2023
Christine Case, ACLS/Mellon Leading Edge Fellow: Narrative Strategy Specialist, Children's Defense Fund
Dissertation Title: "Composite Bodies: Race, Gender, and Dis/ability in Fairy Tale Performance"
Chair: Tyler Bickford
Readers: Jennifer Waldron, Courtney Weikle-Milles, Patrick McKelvey (Theatre Arts), James Kincaid (University of Southern California Dornsife)
Treviene Harris, Graduate Career & Professionalization Manager, Provost's Office, Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences, University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation Title: "Literary 'Visions': Writing, Sound, and Historiographic Method in Contemporary Caribbean Fiction"
Chair: Shalini Puri
Readers: Neepa Majumdar, R.A. Judy, Michael Heller (Music), Imani Owens (Rutgers University)
Nozomi (Nagakaneku) Saito, Assistant Professor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature, Amherst College (TTS)
Dissertation Title: "Aftermaths of Empires: Cold War Narratives of the Black Pacific"
Chairs: Shaun Myers and Shalini Puri
Readers: Piotr Gwiazda, Mitzi Uehara Carter (Florida International University)
2022
Amanda Awanjo, Project Manager, Black Bibliography Project, Yale African American Studies
Dissertation Title: “Black Girl Futures: Intersections of Black Futurity and Black Girlhood in the 20th Century”
Chairs: Imani Owens (Rutgers University), Courtney Weikle-Mills
Readers: Jules Gill-Peterson, Shaun Myers
Sagnika Chanda, Marion L. Brittain Fellow, Georgia Tech University
Dissertation Title: “Precarious Bodies: Posthumanism, Globalized Labor, and the Global South”
Chairs: Nancy Glazener, Shalini Puri
Readers: Jennifer Waldron, Gabriella Lukacs (Anthropology)
Brittney Knotts, ACLS/Mellon Leading Edge Fellow: Program Coordinator for Youth Activation, Vital Voices
Dissertation Title: “Labor, Play, and Futurity of the Twenty-First Century Girl Coder”
Chair: Tyler Bickford
Readers: Elizabeth Pitts, Annette Vee, Meredith Bak (Rutgers University), Dan Kubis
2021
Ariana Brazier, VP of Products & Storytelling, Daymaker (Atl., GA)
Dissertation Title: “’Yea. I’m in my hood. No strap’: Black Child Play as Praxis & Community Sustenance”
Chair: Khirsten Scott
Readers: Tyler Bickford, Jules Gill-Peterson, Cory Holding, Bettina Love (University of Georgia)
Sreemoyee Dasgupta, Assistant Professor of English (TTS), American University of Beirut
Dissertation Title: “Nationalism, Genre and Childhood in Colonial Indian Children's Literature”
Chair: Courtney Weikle-Mills
Readers: Tyler Bickford, Neepa Majumdar, Matthew Grenby (University of New Castle)
Rachel Maley, Visiting Lecturer (NTS), University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation Title: “Adopting the Cultural Economy for Little Readers: Print Transformations for Children in Nineteenth-Century America”
Chair: Courtney Weikle-Mills
Readers: Jean Ferguson Carr, Stephen L. Carr, Ron Zboray (Communication)
Alyssa Quintanilla, Assistant Professor of English (TTS), US Naval Academy
Dissertation Title: “A Matter of Waste and Bodies: Life, Death, and Materiality in the United States-Mexico Borderlands 1990 to the Present”
Chair: Elizabeth Rodriguez Fielder, Jennifer Waldron
Readers: Troy Boone, Zachary Horton, Caitlin Bruce (Communication)
Jiwon Rim, Faculty of Liberal Education (NTS), Seoul National University
Dissertation Title: “Saving the Stuffed Animal: Narratives of Violence, Fictions of Comfort”
Chair: Troy Boone
Readers: Tyler Bickford, Jennifer Waldron, Amanda Chapman (Glenville State College)
2020
Mary Gryctko, Visiting Scholar of Women's, Gender (NTS), and Sexuality Studies, Northeastern University
