, and co-author of the collaborative chapbook I, NE: Iterations of the Junco, published by Small Fires Press in 2009. In June 2009, he was the Letras Latinas Residency Fellow at the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary studies. His interests include experimental Chicano/a & Latino/a poetry.
Sarah A. Chavez is a first year PhD student in Creative Writing with a focus in poetry. Both her creative work and research interests are in ethnicity, the body, access, and border crossing, particularly in Chicano/a literature. Sarah earned her BA in English from California State University, Fresno and her MA in Creative Writing from Ball State University in Indiana. Currently she is working to revise her chapbook titled The Responsibility of Memory and is working on a new collection that highlights poetry inspired by music. Among others, her work can be found in the journals Bent Pin Quarterly and Spooky Boyfriend.
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
emily m. danforth (emdanforth@huskers.unl.edu), a PhD student in Creative Writing, has her MFA in Fiction from the University of Montana. emily is the Assistant Director of the Nebraska Summer Writers' Conference (www.NSWC.org) and the Vice President of the EGSA (English Graduate Student Association). Her short stories have twice been nominated for Pushcart prizes; in 2005 she won the George Garrett Fiction Award from Willow Springs magazine; and in 2008 her short story "The Truest Way to Name Something," was chosen by judges Sarah Waters and Robert Gluck as the winner of Chroma Magazine's International Queer Fiction Award. Currently her first novel, Lucky Human, is represented by the Jean V. Naggar Agency, NYC. Her academic work includes the contemporary novel, film studies, queer studies/fiction, and Ergodic Literature.
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
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).
Steven Charles Edwards, a PhD student, received the 2001 PEN/Northwest Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency which afforded him the use of a backcountry cabin in southwestern Oregon for seven months. He has published stories, poems and essays in such journals as: The Cream City Review, Passages North, Sou´westerand Wilderness: The Wilderness Society Magazine. He is currently working on a short novel.
James Engelhardt is a fifth year PhD student in poetry focusing on ecopoetics as well as place−based education, critical pedagogy, and sustainability. He was awarded the initial Susan Atefat Peckham Fellowship and has received a Louise VanSickle Fellowship. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including Isotope, Lilies and Cannonballs Review, and Hawk & Handsaw. He is the Managing Editor of Prairie Schooner.
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.
Alison Friedow, a second year PhD student in Composition and Rhetoric, teaches English 254, works as a consultant in the Writing Center, and serves as an executive member of the English Graduate Student Association. Among other projects, she is currently undertaking a collaborative project concerning the role of difference in the writing center. Alison´s interests include the role of difference in teaching and learning, teacher development, and writing across the curriculum. Upcoming presentations include a panel at the 2007 Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) Conference.
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 S. Gibbins is a PhD student in Creative Writing-Poetry, specializing in Human Rights and Diversity. Her poetry focuses on placelessness and crossing geographical borders, of boundaries created naturally, arbitrarily, or by measured design—maps, fences, or walls. Other academic interests include poetic translation, specifically poems of Georg Trakl, and researching the intersection between poetry and propaganda during WWI. Her poetry has appeared in Literary Bohemian, Sage Trail, and Minnetonka Review, to name a few.
Maura Giles-Watson
Maura Giles-Watson, MA (English), MEd (Cross-Cultural Ed), was Deputy Commissioner of the Office of Arts and Humanities in Boston. At UNL she is working on her PhD in early English literature, chiefly drama and poetry. Her interests encompass comparative and interdisciplinary approaches to performance of poetic, dramatic, and rhetorical texts; theatrical history; classical traditions and interruptions; and theories of performance, argumentation, and epistolography. Maura’s essay on continuities and ruptures in visual, dramatic, and literary representations of Odysseus/Ulysses appeared in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 103 (2007); her work on ‘geosomatic’ women in Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Middleton was included in the select proceedings of the Newberry Library’s ‘Mapping the Premodern’ conference (2008); and her article on singing Vice figures in early English drama is forthcoming in Early Theatre 12.2 (2009). Maura’s instructional approaches include cross-cultural and liberation pedagogies--especially critical, feminist, and theater-in-education methods. She holds secondary teaching credentials in English and Latin in California and Nebraska. At UNL Maura teaches Shakespeare, Introduction to Linguistics, and Rhetoric as Argument.
