PhD Program
PhD Program
For those entering the program with an MA, the PhD in English is designed to be a five-year program requiring 30 hours of coursework.* This coursework will contribute to a total of 72 graduate credit hours beyond the BA (the 72-hour total may include credits transferred from the MA degree). Students entering the program with an MA will generally complete their coursework within the first two years.
Students can also enter the PhD program with a BA but without an MA, in which case the program is designed to be a six-year program requiring 72 hours of graduate credit beyond the BA. Of these, 48 hours will consist of coursework,* including at least 27 hours of coursework taken at the 8000-level. Students entering the program with a BA will generally complete their coursework within the first three years.
Students select and work closely with a faculty advisory committee to plan a course of professional study and training in their chosen primary and secondary fields. The PhD program is meant to provide deep knowledge as well as methodological sophistication.
* The term "coursework" refers to credits earned in classes and seminars at the graduate level. The term "credit hours" also includes credits earned through dissertation research.
The PhD candidate will take 30 hours of coursework beyond the MA. Coursework must include:
- At least 18 hours in English at the 8000-level (English 8001, English 8005, English 8095 and 9090 hours do not count toward the 18-hour requirement).
Candidates’ coursework and program of study will be designed to prepare them as competent scholars in the designated fields. All PhD candidates are required to take:
- English 8005, Introduction to Graduate Studies, a one-hour course in fall semester of the first year in the program
- English 8010, Theory and Practice of Composition, is required in the first semester for students teaching English 1000
- A course in English linguistics focused on the structure of the language (English 7600 or an equivalent graduate course at another institution), on its history (English 7610, English 7200, or an equivalent graduate course at another institution), or on sociolinguistic aspects of English (English 7620 or an equivalent graduate course at another institution)
- A course in literary criticism (English 8050, 8060, 8070, or an equivalent graduate course at another institution)
- English 8020, The Theory and Practice of Teaching in English (for students who want to teach literature classes)
PhD students in the creative writing program are required to take:
- 9 workshop hours at the 8000 level
- 6 hours of 8000-level seminars whose content includes in-depth analysis of literary texts. Workshops do not fulfill this requirement. 7000-level courses, or courses outside of the English department may be substituted with the approval of the Director of Creative Writing and the Director of Graduate Studies
A student may elect one English 8095 problems course (a maximum of 3 hours credit), with the prior consent of the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS), but the credits will not count towards the 18-hour 8000-level course requirement. Students may also take up to 9 hours of coursework outside English in fields related to their programs of study upon the advice and consent of the advisory committee. In general, students with limited backgrounds in related areas (such as history, philosophy, art history) are encouraged to take coursework in such areas, while students with extensive background in other areas (e.g., one whose undergraduate major or MA is in a field other than English) should choose to concentrate coursework within the department.
PhD students must fulfill a language requirement to ensure that all students have a familiarity with a language other than English. Students, regardless of specialty, gain substantially by making meaningful connections between their own work and a non-English-speaking culture.
A student may satisfy the language requirement for the PhD in English by one of the following:
- By taking coursework at MU. The student must pass with a grade of B or better an intensive introduction to a language, the two-semester introductory sequence of courses, or one course at or beyond the second semester level in the language chosen.
- By demonstrating to the Director of Graduate Studies that the student has taken courses equivalent to those specified in item #1 at another college or university.
- By demonstrating proficiency through a language test. Language tests will be administered by the department in November and April. Those wishing to take a test must notify the DGS in the semester prior. Those students who submitted a TOEFL score as part of their application to graduate school will be considered to have passed the language requirement.
Upon entering the program, students should work with the DGS or a faculty advisor to plan how they will fulfill the language requirement. Projects and areas of study will require different levels of language proficiency. Students’ committees may recommend that they pursue language study beyond the level required by the department.
Below is a sample timeline for completing the PhD within five years of funding. Variations to the timeline can be developed in consultation with a student’s advisor and the Director of Graduate Studies.
Year One:
|
Year Two:
Please note that coursework required for the degree must be completed before taking the Comprehensive Exam. |
Year Three:
|
Year Four:
|
Year Five:
|
Students who are unable to keep to the 5-year funded PhD timeline because of extreme circumstances (e.g., disability, medical condition, family emergency) should consider applying for an additional semester of funding (see "Additional Semester of Teaching Policy" form in the box to the right side of this page).
Although the Department of English offers only 5 years of guaranteed funding, the Graduate School allows 5 years after entering the program for students to pass their Comprehensive Exams and 5 additional years for students to defend their dissertations after passing their Comprehensive Exams.
The Qualifying Exam satisfies a Graduate School requirement. The student and advisor should decide on a proposed Plan of Study (D-2 form) to be discussed and approved at the meeting by the doctoral committee. The doctoral committee is composed of at least three faculty members from the English department and a fourth faculty member who may be from the department of English or from another department.
It is recommended that students use this meeting to shape their fields of study or their lists for the Comprehensive Exam, but this is not required to pass the exam.
In addition, the Qualifying Exam will include a conversation about mentoring for the student. At least one week before the exam, the student will complete the questionnaire "Mentoring Plan_Qualifying Exam_Student" and circulate it (with responses) to their chair and committee members. After reading the student's responses, each committee member will complete the form "Mentoring Plan_Qualifying Exam_Faculty" and bring the form (with responses), to the Qualifying Exam. Students and committee members will discuss the responses at the exam, determining how each faculty member can support the student and where each might be especially helpful as the student prepares for the Comprehensive Exam and Prospectus Meeting. After the meeting, the advisor will submit copies of all the forms (along with the D-1 and D-2 forms) to the Graduate Secretary and the compiled forms will also be retained by the advisor and the student.
Students are encouraged to take the Qualifying Exam by the end of their first year, but may take the exam at the beginning of the second year, if they need more time to compose their doctoral committees. Regardless of the timing of the exam, all students should discuss a plan for fulfilling degree requirements with their advisors and/or with the Director of Graduate Studies by the end of their first year.
The Qualifying Exam must be a formal meeting, scheduled by the committee chair, with at least three of the four members present. The outside faculty member need not be involved in this meeting, but all four members of the committee must sign the D-1 form. The student is responsible for preparing the forms and bringing them to the meeting. To allow time for discussion of all topics, the exam should be scheduled for 1.5 hours.
Selecting an Advisor
The advisor guides students through the qualifying examination, provides crucial advice for a student’s plan of study, helps with topics for the comprehensive examination, and works closely with students as they research and write dissertations or theses. Advisors will help students select internal and external members of examination and thesis/dissertation committees.
Upon entering the English Department, students will be advised by the Director of Graduate Studies. Through individual meetings and in English 8005, the DGS will help students prepare to approach potential advisors. PhD students should research potential advisors in their first semester by taking classes in their fields of interest, talking with experienced graduate students, and consulting with the DGS. Early in the second semester of their study students should meet with potential advisors to determine academic compatibility. Students will need to find an advisor working in their primary area of concentration. This primary area will consist of some combination of historical period, genre, and approach and should be reflected in professional associations and in job listings. Within these areas of primary interest, most students will choose among a small number of potential faculty mentors. In some cases, students will change fields on account of excellent experiences in their first year of graduate study. In choosing an advisor, one should also consider to what extent the faculty member shares methodological interests with the student.
When meeting with a potential advisor, a student should be prepared to discuss both the topic and the methodology that they desire to pursue. A one- or two-page research proposal detailing the broad questions the project will answer and the means by which research questions will be addressed.
For further information, please see the Graduate School's Guidelines for Good Practice in Graduate Education.
Selecting a Program Committee
Students should approach potential faculty committee members by the end of their first year in the program. The committee is registered with the Graduate School with the D-1 form.
The PhD Committee consists of at least four faculty members (including the chair). Three of the members will be faculty in the English Department; the fourth may either be an additional member of the English Department or a faculty member from a different department. Members from outside the department are extremely helpful for some dissertation projects, and students should consult with their faculty advisors about the potential benefits of including one, as well about the composition of their committees in general. As a group, members of the PhD Committee should be equipped to support the student in both prospective primary and secondary fields for the comprehensive examination.
Students can fill out a form to change the composition of the committee, to be signed by the new committee member and the Director of Graduate Studies.
Advising Guidelines
Recognizing that the advising relationship is a mutual one, in which both advisors and students must take responsibility for good communication—about expectations, about what is working well, and about what can be improved—the following is a codification of the observable behaviors that define high-quality graduate advising.
Given that advisors are in positions of power, high-quality advisors consider how their words and actions can impact mentees’ progress. We see high-quality graduate advising as defined by:
Supporting Academic and Professional Development
- Advisors should meet with their advisees at least once each semester to assess progress toward the degree.