Dissertation Title: “The Victorian Cult of the Dead Child”
Chair: Tyler Bickford
Readers: Troy Boone, Jules Gill-Peterson, James Kincaid, Patricia Crain (English, New York University)
Shawna McDermott, Lecturer, University of St. Andrews, Scotland
Dissertation Title: “Visualizing the Future: Childhood, Race, and Imperialism in Children’s Magazines 1873-1939”
Chair: Courtney Weikle-Mills
Readers: Tyler Bickford, Nancy Glazener, James Kincaid, Autumn Womack
Clare Sigrist, Adjunct Professor, College of Wooster
Dissertation Title: “Uneasy Fellowships: The Modern Sentimental Subject and Her Affective Spheres”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Nancy Glazener, Shalini Puri, Giuseppina Mecchia (French & Italian)
2019
Kirsten Paine, Site Management Coordinator & Interpretive Specialist at Rivers of Steel
Dissertation Title: "Something to Do": Fighting and Writing Women of the Civil War
Chair: Courtney Weikle-Mills
Readers: Jean Ferguson Carr, Nancy Glazener, Lisa Tetrault (Department of History, Carnegie Mellon University)
2017
Daniel Barlow, Assistant Professor of English (TTS), Dept. of English, Saddleback College
Dissertation Title: “In the Aural Tradition: Cultural Pedagogies of Black Music”
Chair: William Scott
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Imani Owens, Philip Smith, George Lipsitz (Black Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara)
Jessica Fitzpatrick, Teaching Assistant Professor, English (Appointment stream), & Director of the Digital Narrative & Interactive Design Program (DNID)
Dissertation Title: “Hacking the Future: The Space of Earth in Postcolonial Science Fiction”
Chair: Susan Andrade and Philip Smith
Readers: Thora Brylowe, Shalini Puri, Richard Purcell (English, Carnegie Mellon University)
Elizabeth Oliphant, English Faculty, Northland Pioneer College
Dissertation Title: “Inventing the Southwest: How Modernists Shaped an American Regional Experience”
Chair: Nancy Glazener
Readers: Jonathan Arac, William Scott, Kirk Savage (Art and Architecture)
2016
Joanna Collins, Foundation Year Program Coordinator in the International Office, University of Texas
Dissertation Title: “Authors Exposed: Victorian Literary Celebrity and the Graphic Revolution”
Chair: Colin MacCabe, Philip E. Smith
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Ronald Zboray (Communication)
Kathleen Davies
Dissertation Title: “Write to Privacy: Literature, Letters, Law, and the Inviolate Personality in America's Long Nineteenth Century”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Nancy Glazener, Courtney Weikle-Mills, Christopher Castiglia (English, Penn State University)
Katherine Kidd, Assistant Teaching Professor and Undergraduate Studies Coordinator, Syracuse University
Dissertation Title: “The (Class) Struggle is Real(ly Queer): A Bilateral Intervention into Working-Class Studies and Queer Theory”
Chair: Nick Coles, Nancy Glazener
Readers: Mark Anderson, William Scott, Brent Malin (Communication)
Swathi Sreerangarajan, Adjunct Lecturer, Dept. of English, Los Medanos College
Dissertation Title: “Working around Ethnographic Entanglements: South Asian American Literature and Popular Culture”
Chair: Nancy Glazener, Shalini Puri
Readers: Tyler Bickford, Neepa Majumdar, Marian Aguiar (English, Carnegie Mellon University)
Hyo Kyung Woo, Postdoctoral fellow at CLASS (Center for Liberal Arts and Social Science), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Dissertation Title: “Korean Englishes, Uneven Asias, Global Circulation, 1895-1945”
Chair: Gayle Rogers
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Shalini Puri, Yoon Sun Yang (Korean & Comparative Literature, Boston University)