Office: Andrews 112. Office hours for fall 2009: Tuesdays and Thursdays 1:45-3 and other days by appointment. Contact: mauragiles@post.harvard.edu
Kelly Grey Carlisle is a PhD student. Her essays have appeared in River Teeth, Tampa Review, and Subtropics. Two of these essays were selected as notable essays in Best American Essays 2006 and one was reprinted in The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction, edited by Michael Martone and Lex Williford. She has won an AWP Intro Journal Award, a Susan Atefat Peckham Fellowship, and a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Recently she won second place in nonfiction in the 2008-2009 Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Contest. Carlisle is the former managing editor of Prairie Schooner, the national literary magazine based at UNL, and currently serves as one of the magazine’s Senior Readers.
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 second-year PhD student at UNL in Women’s Literatures with a specialization in Women's & Gender Studies. She is employed as a graduate instructor and also works as an editorial assistant at Prairie Schooner magazine. She is interested in transatlantic 19th- and 20th-Century women's literatures, with other literary interests in interdisciplinary and cultural studies, psychological disorders, and writing fiction and creative nonfiction. Jackie has presented academic and creative papers both nationally and internationally at conferences including the International Cather Symposium, Western Literature Association, Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, and Intermountain Graduate Student Conference. She has been published in Scribendi and has a book chapter entitled "Fernand Léger and Willa Cather’s 'Coming, Aphrodite!'" forthcoming in the volume Cather and Aesthethics.
Whitney Helms, a third-year Ph.D. student, studies nineteenth-century British literature and culture, and specializes in Dickens’s novels. Her article, “Appropriating Maternal Authority and Politicizing the Domestic: Anna Barbauld and Children’s Literature” was given an Honorable Mention Award for UNL’s Woodberry Literary Prize, and will be appearing in Volume 6 of Eighteenth-Century Women. Among other conferences, Whitney recently presented her essay “Dickens Commodifying, Dickens Commodified” at the University of Exeter’s “Instruction, Amusement, and Spectacle” international conference. She holds a B.A. from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and an M.A. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Aaron Hillyer is a fourth−year 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.
Michael Jamieson is an MA student focusing on critical theory who graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with degrees in History and Film Studies. His main interest lies in the relationship between real world and artistic representations of violence and his undergraduate work dealt with spectatorship and the films of Michael Haneke. On Saturdays, he will be wearing his Arsenal jersey while cheering on the Huskers!
Hye-Ran Jung is a newly admitted Ph.D. student at UNL. I received MA in American Literature from Korea University with a thesis focusing on the ideological function of seeing and being seen in the matrix of identity of African Americans. After receiving my Master degree, I taught English grammar and reading comprehension to undergraduates at Hanshin University and high school students at a private academy in Korea. Also I wrote an biography of a priest and presented "Remembering and Mapping", a paper on Fara's Maps at the English Language and Literature Association's annual conference in Korea last November. My fields of interest lie in 20th century American Literature and postcolonial literature and theory, especially in the blind spots of academic discourse and the ideological effect of literary narrative.
Mike Kelly is a third−year PhD student specializing in Composition and Rhetoric. His research interests include institutional literacy, writing center scholarship, and the teaching of basic writing. Primarily teaching first−year writing classes, he has been involved with the TRIO program, the Alpha Project and the English Department´s Programmatic Assessment Committee. This year, Mike serves as the Associate Writing Center Coordinator.
Melissa Kleindl, a PhD student, has professional interests that include bodies, violence, language, border studies, place, religious imagery−especially in Latina/o and Native American fiction. Her presentations include "Mary Lavin´s ´Sarah´: Punishment for a Temptress or Victimization of an Unconventional Woman?" at The Eleventh International Conference on Literature of Region and Nation, 2006, and "Violence, Borders, and Mexicana Bodies in Sandra Benitez´s A Place Where the Sea Remembers" at the 18th Annual ALA Conference, 2007.
Adrian Gibbons Koesters is a first-year Ph.D. student in poetry. She holds an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University; her critical essay for the degree focused on the use of incarnational imagery in Western poetry, especially that of Denise Levertov and Richard Wilbur. She is the author of the nonfiction book Healing Myteries: A Scriptural Rosary, published by Paulist Press in 2005, and her poems have appeared or will appear in Shadows, Poetry Porch, Literary Mama, the Lunch Hour Stories Very Very Short Prize Anthology, and elsewhere.