- Advisors should explain the demands of all aspects of the degree program and work with their advisees to form a communication and collaboration plan in order to do the work of the degree program.
- Advisors should work with their students to establish a timeline for completing the degree program that includes a schedule of meetings and exams, selecting courses and/or committee members, and a plan for coordinating with other committee members. Advisors should also prepare their advisees for oral exams and defenses.
Providing and Asking for Timely and Substantive Feedback
- Advisors should strive to respond to student emails within one week of receipt, and provide students with feedback on large documents, such as drafts of exam essays and thesis/dissertation chapters, within 3-4 weeks of receiving them.
- The advisor should contribute to their students’ professional development by observing their teaching, reviewing documents such as syllabi, conference abstracts, grant and fellowship applications, job letters, etc. Students should allow for at least two weeks for the completing of this work.
Treating Graduate Students as Junior Colleagues
- Advisors should help the student to find professional employment inside or outside the academy and access other networks/mentors. This will usually involve writing recommendation letters. The student should give the advisor at least one month’s notice of any letters to be written and the advisor should respect the stated deadlines.
- High-quality mentors provide time, resources, and opportunities fairly and equitably across students they advise. The advisor should avoid any appearance of a quid pro quo relationship with the advisee by refraining from accepting gifts, professional favors, domestic labor, or offers to provide refreshments at exams and meetings.
- Advisors should be mindful and self-reflective regarding potential subtle barriers for underrepresented advisees (such as race, gender, disability, family responsibilities, mental health and/or personal and financial difficulties) and focus on inclusive ways of achieving the specific tasks and goals associated with degree completing.
- Advisors recognize there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to supporting students and enabling their success. High quality advisors make an effort to “meet students where they are” in their professional development and to provide appropriate oversight and scaffolding that allows for continued professional development.
After all required coursework has been completed, PhD students must take the comprehensive examination. This exam consists of a written section and a two-and-a-half-hour oral exam.
Reading Lists
The major field list should reflect the student’s area of scholarly specialization and take into account the student’s interests and intellectual, pedagogical, and/or professional fields.
The minor field list should be a more narrowly focused secondary specialization (for instance, a student with a major list in African-American literature might have a minor list in twentieth-century American fiction), a genre or sub-genre (creative nonfiction, the sonnet, etc.), or an area of thematic focus (Transcendentalism, nature poetry, etc.).
The criticism and theory list should enhance students’ understanding of critical conversations surrounding the works on their major and minor list and can also be used to develop a separate area of specialization in theory that is anticipated to be useful for the dissertation.
All three lists together should comprise approximately 100-120 book-length works or the equivalent in scholarly articles or works in other media (as decided in consultation with the committee), with the major list roughly equivalent in size to the combined minor and criticism/theory lists.
Written Exam
Learning Outcomes for the Written Exam
Students will:
- Apply appropriate discipline and field-specific research tools, such as critical methods, databases or library resources.
- Identify a conversation, debate or question (“conversation” for short) within the student’s field of study that is likely to be relevant to the student’s dissertation and/or critical introduction
- Identify and analyze key writers and/or texts in this conversation.
- Distinguish and explain influential approaches to the conversation.
- Explain how writers, critics and theorists build on and respond to one another.
The written portion of the comprehensive exam is an essay of 20-25 pages (excluding notes, bibliography and appendices) that demonstrates research skills, critical skills and knowledge that will be necessary to the planning and execution of a dissertation in the student’s scholarly or creative field. The essay must not exceed 25 pages.
The essay will identify a conversation, debate, or question in which the student’s individual dissertation work is likely to participate. In the essay, the student will summarize and analyze key writers, scholars, critics and/or texts within this conversation, as well as synthesizing this material to identify major approaches to the topic. The essay should demonstrate the student’s understanding of how writers, scholars, critics, and/or texts respond to or build upon one another. It should not comprise merely a list of texts; rather, it should offer a narrative about the development and interplay of ideas. The student should use the writers and works that are most important to the question at hand; while these may overlap with texts on the student’s comprehensive exam reading list, they are unlikely to be identical. The student should interpret and engage with the texts being discussed, but it is not expected that they will have yet arrived at an original, comprehensive argument about this material.
Sample Critical Conversations or Questions
How have critics and theorists approached the role of women in Arthurian Romance?
What role does the environment play in contemporary American memoir?
What can visual studies contribute to [a particular field of] literary study?
How and why does contemporary Creative nonfiction by women challenge conventional genre expectations?
What problems arise when combining art historical and literary approaches to medieval manuscript studies?
How have literary theory and criticism approached the relationship among pain, the body, and language over time?
Timeline
- Preparation
Although the written exam is submitted to the committee prior to the oral exam, students should complete their reading of works on their exam lists before writing the essay. This reading may shape a student’s plans for the dissertation and perception of important questions in their field and thus inform the topic and substance of the written exam.
Students are strongly encouraged to meet with all committee members for advice as they develop the topic for their written exam and plan their essay.
Once the initial draft has been submitted, the timeline here should be followed except in cases of unexpected disruption (emergency, illness) or in cases where the student and multiple committee members agree that the revisions required for a passing exam cannot reasonably be completed in the allotted timeframe.
2. At least six weeks before the oral exam
The student will circulate a first draft of the essay to all committee members.
The advisor will work with committee members and the Graduate Secretary to schedule a time and place for the oral exam.
3. At least four weeks before the oral exam
All committee members will return substantive comments and suggestions to the student, having been given two weeks to provide this feedback. The draft will be evaluated on its clarity of expression and organization in addition to its demonstration of the skills outlined in the learning outcomes above.
4. At least two weeks before the oral exam
The student will submit the final draft of the essay to the Graduate Secretary who will circulate it to the members of the student’s committee with a response form.
The student circulates final versions of their reading lists to all committee members.
5. At least one week before the oral exam
All committee members will return final comments to the Graduate Secretary with a vote of “pass,” “fail,” or “abstain.”
The final essay will be evaluated on its clarity of expression and organization in addition to its demonstration of the skills outlined in the learning outcomes above.
The student must receive no more than one vote of “fail” or “abstain” to proceed to the oral exam. If this condition is not met, the oral exam will be canceled.
If the student passes, the advisor will contact committee members with information about the planned format and organization of the oral exam. (Please refer to instructions for the oral exam on the department website.)
6. The oral exam will take place at least two weeks and no more than four weeks after the submission of the final draft of the written exam to the Graduate Secretary.
University rules require that students are enrolled during the term in which they take their oral exam (to be administered only when MU is officially in session). The oral exam must be completed at least seven months before the defense of the dissertation. See https://gradstudies.missouri.edu/current-students/doctoral
Oral Exam
The oral section of the comprehensive exam is designed to test a student’s knowledge of the teaching and research fields represented by their reading lists. Students should be prepared both to answer focused questions about individual works and to speak broadly about the connections among them. Students should send final copies of their lists to their committee members at least two weeks before the oral exams.
The oral exam will be scheduled for two and half hours and will consist of:
- Two hours of questions, with format and time allotted to committee members arranged beforehand by the chair of the student's committee
- Fifteen minutes during which the committee deliberates about the exam
- Fifteen minutes during which the committee informs the student whether he or she has passed or failed, and discusses the exam with the student. The student may also use this time to schedule follow up meetings with each committee member so that they can discuss the student’s movement toward the prospectus.
Within one week of the oral exam, the chair of the committee is responsible for writing a brief document (up to one page) discussing the exam-- things the student did well on, and things that might be improved upon. The chair must give a copy of this document to the Graduate Secretary, who will forward it to the student and place a copy in the student's file.
In order to pass the student must receive no more than one vote of “fail” or “abstain” on the oral exam. Students who fail the oral examination will be allowed to retake it, but cannot do so sooner than 12 weeks after, or later than the end of the semester following the initial examination. If the student passes the oral examination, all members of the committee must sign the D-3 form. The chair of the committee is responsible for submitting the D-3 form to the English graduate studies office, and the form must be filed with the Graduate School within two weeks after the final completion of the exams. Per Graduate School rules, failure to pass two comprehensive examinations automatically prevents candidacy.
While studying for the Comprehensive Exams and after completing required coursework, students may elect to take English 9090: Dissertation Hours in order to maintain Full Time status (Full Time status according to the Graduate School is 9 hours before a student advances to ABD status). English 9090 may be taken before completion of coursework only with permission of the DGS.
After students complete their Comprehensive Exams, candidacy for the doctoral degree is maintained by enrolling in two credit hours in the fall and spring semesters and one credit in the summer semester up to and including the term in which the dissertation is defended. Failure to enroll continuously in 9090 Research hours (or alternatively, in the 8001 Critical Writing Workshop or Job Market Workshops) until the doctoral degree is awarded terminates candidacy. Guidelines for continuous enrollment can be found on the Graduate School website.