2015
Sarah Bagley, Adjunct Instructor, Dept. of English, University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation Title: “Nostalgia and Modernism: Proust, Joyce, Beckett”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Ronald A. T. Judy, Colin MacCabe, Gayle Rogers, Giuseppina Mecchia (French and Italian)
Amanda Phillips Chapman, Assistant Professor of English, Glenville State College, Glenville WV
Dissertation Title: “Self-consciousness and Childhood in the Long Nineteenth Century”
Chair: Troy Boone
Readers: Thora Brylowe, Nancy Glazener, Marah Gubar, Bruce McConachie (Theatre Arts)
Racheal Fest, Adjunct, Dept. of English, Hartwick College
Dissertation Title: “Erotic Poetics: Love and the Function of US Literature from Melville to Modernism”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Jonathan Arac, William Scott, Bruce Robins (English, Columbia University)
Jessica Isaac, Associate Director, Books@Work, (Cleveland, OH)
Dissertation Title: “Compliant Circulation: Children's Writing, American Periodicals, and Public Culture, 1839-1882”
Chair: Jean Ferguson Carr
Readers: David Bartholomae, Stephen L. Carr, Courtney Weikle-Mills, Amanda Godley (Instruction and Learning, School of Education)
Kerry Mockler
Dissertation Title: “Neighborhoods of Make-Believe: Place, Play, and Possibility in Disneyland, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and The Magic City”
Chair: Mark Anderson
Readers: Tyler Bickford, Marah Gubar, Brent Malin (Communication)
Liam O’Loughlin, Visiting Assistant Professor of English, Pacific Lutheran University
Dissertation Title: “Cosmopolitan Disasters: From Bhopal to the Tsunami in South Asian Anglophone Literature”
Chair: Shalini Puri
Readers: Troy Boone, Hannah Johnson, Neepa Majumdar
Loring Pfeiffer, Adjunct Lecturer, Santa Clara University
Dissertation Title: “The Politics of Desire: English Women Playwrights, Partisanship, and the Staging of Female Sexuality, 1660-1737”
Chair: Jennifer Waldron
Readers: John Twyning, Courtney Weikle-Mills, Kristina Straub (English, Carnegie Mellon University)
Rebecca Wigginton, Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor of English, Carnegie Mellon University (NTS)
Dissertation Title: “Twilight States: Sleepwalking, Liminal Consciousness, and Sensational Selfhood in Victorian Literature and Culture”
Chair: Philip E. Smith
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Marah Gubar, John Twyning, C. Drew Armstrong (History of Art & Architecture)
Jarrell D. Wright, Visiting Lecturer, Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation Title: “Dancing before the Lord: Renaissance Ludics and Incarnational Discourse”
Chair: John Twyning
Readers: Colin MacCabe, Jennifer Waldron, Peggy Knapp (Dept. of English, CMU)
2014
Julie Beaulieu, Lecturer, Dept. of Gender, Sexuality, and Woman Studies, University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation Title: “Erotic Knowledge in the Eighteenth Century”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Thora Brylowe, Jennifer Walrdon, Kristina Straub (English, Carnegie Mellon University)
Schuyler Chapman, Assistant Professor of English, Glenville State College, Glenville WV
Dissertation Title: “The Complete Citizen: Good Seamanship and Good Citizenship in Antebellum U.S. Literacy Culture”
Chair: Courtney Weikle-Mills
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Nancy Glazener, Marcus Rediker (History)
Nathaniel Heggins Bryant, Instructor of English, California State University-Chico
Dissertation Title: “Working in the Belly of the Beast: The Productive Intellectual Labor of US Prison Writers, 1929-2007.”