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 first year PhD candidate in Fiction. She did her undergraduate work at Colgate University and earned her MFA from the University of Montana in 2005. Her short stories, which earned her a 2007 New Jersey State Arts Council Fellowship, have appeared in 42 Opus, Invisible Insurrection, and, most recently, Hayden's Ferry Review. She has taught at the University of Montana and JP Stevens High School in New Jersey. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and a non-linear novel that explores caustic female friendships and a bunch of other motifs that might reveal themselves when she rewrites it for the twenty-seventh time. Email her at: katekostelnik@gmail.com.
Aubrey Streit Krug is a first-year master’s student in literature. A native of Tipton, Kansas, she holds a B.A. from Bethany College, Lindsborg. Her scholarly interests include rural and small town literature, ecocriticism, Great Plains studies, agrarianism, and place conscious education. Her creative work has appeared in The Land Report, Identity Theory, and Visual Communication Quarterly.
Kathryn Kruger, a third-year Ph.D. student (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 Pulos and McPhee Fellowships, and she received an Honorable Mention recognition for the Woodberry Prize for a paper on Elizabeth Gaskell's Unitarianism in Mary Barton. She recently has presented papers on Claire de Duras's Ourika (Indiana University) and on the food chain implications in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (Midwest MLA). Katie currently is working on the encoded archival descriptions of Walt Whitman's poetry manuscripts for the Whitman Archive.
Kathleen Lacey is a second 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 (fiction) from Minnesota State University in Mankato. At UNL, she plans to pursue study of African American women’s writing and their involvement in American publishing and the Women in Print Movement. She is currently working on a short story collection and an article discussing the censorship of lesbian literature. 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 first year doctoral student and teaching assistant who plans specialize in 20th Century/contemporary literature and women’s writing. Originally from West Virginia, she taught composition and gender studies at West Virginia Wesleyan College for three years after receiving her Masters degree from the University of Rochester.
Farrah Lehman is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in English Renaissance drama, with interests in performance and media theory. She presented papers on new media theory and Early Modern performance at the 2007 and 2008 Renaissance Society of America conferences, and has a paper entitled "Archival Performance: New Media Shakespeares and Early Modern Metatheatrics" appearing in a forthcoming edited essay collection. She may be contacted at farrah.lehman@huskers.unl.edu.
Amber Harris Leichner is pursuing her PhD 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 essay, “Harlem and the New Woman,” appears in Teaching the Harlem Renaissance (2008). Her poems have appeared in The Dos Passos Review, Relief, and elsewhere, and her chapbook, Just This Proof (2006) is available from FootHills Publishing. Amber teaches courses in writing, literature, and women's and gender studies. Contact her at aleichner2@unl.edu.
Derek Leuenberger, a PhD student, specializes in nineteenth−century British literature, with a particular focus on British Romanticism. His research interests include the political prose of Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake´s work, and trans−Atlantic Romanticism. He is currently working on papers on the rhetorical role of America for the Romantic poets and on the structure of Blake´s Jerusalem.
Elizabeth Lorang is pursuing her PhD in nineteenth−century American literature. An assistant editor of the Walt Whitman Archive and "Walt Whitman´s Poems in Periodicals," her scholarship focuses both on periodical literature and the digital humanities. Elizabeth presented two papers, "Editing Whitman´s Poems in Periodicals" and "Digitizing Periodicals and Representing the Textual Environment," at the 2007 Society for Textual Scholarship conference. Currently, she is at work revising an essay on Whitman and the New York Herald for publication.
Cody Lumpkin is a second−year PhD student in Creative Writing: Poetry. He is currently revising his poetry manuscript, Ode to the Eight−Track Gorilla, in order to send it out to book contests for the fall. He has also recently written critical essays on the poetry of Maurice Manning and the film career of 30´s actress Aline MacMahon. He plans to present both papers at conferences very soon.