Prospectus
As soon as possible after passing the comprehensive examination, a candidate should explore a dissertation topic under the guidance of the student’s adviser. Candidates must formally present and describe the topic in a prospectus of no more than 15 pages (excluding bibliography). For the student to remain in good standing, the prospectus and a signed Dissertation Prospectus Approval Form (posted to the right on this page) must be submitted to the English graduate studies office within three months of a successful oral defense of the Comprehensive Examination or first two weeks of the semester following. In the event revisions are requested by the committee, the advisor will keep the signed form until revisions are made and then submit the form to the office. The advisor should schedule the prospectus conference.
The prospectus should contain five elements:
- The state of current scholarship in the relevant fields
- The nature of the dissertation’s intervention in current scholarship
- A description of method
- A description of the materials—that is, the objects/archives studied and consulted
- A short bibliography
In the case of students writing creative dissertations, the prospectus must describe the critical introduction (see “Creative Dissertation” below) but may also describe a plan for the creative dissertation itself.
The prospectus should be drafted in consultation with the adviser. Once drafted, it will be the subject of the Prospectus Meeting, a meeting of the dissertation committee (outside member optional) covering the student’s ideas and research plans, including schedule. If a majority of the student’s committee doesn’t approve the prospectus, suggestions for revision will be made and the student will submit the revised prospectus only to the adviser; for this reason, students should schedule their meeting with enough time to revise and meet the deadline.
In addition, the Prospectus Meeting will include a conversation about mentoring for the student as they move forward to the dissertation phase. At least one week before the meeting, the student will complete the questionnaire "Mentoring Plan_Prospectus Meeting_Student" and circulate it (with responses) to their advisor and committee members. After reading the student's responses, each committee member will complete the form "Mentoring Plan_Prospectus Meeting_Faculty" and bring the form (with responses), to the Prospectus Meeting. The student, advisor, and committee members will discuss the responses at the meeting, determining how each faculty member can support the student and where each might be especially helpful as the student prepares for the dissertation and academic or non-academic job market. After the meeting, the advisor will submit copies of all the forms to the Graduate Secretary (along with the "Dissertation Prospectus Approval Form") and the compiled forms will also be retained by the advisor and the student.
The prospectus must be completed for the student to begin writing, but it is also important because it usually forms the basis of grant applications and dissertation descriptions when the student goes on the job market. It is of long-term use to have a prospectus on file early, even though it is understood that the dissertation may change during research and writing.
Dissertation
Two types of dissertations are written for our program: the scholarly dissertation and the creative dissertation.
The scholarly PhD Dissertation is a work of original scholarship in a recognizable field covered by departmental expertise. Most dissertations in English are between 200 and 350 pages and combine an original argument with research into the field you explore. By the end of the process of researching and writing the dissertation, the successful student will be one of a few world experts in the field addressed. Therefore topics should be specific enough to allow students to stake a claim to expertise, while broad enough to speak to the general field in which the dissertation is placed. The dissertation becomes the central document upon which you build your academic reputation. At best, it will be ready to go as a book project. Chapters of your dissertation will likely serve as writing samples on the academic job market and might be revised into publications either before or after you have defended it and received your PhD. The dissertation itself will be read by the student’s adviser and a minimum of three other readers. One member of the committee may be a member of a department other than English. In the process of research and writing, some students work closely with an entire committee; others focus on the responses of their primary adviser to preliminary work.
PhD candidates in Creative Writing generally write a creative PhD dissertation, which may take the form of a collection of poetry, a novel, a novella, a book-length collection of short stories, or a book-length work of creative non-fiction. To exercise this option, the candidate must have taken 9-12 hours of creative writing seminars as part of the PhD coursework. In addition to the creative part of the dissertation, the candidate will compose a Critical Introduction, which is an article-length and rigorous critical essay that substantively engages the candidate’s areas of critical interest.
By the rules of the Graduate School, seven months must elapse between a student's successfully passing the PhD Comprehensive Examination and submitting the PhD dissertation.
Defense
Defense usually occurs within a month of submission to the committee of an acceptable dissertation. Committee members prepare questions in advance and the defense consists of a conversation regarding the scholarship and writing of the dissertation. The defense is customarily a celebratory occasion. But committee members can—and sometimes do—ask challenging questions that undercut specific and general issues in the project. Students have a chance to incorporate suggestions from the defense into the final document submitted to the Graduate School. Therefore, it is useful to schedule the defense some weeks before the final deadline for submission to the Graduate School in the term in which the student wishes to graduate. For the dissertation to be successfully defended, the committee must vote to pass it with no more than one abstaining or dissenting vote. If the dissertation is not passed, the student can revise in accordance with suggestions and resubmit.
The advisor will schedule two and half hours for the defense. It will consist of: two hours of questions and conversation, fifteen minutes during which the committee deliberates about the exam, and fifteen minutes during which the committee discusses the outcome and any revisions to be incorporated into the final copy turned in to the Graduate School.
PhD students may elect to invite people outside of their committees to attend their defenses. The student and advisor should agree on whether the audience can be present for the whole defense or just the opening portion. The audience may not be present for committee deliberations from which the PhD candidate is excluded. Audience members may observe but cannot ask questions, give comments, or reduce the allotted time for committee questioning in any way. Recording or livestreaming the defense is not permitted.
For instructions on filing your dissertation, see: https://gradstudies.missouri.edu/current-students/thesis-dissertation/thesis-dissertation-guidelines/
Dissertations in Progress
Updated 5/2/2024
Heather Asbeck
“Pockets in Print: Reading the Material Circumstances of Women's Lives, 1840-1870”
Director: Nancy West
Traci Cox
“Missed”
Director: Anand Prahlad
Blake Estep
"'Continually Reimagined and Contested': A Narrative Theory Approach to Four Reconstruction Novels"
Director: John Evelev
Chelsea Fabian
“Identities Unbound: Queer Liminality, Futurity, and Other-World Speculative Fiction”
Director: Becca Hayes
Anna McAnnally
"Unserious Adaptation: Connections between 19th and 21st Century Literary Culture in Adaptations of Little Women"
Director: Alexandra Socarides
Jesutofunmi Omowumi
“The African Diasporic Novels of Geo-Poethics: Decolonizing Black
Anthropocenes in the Contemporary Climate Change Crisis”
Director: Christopher Okonkwo
McKenzie Peck
"A History and Examination on Robert Thornton and His Manuscripts"
Director: Emma Lipton
Maurine Pfuhl
"Heavily Perfumed Women"
Director: Julija Ŝukys
Shelby Preston
"Performing Disidentifications in Chivalric Romance at the Anglo Scottish Border"
Director: Emma Lipton
Yoonjae Shin
“Gothic Jurisprudence: Genre, Gender, and the Rule of Law”
Director: Noah Heringman
Recent Dissertations
(2023-2026)
Micaela Bombard (PhD 2023) "Grievances & Appeals" poetry collection and "Poetry as Accommodation: Reconciling Pain, Language & Theory in Disability Studies" critical introduction.
