The Graduate Program

Erin Clair

Visiting Assistant Professor of English,
Arkansas Tech University

Dissertation:
Death Becomes Her: Modernism, Femininity, and the Erotics of Death

Emily Isaacson

Assistant Professor of English,
Chowan University

Dissertation:
Domesticating the Citizen: Household Authority, the Merchant Class Family, and the Early Modern Stage

Jason Koo

Visiting Professor of English,
Davidson College, North Carolina

Bryan Narendorf

Assistant Professor of English,
LaSalle University, Pennsylvania

Jason Arthur

Visiting Assistant Professor of English,
Central Methodist University

Mike Kardos

Assistant Professor of English,
Mississippi State University

Michael Piafsky

Assistant Professor of English,
Spring Hill College, Mobile, AL

Katie Pierce

Assistant Professor of English,
Mississippi State University

William Bradley

Assistant Professor of English,
Chowan University

Dissertation:
Second Life (creative nonfiction)

Rebecca Dunham

Assistant Professor,
Creative Writing Program
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Dissertation:
The Miniature Room (poetry)

Steven Gehrke

Assistant Professor of English,
Seton Hall University

Dissertation:
Michelangelo’s Seizure (poetry)

Christie Hodgen

Assistant Professor of English,
University of Missouri-Kansas City

Scott Kaukonen

Assistant Professor of English,
Sam Houston State University

Dissertation:
Ordination (fiction)

Jacqueline McGrath

Assistant Professor of English,
College of DuPage

Dissertation:
The Politics of Belief: Ethnography of the Catholic Workers, or Theorizing the Activist Literature of Dorothy Day

RaShell Smith-Spears

Assistant Professor of English,
Jackson State University

Dissertation:
Black Love Ain’t Love: How the Image of Black Romantic Relationships Was Used in the Construction of National Identity

Heather Maring

Assistant Professor,
Arizona State University

Creative Dissertation:
Poetry Collection

Academic Dissertation:
A Companion to Two Medieval Dream-Visions: “The Dream of the Rood” and “Pearl”

James Andrew Miller

Assistant Professor of English,
Purdue University-Calumet

Dissertation:
Matters of Life and Death: Political Crisis and the Ghost Film

Andrew Mulvania

Assistant Professor of English,
Washington and Jefferson College

Dissertation:
Manuscript of poems

John Porter

Assistant Professor of English,
Central Methodist University

Dissertation:
Socioeconomic Definitions of African Muslims in Tudor Drama

Stacy Tintocalis

Assistant Professor of English,
University of Alabama at Birmingham

Dissertation:
Honeymoon in Beirut (fiction)

Anthony Varallo

Assistant Professor of English,
College of Charleston

Dissertation:
Houses Left Behind and Other Stories

Averill Curdy

Lecturer,
Northwestern University

Dissertation:
From the Lost Correspondence: Poems

Sally Hartin-Young

Editor,
Holt Literature and Language Arts

Dissertation:
In the Dark We Are All the Same

David Allred

Assistant Professor of English,
Snow College

Dissertation:
Fiction, Folklore, and Reader Competency: The Politics of Literary Performance Arenas

William Grattan

Assistant Professor of English & Advisor for the Decree,
North Carolina Wesleyan College

Dissertation:
Ghost Runners

Eric Leuschner

Assistant Professor, Department of English,
Fort Hays State University

Dissertation:
Prefacing Fictions: A History of Prefaces to American and British Novels

Kevin Allton

Professional Development Manager,
Association for Community Action (Jefferson City)

Dissertation:
The Bride of Fog

Jean Braithwaite

Assistant Professor of English,
University of Texas Pan American

Dissertation:
FAT: The Story of My Life With My Body (Creative Nonfiction)

Mary Jill Burkindine

Assistant Professor &
Director of English for Academic Purposes,
Drury University

Dissertation:
The World According to East African Writers: A Bakhtinian Analysis with Teaching Applications

Deborah Forssman-Hill

Instructor, Writing Program,
University of Central Arkansas

Dissertation:
Working Language Together: The Transforming and Transformative Voices of Three Women on the Academic Page

Rachel Palencia Harper

Adjunct Instructor, Department of English,
University of Missouri-Columbia

Dissertation:
Jean Kenyon Mackenzie's "The Trader's Wife": A Critical Edition

Joanie Mackowski

Assistant Professor,
Department of English & Comparative Literature,
University of Cincinnati

Dissertation:
Tails (Poetry)