Chair: Philip Smith
Readers: David Bartholomae, Nick Coles, Sabine von Dirke (German)
Katie Homar, Academic and Technical Writing Coordinator, The Graduate School, North Carolina State University
Dissertation Title: “Juggling Rhetorical Histories and Traditions: The Wordsworth Circle as Romantic Rhetoricians”
Chair: Don Bialostosky
Readers: Thora Brylowe, Stephen L. Carr, Jon Klancher (English, Carnegie Mellon University)
Shelagh Patterson, Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, Montclair State University
Dissertation Title: “Architectures of Freedom: Literary Collaboration in Contemporary American Poetry”
Chair: Don Bialostosky
Readers: Shalini Puri, Todd Reeser (French & Italian Languages and Literatures), William Scott
2013
Rebecca Camp, Working in the nonprofit sector as Coordination Officer for the Stabilization Support Unit, United Nations Mission in Congo (MONUSCO)
Dissertation Title: “Advocacy Literature Sans Frontières: African Warscapes, International Community, and Popular Narratives for Emerging Human Rights Norms”
Chair: David Brumble
Readers: Nancy Glazener, Shalini Puri, Neil Doshi (French and Italian)
Bradley Fest, Assistant Professor of English, Hartwick College
Dissertation Title: “The Apocalypse Archive: American Literature and the Nuclear Bomb”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Adam Lowenstein, Philip Smith, Terry Smith (History of Art and Architecture)
Jonathan Hayes, Instructor, Southeast Missouri State University
Dissertation Title: “Henry James’s ‘Various America’: The Novel, Freedom, and Modernity”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Susan Andrade, William Scott, Giuseppina Mecchia (French and Italian)
Deepa Jani, Assistant Professor, SUNY Old Westbury
Dissertation Title: “J. M. Coetzee: Ethics, Subalternity, and the Critique of Humanism”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Ronald A. T. Judy, Marcia Landy, John Beverley (Hispanic Languages and Literature)
Dan Kubis, Assistant Director to the Humanities Center, University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation Title “Fighting for a Common Culture: Literary Theory in the Age of Reagan”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Paul A. Bové, William Scott, Jeffrey Williams (CMU)
Andrea Lapin, freelance writer
Dissertation Title: “A Body of Text: Physical Culture and the Marketing of Mobility”
Chair: Nancy Glazener
Readers: Jonathan Arac, William Scott, Brent Malin (Communication)
Kathleen Pendlebury, YWCA Greater Pittsburgh, Grants and Proposals Manager
Dissertation Title: “Cerebral Pleasures: Children’s Literature and Philosophy”
Chair: Philip Smith
Committee: Troy Boone, Nancy Glazener, Amanda Godley (Instruction and Learning, School of Education)
Heather Sprong
Dissertation Title: “Navigating Identities: Women’s Travel Narratives in the Nineteenth Century”
Chair: Troy Boone
Readers: Neepa Majumdar, Philip Smith, Josh Ellenbogen (History of Art and Architecture)
Alicia Williamson, Head Writer & Editor for Quotabelle.com
Dissertation Title: “A Free Union?: The Sexual Politics of Progressive-Era Socialist Novels”
Chair: William Scott
Committee: Jonathan Arac, Nancy Glazener, Susan Harris Smith, Ronald Zboray (Communication)
2012
Carolyn Elliott, CEO of WITCH online teaching and media company
Dissertation Title: “Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Poetic Education”
Chair: Marianne Novy
Readers: Toi Derricotte, Dawn Lundy Martin, Sharon M. Abbey (Faculty of Education, Brock University, Ontario, Canada)
Jonathan S. Feinberg, Editor, Department of Radiation Oncology, UT Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas, TX)
Dissertation Title: “Samuel Beckett, Language, and the Creative and Critical Possibilities of Literature”
Chair: Colin MacCabe
Readers: Marcia Landy, William Scott, Giuseppina Mecchia (French & Italian)
Claudia Heske, Program Coordinator for NIH-funded Initiative for Maximizing Student Development, Dept. of Biology, U Mass-Boston
Dissertation Title: “Inconsumable Realities: Documenting Warfare, Britain 1914-1920”
Chair: Troy Boone
Readers: Neepa Majumdar, Philip Smith, Giuseppina Mecchia (French & Italian)
Amy Robin Hoffman, Assistant Editor, Art Institute of Chicago Publishing Department
Dissertation Title: “Doubtful Characters: Alphabet Books and Battles Over Literacy in Nineteenth-Century British Print Culture”