K. Mikey Borgard (PhD 2024) "Marathon"
Bailey Boyd (PhD 2023) "Fathoming"
Erick Burdock (PhD 2024) "Queer Humor & Resistant Readings in Canonical Gothic Film and Literature"
Tyler Corbridge (PhD 2024) "Desert Whaling"
Hailey Cox (PhD 2024) "The Opposite of Gone"
Cass Donish (PhD 2024) "Your Dazzling Death"
Samantha Edmonds (PhD 2024) "A World to Hold Us All"
Lindsay Fowler (PhD 2023) "Bury the Key: A Book of Houses"
Ariel Fried (PhD 2024) "Being and Belonging in Victorian Fiction, Science, and Medicine: Subjectivity and Affective Relations Constructing Victorian Time and Space (1847-1897)"
AnneElise Hatjakes (PhD 2024) "The Suicide Table"
Heather-Heckman-McKenna (PhD 2023) "Eighteenth-Century Sensibility and the Subversive Female Body"
Jolie Mandelbum (PhD 2023) "The Monstrous Ordinary: The Erasure of the Women of Weird Tales and the Implications for Monster Theory"
Thanh Nguyen (PhD 2024) "The English and Vietnamese Languages of the Vietnamese Americans in the US"
Anna Perrigo (PhD 2024) "Motherhood and Food in Twenty-First Cetury Transnational Literature"
Erin Regneri (PhD 2023) "We Must Look a Long Time Before We Can See: The Art and Science of Thoreau's Early Work"
Brittany Wilson (PhD 2024) "Futurist Deep Mapping: Cartographies of Resistance in Contemporary BIWOC Climate Justice Literature"
Allison Wiltshire (PhD 2024) "Breakable Binaries: Representations of Twins in African and African American Literature, Film, Television, and Cultures"
(2019-2022)
Ashley Anderson (PhD 2022) “Sifting the Feminine Bones: Essays”
Megan Abrahamson (PhD 2020) “Medieval Romance, Fanfiction, and the Erotics of Shame”
Gregory Allendorf (PhD 2019) “Bottle Fly”
Jordi Alonso (PhD 2021) "An Island of Nymphs:" Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Victoria Women's Classical Education"
London Brickley (PhD 2019) “Science Frictions: Science, Folklore, and ‘The Future’”
Elise Broaddus (PhD 2020) "`the back-and-forth form': Epistolary Mediation in Late Medieval English Literature"
Gwendolyn Edward (PhD 2021) "Refrain"
Carley Gomez (PhD 2021) "The First Inch of a Saguaro"
Elijah Guerra (PhD 2022) “Spatial Politics in Genre in the 21st Century Arabic Novel in English”
Jacob Hall (PhD 2022) “The Conditions”
Kate Harlin (PhD 2020) “'One Foot on the Other Side': Suicideality in Contemporary African Diaspora Fiction”
Aaron Harms (PhD 2021) "Selling You On Flexibility: Toward a Flexible Framework for Reflexive Administration of Writing Centers"
Emilee Howland-Davis (PhD 2019) “Magical Safe Spaces: The Role of Literature in Medieval and Early Modern Magic”
Vedran Husic (PhD 2020) “Book of Apparitions”
Sean Ironman (PhD 2020) “As Many Roast Bones As You Need”
Kate Kelley (PhD 2019) “Policing the Boundaries of Whiteness: Monsters Made in the USA”
Travis Knapp (PhD 2021) "Anti-Calvinist? Ceremonial Conformity and Laudian Writing, Reconsidered (c. 1590-1640)"
Neriman Kuyucu (PhD 2020) “Transnational Spaces, Transitional Places: Muslimness in Contemporary Literary Imaginations”
Peter Lang (PhD 2022) “Between the body and language: Subjectivity and the literary arts”
Lawrence Loiseau (PhD 2019) “A Lacanian Reply to Marx: The Necessity of Topology in the Formation of the Social”
Timothy Love (PhD 2021) "Black Skin Matters: The Significance of Color in Early Modern England"
Jennifer McCauley (PhD 2020) “When Trying to Return Home: Stories”
Teresa Mildbrodt (PhD 2019) “Sharp Things, or the Silver Lines are Not Scars”
William Moore (PhD 2019) “Brain Catalogue”
Angela Netro (PhD 2022) "The Wise Avenue"
Rebecca Pelky (PhD 2020) “Through a Red Place”
Katie Rhodes (PhD 2022) “Rites of Leaving”
Brian Rodriguez (PhD 2021) "Beautiful Phantoms: British Literature, Political Economy, and Biopolitics from 1780-1855"
Donald Quist (PhD 2021) “The Freedoms of B. Kumasi”
Bradley Smith (PhD 2018) “Canon”
Joseph D. Smith (PhD 2019) “Worried Notes: Poems”
Nicole Songstad (PhD 2021) "Social Networks of Friendship in the Writings of Early Medieval English Women"
Steven Watts (PhD 2020) “Occupy, Blockade, Circulate: Narrating Community in 21st Century Crisis Fiction”
Kacy Walz (PhD 2022) “The Graduate Student Novel: A New Subgenre in University Fiction”
Jake Young (PhD 2020) “All I Wanted” (creative); “On Poetry: The Emergence and Function of Meaning” (critical)
(2014-2018)
Jessie Adolph (PhD 2018) “Dee-Jay Drop that ‘Deadbeat’: Hip-Hop’s Remix of Fatherhood Narratives”
Khem Aryal (PhD 2015) “Rewriting the Creative: Toward a Happenings Theory of Creative Compositions” (critical); “The Last Monarchist:Stories from Nepal” (creative)
Dorothy Atuhura (PhD 2018) “Documenting ‘Harm’: Mediated Representations of Gendered Bodylore from Sub-Saharan Africa”
Constance Bailey (PhD 2015) “It Takes a Village: Twentieth Century Black Women’s Fiction and the Spiritual Apprenticeship Narrative”
Allison Balaskovits (PhD 2015) “Magic for Unlucky Girls:Stories”
Anne Barngrover (PhD 2016) “Brazen Creature”
Toby Beeny (PhD 2018) “Ecclesiastical Advice Literature in Anglo-Saxon England”
Colin Beineke (PhD 2018) “Assembling Comics: The House Style and Legacy of RAW Books and Graphics”
Deanna Benjamin (PhD 2018) “The Education of a Gambler’s Daughter”
Julie Christenson (PhD 2018) “Interpretive Cultures and Anglo-Saxon Texts”
Corinna Cook (PhD 2018) “Leavetakings”
Andrew Darr (PhD 2018) “Masculinity in Early Modern English Revenge Drama and City Comedy”
Joanna Eleftheriou (PhD 2015) “This Way Back: Essays from Cyprus”
Lauren Fath (PhD 2015) “My Hands, Remembering”
Marissa Fugate (PhD 2016) “Midnight’s Children: The Adolescent Body in the Age of Nations”
Lianuska Guiterrez (PhD 2015) “And the Wood Doll Arose and Told, I’m a Real”
Ryan Habermeyer (PhD 2017) “Babbler: A Novel”
Rachel Hanson (PhD 2016) “Dislocations”
Stephen Haynie (PhD 2018) “Escalations: Stories”
Brianne Jaquette (PhD 2015) “The Locomotive and the Tree: Industrial Pittsburgh’s Late Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture”
Sarah Johnson (PhD 2017) “Mr. Boswell Peels an Orange”
Jennifer Julian (PhD 2017) “I’m Here, I’m listening: Short Stories”
Ruth Knezevich (PhD 2015) “Narrative as Archive: Ethno-Historical Paratexts in British Literature, 1760-1830”
Patrick Lane (PhD 2016) “Medieval Death Trip”
Miranda Mattingly (PhD 2016) “A Circuit of Haunting Pictures: Theorizing the Space of Readership in ‘Condition of England’ Literature and the Periodical Press, 1845-1889”
Elizabeth McConaghy (PhD 2015) “Migrations”
LaTanya McQueen (PhD 2017) “When the Evening Comes” (fiction); “And It Begins Like This” (nonfiction)
Juliette Paul (PhD 2015) “Transatlantic Geographies of Faith in the Long Eighteenth Century”
Kavita Pillai (PhD 2018) “The Refashioning of Fundamentalist Nostalgia in the Age of Globalization: Charting the Rise of the Right Wing via Textual Trends”
Nick Potter (PhD 2018) “Big Gorgeous Jazz Machine”
Nick Robinson (PhD 2016) “Our Family Walks”
Eric Russell (PhD 2016) “Nature, Materiality, and Human Agency in the Literature of the Great Lakes, 1790-1853”
Travis Scholl (PhD 2018) “Of the Burning”
Eric O. Scott (PhD 2018) “The Pagan’s Progress, or, The Invention of Pilgrimage”
Carli Sinclair (PhD 2018) “‘This Land is My Land’: Authority and Landscape in American Women’s Nonfiction, 1843-1903”
Magi Smith (PhD 2016) “The Drama of Dissent: Pamphleterring Culture and Performative Protestantism:1650-1795”
Gregory Specter (PhD 2014) “Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Circulation of Texts”
Jennifer Spitulnik (PhD 2015) “No People Like #ShowPeople: Broadway Performers”
Christopher Strelluf (PhD 2015) “We Have Such a Normal, Non-Accented Voice’: A Sociophoentic Study of English in Kansas City
Raymond Summerville (PhD 2016) “The Fetishization of Firearms in African‐American Folklore and Culture”
Chun Ye (PhD 2016) “HAO”
Jihun Yoo (PhD 2015) “The Frontier Myth and The Frontier Thesis Contemporary Genre Fiction”
Name | Position | Field | Dissertation |
|---|---|---|---|
PhD 2024 | |||
| Mikey Borgard | Manage of Grant Program Development, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MA) | Creative Writing | Marathon |
| Tyler Corbridge | Associate Teaching Professor, The Pennsylvania State University (PA) | Creative Writing | Desert Whaling |
| Hayli Cox | Tenure-track Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, Waldorf University | Creative Writing | The Opposite of Gone |
| Samantha Edmonds | Assistant Professor, Berry College (GA) | Creative Writing | A World to Hold Us All |
| Ariel Fried | Post-Doc Faculty, University of Missouri | Literature | Being and Belonging in Victorian Fiction, Science, and Medicine: Subjectivity and Affective Relations Constructing Victorian Time and Space (1847-1897) |
| AnnElise Hatjakes | Lecturer, University of Nevada-Reno | Creative Writing | The Suicide Table |