Bern Mulvey

Assistant Professor,
Department of English and Philosophy,
Idaho State University

Dissertation:
The Mirror Kingdom

Kira Salak

Writer for National Geographic Adventure

Dissertation:
Four Corners: One Women's Solo Journey into the Heart of Papua New Guinea (Creative Nonfiction)

Billie Stephanie Powell Watts

Assistant Professor & Director of Creative Writing,
Department of English,
Lehigh University

Dissertation:
Talk to me while I'm listening: A Novella

Professor of English Practice, Department of English,
Lehigh University

Dissertation:  
Past Providence (Poetry)

Anjail Rashida Ahmad

Assistant Professor of English &
Director of Creative Writing,
North Carolina A&T State University

Dissertation:
Only Violet Can Rupture Like This (Poetry)

Assistant Professor of English,
University of St. Thomas

Dissertation:
"Negotiating Cooly": The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Sexual Identity in Black Arts Poetry

Assistant Professor of English,
Penn State University-Altoona College

Dissertation:
Readdressed: Correspondence Culture and 19th Century British Fiction

Timothy Spence

Visiting Assistant Professor,
Hollins University

Dissertation:
Affective Rhetorics: The Emotional Persuasion of Prayer in 14th-Century England

Denise Stodola

Assistant Professor of Communication,
Department of Liberal Studies,
Kettering University

Dissertation:
Transitional Materials: Crossing the Boundaries between Medieval and Modern Conceptions of Writing As A Step Toward Constructing A Pedagogical "Masterpiece in a Composition Classroom"

Marilyn Lake

Freelance Writer,
Hutchinson, Kansas

Dissertation:
Our Mother's Ghosts

Nicole Pekarske

Instructor,
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Dissertation:
Intermissa, Venus (poetry)

Charles Bradshaw

Assistant Professor of English,
University of Tennessee at Martin

Dissertation:
Republican Aesthetics and the Discourse of Conspiracy in Federalist Literature

Rebecca Wardell

Assistant Professor of English,
Alfred State College-SUNY

Dissertation:
Men, Mentors, and Masculinity in Three of George Eliot's Novels

Hoa Ngo

Visiting Assistant Professor of English,
Hamilton College

Dissertation:
Prayers for Imperfection

Tina Hall

Assistant Professor of English,
Hamilton College

Dissertation:
All These Things I've Called Lover (Fiction)

Karen Holmberg

Assistant Professor of English & Creative Writing,
Susquehanna University

Dissertation:
The Perseids

Darlene Sybert

Director,
Northtown Community Center (St. Joseph, MO)

Dissertation:
Two Ways of Knowing and the Romantic Poets

John Tait

Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing,
University of North Texas

Katherine H. Lee

Assistant Professor of English,
Indiana State University

Dissertation:
North American Orientalism: The Career and Work of Winifred Eaton (1875-1954)

Evelyn Somers-Rogers

Associate Editor, Missouri Review,
University of Missouri-Columbia

Dissertation:
The Discontinuity of History: Stories Real and Otherwise

Timothy Sougstad

Visiting Assistant Professor of English,
Oklahoma State University-Stillwater

Dissertation:
Iconoclastic Tradition in American Literature

Colin Ramsey

Assistant Professor of English,
Appalachian State University

Dissertation:
The Labor of Writing: Literary Culture and the Artisan Class During the American Revolution

Marta Ferguson

Sole Proprietor,
Wordhound Writing & Editing Services, LLC

Dissertation:
Mustang Sally Pays Her Debt to Wilson Pickett

Bryan Carter

Assistant Professor,
Department of English & Philosophy,
Central Missouri State University

Dissertation:
Left Behind: Passing Through African American Literature

Reinhold Hill

Assistant Professor and Acting Head,
Department of Language and Literature,
Ferris State University

Dissertation:
Rooted Ethnography: Writing Culture From the Inside Out

Jacqueline M. Chambers

Staff Director,
St. Louis Region, Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial
Citizenship Education Clearinghouse,
College of Education,
University of Missouri-St. Louis

Dissertation:
The Needle and the Pen: Needlework and Women Writers’ Professionalism in the Nineteenth Century

Kenneth DeShane

Associate Professor of English,
Middle Tennessee State University

Dissertation:
Insider Ethnography: The Believer's Dilemma

Michele Reese

Assistant Professor of English,
University of South Carolina, Sumter

Dissertation:
Following Phia

Sandra Camargo

Lecturer, Department of English (Film Studies),
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Dissertation:
Once More With Feeling: Film Genre and Emotional Experience