Dave Madden is a PhD candidate in creative writing with a focus on fiction and nonfiction. His stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Tampa Review, Indiana Review, Third Coast, Hobart, Mid-American Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, and elsewhere, and he's the recipient of a Sherwood Anderson Award in fiction, an AWP Intro Journals Award in nonfiction, and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship at the 2008 Sewanee Writers' Conference. His academic work involves the contemporary novel and post-gay fiction. Currently he co-edits the literary pamphlet The Cupboard. His book, The Authentic Animal: Inside the Odd and Obsessive World of Taxidermy, is forthcoming from St. Martin's Press.
Susan Martens-Baker is a first-year Ph.D. student in Composition and Rhetoric. She is one of the Co-Directors of the Nebraska Writing Project and organizes writing retreat and writing marathon programs for this professional network of teacher writers. She 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. She is currently collaborating on a book written by Nebraska Writing Project teachers which will examine the role of place-conscious writing instruction as it intersects the influence of suburban culture.
Jill McCabe Johnson is pursuing a PhD with emphasis in creative writing. She received an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in journals such as Pontoon, Oak Bend Review, the Houston Literary Review, and Umbrella Journal. She received the Paula Jones Gardiner Poetry Award from Floating Bridge Press. She is a recipient of the Deborah Tall Memorial Fellowship. Jill is the director of the non-profit Artsmith, which hosts artist residencies, and produces a literary salon reading series, an annual literary contest, and various visual and performing arts shows and performances.
David Moberly (davidmobe@juno.com) is a first-year MA student in English with a focus on Medieval and Renaissance Literature. He is from Manhattan, Kansas and graduated in 2009 from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor's Degree in English. David worked as an editor for several publications as an undergrad and is currently a Writing Tutor at Southeast Community College. As part of his studies at Nebraska, he plans to increase his fluency in Arabic and look into Anglo-Arab cultural relations depicted in Renaissance Literature.
Trey Moody, a PhD student in poetry, holds a BA and an MFA from Texas State University. His poems appear or are forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary, Best New Poets 2009, CutBank, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Quarterly West, and Third Coast.
Kelly Payne is a PhD student and academic advisor in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She received her MA in English Literature from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her Bachelor’s degree in English from Saint Mary’s College (IN). Her area of research is 19th-century American literature and reform, with a special interest in transatlantic women’s writing and reform efforts. She has also done work on the Bildungsroman and gender in literature. Email: kpayne2@unl.edu
Megan Peabody is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in 19th century American literature. She is currently working on achieving candidacy, focusing on post-bellum writers and American identities. Megan has recently presented papers at the Midwest Modern Language Association and Nineteenth Century Studies Association conferences, and is anxiously anticipating her first publication, a chapter on Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Lyrics of Lowly Life in a collection about Dunbar and African American identity.
Gayathri Prabhu is an incoming PhD student in Creative Writing (Fiction). Born and raised in India, Gayathri holds a M.A. in Mass Communication (Television and Film Production) and a M.A. in English. She was in Wales (UK) for the past two years, working on her MPhil in English (Creative Writing) and teaching undergraduate students at Swansea University. She has recently completed a historical novel set in late 18th century India and while at UNL intends to study, reinterpret and retell stories from Hindu Mythology. Gayathri is the author of the novels Maya (New Delhi: Indialog Publications, 2003) and Birdswim Fishfly (Delhi: Rupa Publications, 2006).
Yelizaveta P. Renfro is a Ph.D. student in creative writing. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, So to Speak, ByLine, and the anthology A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross Cultural Collision and Connection (OV Books/University of Illinois Press, 2008). Her awards include second place in Glimmer Train's Fiction Open, first place in So to Speak's Fiction Contest, and the Vreeland Award.
Monica Rentfrow is an MA student specializing in Creative Writing. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in English from Alma College. While her main creative outlet often finds itself in the style of poetry, she is greatly interested in creative non-fiction as well. Her work draws heavily from her life experiences--exploring how the body and person are affected by a traumatic medical past. She is currently working on her Creative Masters Thesis (to be completed in May), teaching two sessions of English 151, and may be reached at monica.rentfrow@huskers.unl.edu
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.
Arra Lynn Ross is a Ph.d student with a focus on creative writing. Her debut book, Seedlip and Sweet Apple, is forthcoming with Milkweed Editions in April, 2010; the poems revolve around Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers in America in the late 1700s. Her work has also appeared in Hayden’s Ferry, Linebreak, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and Alimentum: the Literature of Food, among other places. She can be contacted at arralynn@mail.com.