| Anna Perrigo | Assistant Professor, Lincoln University | Literature | Motherhood and Food in Twenty-First Century Transnational Literature |
PhD 2023 | |||
| Micaela Bombard | Post-Doc Faculty, University of Missouri | Creative Writing | Grievances & Appeals |
| Bailey Boyd | Assistant Director of the Writing Center, University of Missouri | Creative Writing | Fathoming |
| Lindsay Fowler | Instructor of English, University of Missouri | Creative Writing | Bury the Key: A Book of Houses |
| Heather Heckman-McKenna | Instructor of English, University of Missouri | Creative Writing | Eighteenth-Century Sensibility and the Subversive Female Body |
| Jolie Mandelbaum | Creative Writing | The Monstrous Ordinary: The Erasure of the Women of Weird Tales and the Implications for Monster Theory | |
| Erin Regneri | Instructor of English, University of Missouri | Nineteenth Century American | We Must Look a Long Time Before We Can See: The Art and Science of Thoreau's Early Works |
PhD 2022 | |||
| Elijah Guerra | Assistant Professor of English Composition, University of Cincinnati (OH) | Literature | Spatial Politics in Genre in the 21st Century Arabic Novel in English |
| Ashley Anderson | Instructor of English, University of Missouri | Creative Writing | Sifting the Feminine Bones: Essays |
| Jacob Hall | Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of English, University of Missouri | Creative Writing | The Conditions |
| Peter Lang | Lecturer, University of Central Arkansas | Critical Theory | Between the body and language: Subjectivity and the literary arts |
| Katie Rhodes | Medical Student, University of Missouri School of Medicine | Creative Writing | Rites of Leaving |
| Kacy Walz | Writing Instructor, Walden Writing Center, Walden University | America Literature | The Graduate Student Novel: A New Subgenre in University Fiction |
PhD 2021 | |||
| Jordi Alonso | MA Student, Classical Studies Program, Columbia University of New York | Creative Writing, Poetry | An Island of Nymphs: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Victorian Women’s Classical Education |
| Gwendolyn Edward | Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing, Murray State University, Murray, KY | Refrain | |
| Carley Gomez | Pre-Law Advisor, Lead for Professional Development, Center for Pre-Law Advising, University of Madison-Wisconsin, Madison, WI | Creative Writing, Fiction | The First Inch of a Saguaro |
| Aaron Harms | Director, Writing Center, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO | Rhetoric and Composition | Selling You on Flexibility: Toward a Flexible Framework for Reflexive Administration of Writing Center |
| Travis Knapp | Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, English Department, Valley City State University, North Dakota | Anti-Calvinist? Ceremonial Conformity and Laudian Writing, Reconsidered (c. 1590-1640) | |
| Timothy Love | Lecturer, English Department, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama | Early Modern British Literature | Black Skin Matters: The Significance of Color in Early Modern England |
| Donald Quist | Assistant Professor of English, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO | Creative Writing | The Freedoms of B. Kumasi |
| Brian Rodriguez | Instructor of English, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO | Romantic Literature | Beautiful Phantoms: Literature, Political Economy, and Biopolitics from 1780-1855. |
| Nicole Songstad | Library Supervisor, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN | Literature | Anglo-Saxon Women and Social Networks: Mapping Sisterhood, Alliances, and Friendship |
PhD 2020 | |||
| Elise Broaddus | Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of English, University of Missouri | Medieval Literature | The Back-And-Forth Form: Epistolarity in Late Medieval Literature |
| Megan Abrahamson | Part-Time Faculty, Central New Mexico Community College | Medieval Literature | Medieval Romance, Fanfiction, and the Erotics of Shame |
| Katelyn Harlin | Assistant Professor of Postcolonial Literature, Eureka College | African Diaspora Studies | 'One Foot on the Other Side': Suicideality in Contemporary African Diaspora Fiction |
| Vedran Husic | Adjunct Professor, Saint Leo University (FL) | Creative Writing, Fiction | Book of Apparitions |
| Sean Ironman | Post-Doctoral Fellow of Writing, US Naval War College (RI) | Creative Writing | As Many Roast Bones As You Need |
| Neriman Kuyucu | Teaching Focused Position, Koç University (Turkey) | Diaspora Literature and Academic Writing | Transnational Spaces, Transitional Places: Muslimness in Contemporary Literary Imaginations |
| Jennifer McCauley | Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, University of Missouri-Kanasas City | Creative Writing, Fiction | When Trying to Return Home: Stories |
| Rebecca Pelky | Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, LeMoyne College, Syracuse NY | Creative Writing, Poetry | Through a Red Place |
| Steven Watts | Lecturer, School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison | Contemporary Literature | Occupy, Blockade, Circulate: Narrating Community in 21st Century Crisis Fiction |
PhD 2019 | |||
Gregory Allendorf | Adjunct Instructor, English Department, University of Missouri | Creative Writing, Poetry | Bottle Fly |
Devin Day | Lecturer, Writing Program, University of Massachusetts | Contemporary American Literature | The Great Recession and the Genre Turn |
Emilee Howland-Davis | Assistant Teaching Professor, University of Wisconsin-Superior | Medieval Studies | Magical Safe Spaces: The Role of Literature in Medieval and Early Modern Magic |
Kate Kelley | Visiting Assistant Professor, Religious Studies, University of Missouri | Folklore | Policing the Boundaries of Whiteness: Monsters Made in the USA |
Teresa Milbrodt | Assistant Professor, Michigan State University (Michigan) | Creative Writing, Fiction | Sharp Things, or the Silver Lines are Not Scars |
William Moore | Associate Content Producer, Three Ships (Raleigh, North Carolina) | Creative Writing, Nonfiction | Brain Catalogue |
Bradley Smith | English Teacher, Liberty High School (Missouri) | Creative Writing | Canon |
J.D. Smith | Genealogist & Lecturer at The Rheinland American: Genealogy Services | Creative Writing | Worried Notes: Poems |
PhD 2018 | |||
Jessie Adolph | Assistant Professor of English, Georgia State University, Decatur, Georgia | Folklore | “Dee-Jay Drop that ‘Deadbeat’: Hip-Hop’s Remix of Fatherhood Narratives” |
Dorothy Atuhura | Lecturer, Kyambogo University (Uganda) | Folklore | Documenting "Harm:" Mediated Representations of Gendered Bodylore from Sub-Saharan Africa |
Deanna Benjamin | Assistant Dean and Academic Coordinator, Washington University (Missouri) | Creative Writing | The Education of a Gambler's Daughter |
Julie Christenson | Rare Book Librarian at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas | Medieval | Interpretive Cultures and Anglo-Saxon Texts |
Corinna Cook | Fulbright Visiting Researcher Award, Whitehorse, Yukon | Creative Writing | Leavetakings |
Stephen Haynie | | Creative Writing | “Escalations: Stories” |
Leanna Petronella | Content Creater @ Aceable (Texas) | Creative Writing | The Imaginary Age: Poetry |
Kavita Pillai | Product Engagement for Strategic Accounts, Deem, Inc. | Global Literature | “Democracy and the Failure of Liberalism: Globalization and the Reemergence of Orientalist |
Nick Potter | Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Visual Studies, University of Missouri | Creative Writing | Big Gorgeous Jazz Machine |
Travis Scholl | Managing Editor, Theological Publications at Concordia Seminary (Missouri) | Creative Writing | Leavetakings |
Eric O. Scott | Field Rep, Laborers International Union of North America Local 773 Mid Missouri | Creative Writing, Creative Non-fiction | The Pagan’s Progress, or, The Invention of Pilgrimage |
Carli Sinclair | Visiting Professor, Stephens College (Missouri) | Ninteenth-Century American Literature | “‘This Land is My Land’: Authority and Landscape in American Women’s Nonfiction, 1843-1903” |
PhD 2017 | |||
Toby Beeny | Master Instructor, Indian River State College (Florida) | Medieval Literature | Ecclesiastical Advice Literature in Anglo-Saxon England (critical dissertation) |
Colin Beineke | Professor of English, SCAD - The University of Creative Careers (Georgia) | Contemporary American Literature | Assembling Comics: The House Style and Legacy of RAW Books and Graphics (critical dissertation) |
Andew Darr | English Teacher, Centralia High School (Missouri) | Early Modern Literature | Masculinity in Early Modern English Revenge Drama and City Comedy (critical dissertation) |