Dale Rigby

Assistant Professor of English,
Western Kentucky University

Dissertation:
Of Goat Glands, Potency Pills, and Other Conjugal Acts

Lori Peterson Garner

Lecturer in English,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Dissertation:
Oral Tradition and Genre in Old and Middle English Poetry

Yolanda Hood

Reference Librarian,
Valdosta State University

Dissertation:
African American Quilt Culture: An Afrocentric Feminist Analysis of African American Art Quilts in the Midwest

Pamela Johnston

Assistant Professor of English,
Texas Lutheran University

Dissertation:
A Girl Like You

Anne Pulis

McKee & Schalka Real Estate Appraisal Services, Inc.

Dissertation:
The Vanishing Inquiry: Modernists in Pursuit of Spirit

Anthony Butts

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and English,
Carnegie Mellon University

Dissertation:
Little Low Heaven

James Kimbrell

Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing, Florida State University

Dissertation:
The Gatehouse Heaven

Michael Land

Assistant Professor of English,
Assumption College

Dissertation:
Highway 82

Clifford Manlove

Assistant Professor of English, Penn State McKeesport

Dissertation:
Eyes that Colonize and Postcolonial Resistance to the Transatlantic Gaze in Literature

Kristen Harmon

Associate Professor of English,
Gallaudet University

Dissertation:
Spectacles

Lynn Lewis

Assistant Professor of Literature, Language, and Philosophy,
Tennessee State University

Dissertation:
Towards an Ethnography of Voice in Amerafrican Culture: An Oral Traditional Register in Four Women’s Narratives

Lawrence Potter

Executive Director of Institutional Diversity,
University of St. Thomas

Dissertation:
Harlem's Forgotten Genius: The Life and Works of Wallace Henry Thurman

John Strawn

Writing Specialist, Focus on Learning

Deborah Lee Foard Furbeck

Director of Transfer Admissions,
Iowa State University

Dissertation:
Captured by Indians: Manifestations of the Indian Captivity Narrative in the Early American Novel

Penelope Pelizzon

Associate Professor of English &
Director of the Creative Writing Program,
University of Connecticut

Dissertation:
The Flower Called I Want

Nicoleta Raileanu

Assistant Professor of
British and American Studies, Lucian Blaga,
University of Sibiu, Romania

Dissertation:
The Social and Psychological Relevance of Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned and Pandora in the Context of Gothic Tradition

Jeffrey R. Williams

Assistant Professor of English,
University of Missouri-Columbia

Dissertation:
Benjamin Brawley and the Compass of Culture: Art and Uplift in the Harlem Renaissance

Dana Kinnison

Interim Director of Composition,
Department of English,
University of Missouri-Columbia

Dissertation:
Defiant Landscapes: Space and Subjectivity in Early Twentieth-Century Women's Farm Novels

Chad Mikal Oness

Founding Editor and Publisher,
Sutton Hoo Press

Dissertation:
Not Grace Exactly: An Unanxious Search for Contemporary and Anglo-Saxon Poetic Influences

M. Elizabeth Oness

Assistant Professor of English,
Winona State University

Dissertation:
Momentum (short story collection)

James Ottery

Associate Professor of English,
University of Illinois at Springfield

Dissertation:
Time for Perception: The Subject of College English in Theory and Practice

Roland Cross

Associate, 
Brown, Hay & Stephens Law Firm (Springfield, Illinois)
(Abraham Lincoln also worked for this law firm.)
J.D., St. Louis School of Law, May 2001

Dissertation:
Edwardian Mansfield

Meg Gunderson

Department of English and Theatre,
Eastern Kentucky University

[dissertation proposal not yet submitted]

Phil Howerton

Instructor,
North Arkansas College

Dissertation:
Delayed Reality: The Arcadia Myth and the Backwoods Stereotype in the Local Color Literature of the Missouri Ozarks, 1865-1945

Michael Leuker

Instructor,
Our Lady of the Lake University

Dissertation:
Writing Outcomes and the First Year Success Course: A Case
Study of a Retention Initiative

Nadine Meyer

Instructor,
Seton Hall University

[dissertation proposal not yet submitted]

Lisa Rathje

Arts and Heritage Specialist
Institute for Cultural Partnerships

[dissertation proposal not yet submitted]

Jeremy Reed

Instructor,
Oregon State University

Dissertation:
The American Dream from the Margins in 20th-Century Fiction