Zachary Schomburg, a PhD student, is the author of two books of poems, The Man Suit (Black Ocean 2007), which is now in its second printing and is named on the New York Public Library's 25 Books to Remember of 2007, and Scary,! No Scary which will be published by Black Ocean in the spring of 2009. A chapbook, The Pond, is forthcoming from Greying Ghost Press in the fall of 2008. He is the co-editor of an online poetry magazine, Octopus and the co-editor of a small poetry press, Octopus Books. His translations of Russian poet Andrei Sen-Senkov are forthcoming in Circumference and Mantis. He now lives in Portland, OR.
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.
Sabrina Ehmke Sergeant is a PhD student examining literature of the First World War couched in a transnational context (specifically German literature). Interests include alternatives to the Lost Generation´s representations of WWI (including those of women, African American, and possibly American Indian authors). She is editorial assistant for the Cather Archive´s electronic edition of A Calendar of the Letters of Willa Cather and is currently working for the Whitman Archive.
Carrie Shipers (hera6201@hotmail.com) is a fifth-year doctoral candidate and a Senior Poetry Reader for Prairie Schooner. Her poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Barrow Street, Hayden’s Ferry Review, North American Review, and other journals. She is the author of two chapbooks, Ghost-Writing (Pudding House, 2007) and Rescue Conditions (Slipstream Press, 2008). Her first full-length collection, Ordinary Mourning, was selected by Mark Halliday as the winner of the third annual ABZ Press Poetry Prize.
Katie Sisneros is a Masters degree candidate and teaching assistant and graduated from UNL with a Bachelors in English. Her field of study is Medieval and Renaissance British Literature, and her thesis work focuses on representations of Turks and Islam in Early Modern English dramas and ballads.
Vanessa Steinroetter is a PhD student and teaching assistant at UNL, who specializes in 19th-century American literature and culture. She received her MA in American Literature from the University of Eichstaett, Germany, with a thesis on American sea literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her work has appeared in American Periodicals and the New England Quarterly, and she is currently writing her dissertation on representations of readers and reading in Civil War literature.
Sandy Tarabochia is a 5th year doctoral candidate in Composition and Rhetoric with interests in critical rhetorical education, WAC/WID, writing center theory and practice, and service learning. Sandy has worked with students and faculty in the biology department as a consultant and co−instructor developing strategies to make writing a central part of department curriculum. She is currently writing a dissertation in which she argues for and demonstrates a pedagogical approach to cross-curricular literacy work.
Barbara Tracy is a PhD student with a dissertation focus in Crossroads in African American and Native American Literature. Barbara´s recent publications include "The Red−Black Center of Alice Walker´s Meridian: Asserting a Cherokee Womanist Sensibility," Cultural Sites of Critical Insight: Native and African American Women´s Writings, SUNY, 2007. She has taught for 14 yrs at Southeast Community College in Native American Literature, Women´s Literature, and Composition and as SCC Writing Center Coordinator.
Carrie Walker is a fourth-year Ph.D student whose studies focus on ethnic women's literature, especially literature of the African Diaspora. Carrie is interested in literary representations of social justice movements and national reconciliation projects. Currently, she is researching ways in which women writers utilize mythological allusions to challenge oppression and dismantle patriarchal notions about female identity. She also studies ecocritism and the counterdiscursive nature of hip hop music. This semester, Carrie will be giving a talk entitled “Breaking Silences and Enacting Justice: Advocating Women’s Rights at the United Nations” as part of the Women and Gender Studies Colloquium Series.
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.
Laura Madeline Wiseman is a PhD student in creative writing. She holds a BS in English literature and women’s studies from Iowa State University and an MA in women’s studies from the University of Arizona. Her research interests include women’s literature, LGBTQ writers, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Feminist Studies, MARGIE, Arts & Letters, and elsewhere. She is the author of two chapbooks My Imaginary (Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming 2009) and Ghost Girl (Pudding House, forthcoming). In July she did a residency in Iowa at the Herbert Hoover Historic Site to work on her manuscript The American Platform. These poems explore the life of Matilda Fletcher, a 19th century suffragist, lecturer, and poet from Iowa, who is also Madeline’s great-great-great-grandmother. Contact and more information: www.lauramadelinewiseman.com.
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