Ryan Habermeyer | Assistant Professor of English, tenure-track, Salisbury University (Maryland) | Creative Writing and Literature | Babbler: A Novel (fiction) and Fairy-Tale Phantoms: On the Cultural Hauntings of Ever After (critical dissertation) |
Jennifer Julian | Fiction Writer in Residence at Allegheny College (Pennsylvania) | Creative Writing, fiction | I’m Here, I’m Listening: Nine Short Stories and a Novella (fiction) |
LaTanya McQueen | Assistant Professor, Coe College (Iowa) | Creative Writing, fiction | When The Evening Comes (novel); And It Begins Like This (essays) |
PhD 2016 | |||
Anne Barngrover | Assistant Professor of Creative Writing-Tenure Track, Saint Leo University (Florida) | Creative Writing, Poetry | Brazen Creature (poetry) |
Rachel Hanson | Oliver O'Connor Creative Writing Fellow, Colgate University | Creative Writing, Nonfiction | Dislocations |
Patrick Lane | Tenure-Track Position, Culver-Stockton College (Missouri) | Creative Writing, Fiction | Medieval Death Trip |
Megan Peiser | Assistant Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at Oakland University (Michigan) | Eighteenth-Century Literature | British Women Novelists and The Review Periodical, 1790-1820 |
Nick Robinson | Associate Professor, Claflin University | Creative Writing, Poetry | Our Family Walks |
Eric Russell | Lecturer, Central Michigan University (Michigan) | Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century American Literature | Nature, Materiality, and Human Agency in the Literature of the Great Lakes from 1790 to 1853 |
Maggie Smith | Associate Professor, Moberly Area Community College | Early Modern Literature | The Drama of Dissent: Pamphleterring Culture and Performative Protestantism: 1650-1795 |
PhD 2015 | |||
Khem Aryal | Assistant Professor, Arkansas State University | Rhetoric and Composition | The Displaced: Stories from Nepal (fiction) and The Creative of the Critical: Toward a Happenings Theory of Creative Composition (critical dissertation) |
Constance Bailey | Assistant Professor of African American Literature and Folklore, Georgia State University | English/African American Studies | It Takes a Village: Twentieth Century Black Women's Fiction and the Spiritual Apprenticeship Narrative |
Joanna Eleftheriou | Assistant Professor, University of Houston-Clear Lake | Creative Writing, Nonfiction | This Way Back: Essays from Cyprus |
Lauren Fath | Assistant Professor, Highlands University (NM) | Creative Writing, Nonfiction | My Hands, Remembering |
Brianne Jaquette | Assistant Professor, College of the Bahamas | Nineteenth Century American Literature | The Locomotive and the Tree: Industrial Pittsburgh’s Late Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture |
Ruth Knezevich | Postdoctoral Fellow, Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Trust | Long 18th Century | Narrative as Archive: Ethno-Historical Paratexts in British Literature, 1760-1830 |
Juliette Paul | Assistant Professor, Christian Brothers University | Eighteenth-Century British Literature | Transatlantic Geographies of Faith in the Long Eighteenth Century |
Jennifer Spitulnik | Adjunct Assistant Professor, Stephens College (MO) | Folklore | No People Like #ShowPeople: Broadway Performers' Ethnographic Social Media |
PhD 2014 | |||
Jess Bowers | Assistant Professor of English, Maryville University | Creative Writing, Fiction | Shooting a Mule and Other Stories |
Meagan Ciesla | Assistant Professor, Gonzaga University | Creative Writing, Fiction | County Road 23 |
Naomi Clark | Assistant Professor and Director of the Writing Center, Loras College (IA) | Rhetoric and Composition | Toward a New Critical Materialist Rhetorical Methodology: Ideographic Tracking of Family Values from Eugenics to Neoliberalism |
Darcy Holtgrave | Program Manager, MedOpp Advising Office, Honors College, University of Missouri | Folklore | "Welcome to my Couch": an Ethnographic Description and Narrative Analysis of Youtube Blogs on Mental Illness |
Shelli Homer | Associate Faculty, MiraCosta College | African Diaspora Literature | The Space of the South and Self-Definition in African American Return Migration Novels of the Post-Civil Rights Era |
Claire McQuerry | Assistant Professor, Kutztown University (Pennsylvania) | Creative Writing, Poetry | The Heart Can Thirst Because Obsession is a More Country: Poems and Lacemakers |
Bethany Peterson | Assistant Professor, Grand Valley State University (MI) | Creative Writing, Nonfiction | Glaciology |
Melissa Range | Assistant Professor, Lawrence University | Creative Writing, Poetry | Scriptorium |
Alison Rutledge | Student Success Coordinator, STEM Division, Southern Oregon University | Victorian Literature | Impressions and Characters: Travel Writing and Narration in the Novel from Victorian to Modern |
Gregory Specter | Visiting Assistant Professor, Duquesne University | Nineteenth Century American Literature | Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Circulation of Texts |
Christopher Strelluf | Assistant Professor, University of Warwick (UK) | Linguistics | "We have such a normal, non-accented voice": A Sociophonetic Study of English in Kansas City |
PhD 2013 | |||
Joseph Aguilar | Assistant Teaching Professor, Worcester Polytenic Institute | Creative Writing, Fiction | House of Halls |
Luke Gibbs | Professor, Evangel University | British Romanticism | Great Britain and Latin America: The Romantics and Informal Empire |
Stephanie Kartalopoulos | Learning & Performance Business Partner at Forward Air Corporation, Georgia | Creative Writing, Poetry | Amulet |
Caitlin Kelly | Lecturer, Case Western Reserve University | Eighteenth Century British Literature | Private Devotion, Common Prayer, and the British Novel, 1700-1815 |
Zaid Mahir | Instructor, University of Central Missouri | World Literature | A Comparative Study of Robert Coover’s The Public Burning and ‘AbdulKhaaliq al-Rikaabi’sSaabi‘ Ayaam al-Khalq |
Katharine McIntyre | Assistant Professor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute | Creative Writing, Fiction | The Moat |
Rebecca Mouser | Assistant Professor, Missouri Southern State University | Medieval Literature | Oral Tradition, Anglo-Saxon Heroic Poetry and the Fourteenth Century: ‘Reading’ the Oral in the AlliterativeMorte d’Arthur and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight |
Darren Pine | Online Instructor-Mizzou Online, University of Missouri | Medieval Literature | The Poetics of the Medium: Aesthetic Forms and Technologies of the Word in the English Middle Ages |
Claire Schmidt | Associate Professor, Missouri Valley College | Folklore & Oral Tradition | "If You Don't Laugh You'll Cry": The Occupational Humor of White American Prison Workers and Social Workers |
Derek Updegraff | Associate Professor, California Baptist University | Medieval Literature | Style and Structure, Politics and Preaching: The 'Lives of Saints' and Other Alliterative Works by AElfric of Eynsham |
Ramsay Wise | Instructor, University of Missouri | Film Studies | Film in Post-World War II American Fiction |
Megan Woosley | Assistant Professor, Department of English, Francis Marion University (South Carolina) | Medieval Literature | |
PhD 2012 | |||
Jonas Cope | Assistant Professor, California State University-Sacramento | British Romanticism | The Dissolution of Character in Late Romantic British Literature, 1816-1837 |
Gregory Dunne | Professor, Miyazaki International College (Japan) | Creative Writing, Nonfiction | Passing Figures |
Sharon Emmerichs | Assistant Professor, University of Alaska-Anchorage | Renaissance Literature | Crossing Boundaries: Shakespeare and the Language of Transgression |
Robert Long Foreman | Assistant Professor, Rhode Island College | Creative Writing, Nonfiction | We Are All Dealers in Used Furniture |
Kevin Henderson | Chair, Languages and Literature, Assistant Professor, and Faculty Coordinator for English, Drury University | Rhetoric and Composition | Dissertation: Writing to Feel / Feeling to Write: Utilizing Emotion Theory and Performance Studies in Creative Writing Pedagogy |
Shelley Ingram | Assistant Professor, University of Louisana-Lafayette | Folklore | “To See a Little Differently”: Racialized Discourses in the Study of American Literature |
Debbie Lelekis | Assistant Professor, Florida Institute of Technology | American Literature | Spectatorship in the Crowd in American Literature, 1880-1920 |
Joanna Luloff | Assistant Professor, University of Colorado-Denver | Creative Writing, Fiction; Transnational Literature | Remind Me Again What Happened(creative dissertation) and The Novel as NGO: Border and Genre Crossings in 20th/21st Transnational Literature(critical dissertation) |
Dustin Michael | Assistant Professor, Savannah State University | Creative Writing | Triptych: Essays of Place and Travel |
Neesha-Elizabeth Navare | Assistant Professor, Savannah State University | Creative Writing | Night and Day |
John Nieves | Assistant Professor, Salisbury University (MD) | Creative Writing, Poetry | Second Person Ethereal |
Peter Ramey | Assistant Professor, Northern State University (SD) | Medieval Literature | The poetics of the medium: aesthetic forms and technologies of the word in the English Middle Ages |
Joseph Scott | Lecturer, Center for English Language Learning, University of Missouri | American Literature | The American Alien: Immigrants, Expatriates and Extraterrestrials in Twentieth-Century U.S. Fiction |
Erin Wilson | Visiting Affiliate Assistant Professor, Loyola University (MD) | Victorian Literature | Somatic Subjects: The Pathological Path to Victorian Womanhood |
Ramsay Wise | Lecturer, Missouri Science and Technology | American Literature | Film in Post-World War II American Fiction |
PhD 2011 | |||
Katy Didden | Assistant Professor, Ball State University | Creative Writing, Poetry | Avalanche |
Philip Howerton | Professor, Missouri State University-West Plains | American Literature, Rhetoric and Composition | The Other Ozarks: A Critical Anthology |
Shelley Ingram | Professor, English Department, University of Louisiana-Lafayette | American Literature | "To See a Little Differently": Racialized Discourses in the Study of American Literature |
Peter Monacell | Chair of the Language and Communication Studies Department and Assistant Professor of English, Columbia College (MO) | American Poetry | Poetry of the American Suburbs |
Chad Parmenter | Visiting Assistant Professor, | Creative Writing, Poetry | My America |
Angela Rehbein | Associate Professor, West Liberty University | Eighteenth-Century British Literature | Domesticating the Empire: women writers and colonial discourse in late eighteenth- century British literature |
Todd Richardson | Associate Professor, University of Nebraska-Omaha | Folklore | A Ghost is Born: The Construction and Consumption of Folk Authenticity |
PhD 2010 | |||
Leigh Dillard | Professor of English, University of North Georgia | British Novel 1740-1900 | Illustrated Editions: Depicting the Eighteenth-Century Novel |
Chatham Ewing | Digital Library Strategist, Cleveland Public Library | American Literature | American Little Magazines of the Mid-20th Century: Network Analysis, Influence and Canons |
Lania Knight | Senior Lecturer, University of Cloucestershire (UK) | Creative Writing, Fiction | Adaptation: Re-Creating the Novel as a Stage Play |
Damon Kraft | Interim Provost and Associate Professor, Kansas Weslyan University | Medieval Literature | Merchants and the Medieval Mirror |
Lily Mabura | Assistant Professor, | African Diaspora Studies and Creative Writing, Fiction | Representations of the violently displaced black female self in contemporary African literature: (scholarly dissertation); House on a jade sea (creative dissertation) |
Marc McKee | Assistant Teaching Professor, University of Missouri | Creative Writing, Poetry | The Consolationeer |
Scott Mitchell | Honors College Coordinator for the Online Campus at Georgia State University Perimeter College | Folklore | "This sweet touch": alienation and physical connection in the works of Michael Ondaatje, Shyam Selvadurai, and Salman Rushdie |
Willow Mullins | Visiting Assistant Professor, | Global Literature | Philanthropic Tourism and Artistic Authenticity: Cultural Empathy and the Western Consumption of Kyrgyz Art |
Stefanie Wortman | Consultant at Public Consulting Group, Kansas City, MO | Creative Writing, Poetry | Permanent Collection |
PhD 2009 | |||
Sarah Barber | Associate Professor, | Creative Writing, Poetry | The Kissing Party (poetry) |
William Connolly | Affiliate Assistant Professor of English, | Creative Writing, Nonfiction | The Eight Leaves (creative nonfiction) |
John Estes | Associate Professor and | Creative Writing, Poetry | Sufficient Wildness (poetry) |
Emily Friedman | Assistant Professor, | Eighteenth-Century British Literature | Beginning's Ends: New Senses of Ending and the Rise of the Novel |
Joseph Green | Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning, University of Dubuque | British Novel to 1945 | Victorian Natural History as Cultural History |
Gretchen Henderson | Adjunct Lecturer, Georgetown University | Creative Writing, Fiction | On Marvellous Things Seen and Heard |
Elizabeth Langemak | Assistant Professor, LaSalle University | Creative Writing, Poetry | Reluctant Sublime: Poems (poetry) |
Jeremy Reed | Associate Professor, Central Methodist University | 20th century American Literature | The American Dream from the Margins in 20th-Century Fiction |
Emily Rosko | Associate Professor, College of Charleston | Creative Writing, Poetry | Prop Rockery (poetry) |
Amy Wilkinson | Clinical Assistant Professor of Writing in the Core Program, New York University | Creative Writing, Fiction | Kaylene Can't Drive and Other Stories(fiction) |
PhD 2008 | |||
Julie Buchsbaum | Humanities Librarian, | Creative Writing, Poetry | Still Life with Rooms People Live In (poetry) |
Crystal Lake | Professor, Wright State University | Eighteenth-Century Studies and Romanticism | Ruin Nation: The Aesthetics of Decay and the Politics of Decline in Britain, 1740-1820 |
Nathan Oates | Professor and Director of Undergraduate Writing Studies, | Creative Writing, Fiction | The World is Mist (fiction) |
David Henderson | Adjunct Faculty, | Folklore and Oral Tradition | The Medieval English Begging Poem |
Lisa Higgins | Program/Project Support Coordinator Senior, Missouri Folk Arts Program, University of Missouri | Folklore | Reconstructing gender, personal narrative, and performance at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival |
Jeffrey Pethybridge | Chair, Summer Writing Program Director, Naropa University | Creative Writing, Poetry | The January Party (poetry) |
Lisa Rathje | Executive Director at Local Learning: The National Network for Folk Arts in Education | Folklore | Re/presenting traditions: identity, power, and politics in folklife programming |
Zak Watson | Chair of the English and Philosophy Department, Missouri Southern State University | Critical Theory and Restoration Literature | Breathing in the Other: Enthusiasm and the Sublime in Eighteenth-Century Britain |
PhD 2007 | |||
Jason Arthur | Associate Professor, Chair of English | American Literature (1865-1965) | Thinking Locally: Provincialism And Cosmopolitanism In American Literature Since The Great Depression |
Nicky Beer | Associate Professor, | Creative Writing, Poetry | The Diminishing House (poetry) |
Erin Clair | Associate Professor and Director of College Operations, Arkansas Tech University | 20th century Gender and Sexuality Theory | Death Becomes Her: Modernism, Femininity, and the Erotics of Death |
Na'Imah Ford | Assistant Professor, | Postcolonial and African American Literature | A Theory of Yere-Wolo: Coming-of-Age Narratives in African Diaspora Literature |
Emily Isaacson | Associate Professor and Director of the Honors Program, Heidelberg University | Renaissance and Restoration Drama | Domesticating the Citizen: Household Authority, the Merchant Class Family, and the Early Modern Stage |
Mike Kardos | Associate Professor, | Creative Writing, Fiction | One Last Good Time (fiction) |
Jason Koo | Associate Teaching Professor, Quinnipiac University (Connecticut) | Creative Writing, Poetry | Man on Extremely Small Island(poetry) |
Nadine Meyer | Associate Professor, | Creative Writing, Poetry | The Anatomy Theater (poetry) |
Bryan Narendorf | Associate Professor and Chair, | Creative Writing, Poetry | Against the Terrible Death (poetry) |
Sophia Nikoleishvili | Instructor, | 18th century British Literature and Art | The many faces of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe: examining the Crusoe myth in film and on television |
Michael Piafsky | Associate Professor and Director of Writing Program, Spring Hill College | Creative Writing, Fiction | Laughter and Other Lies (fiction) |
Catherine Pierce | Professor (full), | Creative Writing, Poetry | Famous Last Words (fiction) |
Sharon Robideaux | Assistant Professor, tenure-track, | Rhetoric and Composition | Like dancers following each other's steps: an analysis of lexical cues in student writing for differing audiences |
PhD 2006 | |||
William Bradley | Writing Center Coordinator, | Creative Writing, Nonfiction | Second Life (creative nonfiction) |
Rebecca Dunham | Professor (full), | Creative Writing, Poetry | The Miniature Room (poetry) |
Steven Gehrke | Associate Professor, | Creative Writing, Poetry | Michelangelo’s Seizure (poetry) |
Christie Hodgen | Professor (full), tenure-track | Creative Writing, Fiction | Hello, I Must Be Going (fiction) |
Linda Johnson | Assistant Professor, tenure-track | Africana Literature | Claiming/Reclaiming Africana Womanist Texts |
Scott Kaukonen | Associate Professor, | Creative Writing, Fiction | Ordination (fiction) |
James Kimbrell | Professor (full), | Creative Writing, Poetry | The gatehouse heaven (poetry) |
Jacqueline McGrath | Professor of English, | Folklore | The Politics of Belief: Ethnography of the Catholic Workers, or Theorizing the Activist Literature of Dorothy Day |
Elizabeth Thomas-Horn | Editor, International Journal of Conflict and Reconciliation, | Creative Writing, Poetry | Confessions of an Apprentice God: Poems |
C. Michael Land | Associate Professor, | Creative Writing, Fiction | Highway 82 (fiction) |
PhD 2005 | |||
Heather Maring | Associate Professor, | Creative Writing, Poetry | Water Margins (poetry) |
James Andrew Miller | Assistant Professor, tenure-track, | 20th century American Literature | Matters of Life and Death: Political Crisis and the Ghost Film |
Andrew Mulvania | Associate Professor, tenure-track, | Creative Writing, Poetry | Also in Arcadia (poetry) |
John Porter | Associate Professor of English, | Renaissance Drama | Socioeconomic Definitions of African Muslims in Tudor Drama |
RaShell Smith-Spears | Associate Professor, | 19th century American Literature | Black Love Ain’t Love: How the Image of Black Romantic Relationships Was Used in the Construction of National Identity |
Stacy Tintocalis | Assistant Professor, | Creative Writing, Fiction | Honeymoon in Beirut (fiction) |
Anthony Varallo | Professor (full), Director of Undergrad Creative Writing, | Creative Writing, Fiction | Houses Left Behind and Other Stories(fiction) |
PhD 2004 | |||
David Allred | Professor (full), tenure-track, | Folklore and Oral Tradition | Fiction, Folklore, and Reader Competency: The Politics of Literary Performance Arenas |
Kevin Allton | Assistant Professor, | Creative Writing, Fiction | The Bride of Fog |
Jean Braithwaite | Associate Professor, | Creative Writing, Nonfiction | FAT: The Story of My Life With My Body (creative nonfiction) |
Mary Jill Burkindine | Professor, | | The World According to East African Writers: A Bakhtinian Analysis with Teaching Applications |
Averill Curdy | Associate Professor, | Creative Writing, Poetry | From the Lost Correspondence: Poems |
Deborah Forssman-Hill | Adjunct Instructor, | Rhetoric and Composition | Working Language Together: The Transforming and Transformative Voices of Three Women on the Academic Page |
William Grattan | Associate Professor, | Creative Writing, Fiction | Ghost Runners |
Rachel Palencia Harper | Associate Dean, Honors College, | American Literature 1820-1945; Rhetoric and Composition | Jean Kenyon Mackenzie's "The Trader's Wife": A Critical Edition |
Sally Hartin-Young | Freelance Writer/Editor | Creative Writing, Fiction | In the Dark We Are All the Same(fiction) |
Eric Leuschner | Chair & Associate Professor, | History and Theory of the Novel to 1960 | Prefacing Fictions: A History of Prefaces to American and British Novels |
Joanie Mackowski | Associate Professor, | Creative Writing, Poetry | Tails (poetry) |
Bern Mulvey | Associate Professor, Eastern Arizona College | Creative Writing, Poetry | The Mirror Kingdom (poetry) |
Kira Salak | Writer for National Geographic Adventure | Creative Writing, Nonfiction | Four Corners: One Woman's Solo Journey into the Heart of Papua New Guinea (creative nonfiction) |
PhD 2003 | |||
Anjail Rashida Ahmad | Associate Professor of English & | Creative Writing, Poetry | Only Violet Can Rupture Like This(poetry) |
Marilyn Lake | Freelance Writer, | Creative Writing, Fiction | Our Mother's Ghosts (fiction) |
David Todd Lawrence | Associate Professor of English, | African American Literature | "Negotiating Cooly": The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Sexual Identity in Black Arts Poetry |
Nicole Pekarske | Lecturer, | Creative Writing, Poetry | Intermissa, Venus (poetry) |
Laura Rotunno | Associate Professor of English | 19th century British Literature | Readdressed: Correspondence Culture and 19th Century British Fiction |
Denise Stodola | Associate Professor & | Medieval Literature | Transitional Materials: Crossing the Boundaries between Medieval and Modern Conceptions of Writing As A Step Toward Constructing A Pedagogical "Masterpiece in a Composition Classroom" |
Billie Stephanie Powell Watts | Associate Professor, | Creative Writing, Fiction | Talk to me while I'm listening: A Novella (fiction) |
Bobby M. Watts | Associate Professor, tenure-track, | Creative Writing, Poetry | Past Providence (poetry) |
PhD 2002 | |||
Charles Bradshaw | Associate Professor of English, | American Literature to 1865; Rhetoric and Composition | Republican Aesthetics and the Discourse of Conspiracy in Federalist Literature |
Tina Hall | Associate Professor of English, | Creative Writing, Fiction | All These Things I've Called Lover(fiction) |
Karen Holmberg | Associate Professor, tenure-track, | Creative Writing, Poetry | The Perseids |
Hoa Ngo | Visiting Assistant Professor of English, | Creative Writing, Fiction | Prayers for Imperfection (fiction) |
Darlene Sybert | Director, | Romantic Poetry | Two Ways of Knowing and the Romantic Poets |
John Tait | Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing, | Creative Writing, Poetry | What To Do With the Rest of Your Life(fiction) |
Rebecca Wardell | Adjunct/Sessional instructor, | 19th century British Literature | Men, Mentors, and Masculinity in Three of George Eliot's Novels |
PhD 2001 | |||
Bryan Carter | Assistant Professor of Africana Studies, University of Arizona | African American Literature | Left Behind: Passing Through African American Literature |
Marta Ferguson | Sole Proprietor, Freelance Writer, | Creative Writing, Poetry | Mustang Sally Pays Her Debt to Wilson Pickett |
Reinhold Hill | Vice Chancellor & Dean, | Folklore | Rooted Ethnography: Writing Culture From the Inside Out |
Katherine H. Lee | Associate Professor, | Critical Theory; 20th century American Literature | North American Orientalism: The Career and Work of Winifred Eaton (1875-1954) |
Colin Ramsey | Professor (full), | American Literature to 1865 | The Labor of Writing: Literary Culture and the Artisan Class During the American Revolution |
Evelyn Somers-Rogers | Associate Editor, Missouri Review, | Creative Writing Fiction | The Discontinuity of History: Stories Real and Otherwise |
PhD 2000 | | ||
Sandra Camargo | Adj Assistant Professor, | Film Studies | Once More With Feeling: Film Genre and Emotional Experience |
Matthew Chacko | Assistant Professor, tenure-track, | Creative Writing, Fiction | Broadcast from the Flood and Other Stories (fiction) |
Jacqueline M. Chambers | Staff Director, | | The Needle and the Pen: Needlework and Women Writers’ Professionalism in the Nineteenth Century |
Kenneth DeShane | Associate Dean, Graduate School of Theology, Global University, Springfield, MO | Folklore | Insider Ethnography: The Believer's Dilemma |
Pamela (Johnston) Hartsock | Senior Technical Editor, | 19th century American Literature | A Girl Like You |
Michele Reese | Associate Professor, | Creative Writing, Poetry | Following Phia |
Lawrence (Dale) Rigby | Associate Professor of English, | Creative Writing, Nonfiction | Of Goat Glands, Potency Pills, and Other Conjugal Acts |
Admissions Criteria:
We admit students with only a BA into our PhD program only if their academic records are extremely strong, if they demonstrate in their applications the necessary maturity for a PhD program, and if they already had a good idea of the area in which they want to research and specialize.
Funding and teaching load:
These students are paid the PhD stipend for each of 6 years; they teach 2 courses each semester.
6-year timeline:
The timeline is essentially the same for students entering our PhD program with a BA as it is for students entering with an MA, except that an extra year of coursework is needed in year 2 to allow students to complete the 72 graduate credit hours required by the Graduate School for students entering a PhD program with a BA.
Degree Requirements:
The degree requirements are the same for students entering the PhD with a BA as they are currently for those entering with an MA except that 72 graduate credit hours are required. Forty-eight of these credit hours will consist of coursework, with at least 27 hours of coursework being completed at the 8000-level.
MA Information:
Students who enter the PhD program with a BA will not get an MA degree along the way. However, if a student chooses not to complete the PhD degree, they can get an MA degree by either writing an MA thesis or completing the comprehensive exam for the PhD degree (which can also function as an MA exam).
Anne Myers
Director of Graduate Studies for Advising and Admission
myersanne@missouri.edu