Chair: Marah Gubar
Readers: Troy Boone, Stephen L. Carr, Mary Saracino Zboray (Communication), Ronald Zboray (Communication)
Matthew Kendrick, Associate Professor of English (TTS), William Paterson University
Dissertation Title: “Rude Mechanicals: Staging Labor in the Early Modern English Theater”
Co-Chairs: John Twyning, Jennifer Waldron
Reader: Nicholas Coles, Rachel Trubowitz (English, University of New Hampshire)
Margot Stafford, Visiting Assistant Professor (NTS), Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO
Dissertation Title: “The Child and the Book: Imagining Childhood Reading in Anglo-America, 1899-1936”
Chair: Kathryn Flannery
Readers: Troy Boone, Nancy Glazener, Marah Gubar, Amanda Thein (Language, Literacy, and Culture; University of Iowa)
Alexandra Valint, Associate Professor of English (TTS) and Director of Graduate Studies, University of Southern Mississippi
Dissertation Title: “Collaboration and Contestation: The Victorian Multiple-Narrator Novel”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Troy Boone, Marah Gubar, Giuseppina Mecchia (French and Italian)
Emily Wender, Assistant Professor of English, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Title: “The Critical / Ordinary Reader: School, Emotion, Reading and Writing”
Chair: Philip Smith
Readers: Don Bialostosky, Paul Kameen, Amanda Thein (Language, Literacy and Culture, University of Iowa)
2011
Clark Henderson
Dissertation Title: “Transforming Action: Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke Out of the 1930s”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Ronald A. T. Judy, Nancy Condee (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Gabrielle Owen, Lecturer in English, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Dissertation Title: “Queer Theory and the Logic of Adolescence”
Chair: Jean Ferguson Carr
Readers: Stephen L. Carr, Nancy Glazener, Marah Gubar, Kathleen Blee (Sociology)
Jessica Pannell, Content Specialist / Test Developer, Writing & Communication Literacies, ACT Inc. (Iowa City, IA)
Dissertation Title: “Teeming Delight: Irish Poetry, 1930–1960”
Chair: James F. Knapp
Readers: Troy Boone, Colin MacCabe, Barbara McCloskey (History of Art and Architecture)
Anna Redcay, Chair of the English Department and Upper School English Teacher, The Ellis School
Dissertation Title: “The ‘Long Defended Gate’: Juvenilia and Constructions of Creativity, 1858-1939”
Chair: Marah Gubar
Readers: Troy Boone, Jean Ferguson Carr, Amanda Godley (Instruction and Learning, School of Education)
Maggie Rehm, Lecturer in Psychology and Communication Studies (NTS), University of Idaho
Dissertation Title: “The Art of Citizenship: Suffrage Literature as Social Pedagogy”
Co-Chairs: Paul Kameen and Susan Harris Smith
Readers: Troy Boone, Ronald Zboray (Communication)
Daniel Wollenberg, Assistant Professor, Tampa Bay University
Dissertation Title: “The Invention of England: Danes and Identity in Medieval Romance”
Co-Chairs: Hannah Johnson, John Twyning
Readers: David Brumble, Kellie Robertson (English, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
2010
Cory Goehring, Assistant Professor (TTS), Warner University
Dissertation Title: “The Wordworthian Inheritance of Melville’s Poetics”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Nancy Glazener, Marah Gubar, Virginia Jackson (English, UC Irvine)
2009
Llana Carroll, Lecturer in the Writing and Critical Inquiry (WCI) program, University at Albany, SUNY
Dissertation Title: “Notions of Friendship in the Bloomsbury Group: The Influence of G. E. Moore, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and Virginia Woolf”
Chair: Colin MacCabe
Readers: Troy Boone, Philip Smith, Kieran Setiya (Philosophy)
Catherine Day, Instructor of English (NTS), Oregon State University
Dissertation Title: “On Paying Attention: Particularity in Victorian Fiction and Empirical Thought”
Chairs: Jonathan Arac, Paul A. Bové
Committee: Eric O. Clarke, Ronald A. T. Judy, James Lennox (History and Philosophy of Science)
Lopé López
Dissertation Title: “Untimely Figures: Edgar Allan Poe, Journalism, and the Literary Imagination”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Ronald A. T. Judy, William Scott, Donald Pease (English, Dartmouth College), Philip Watts (French and Romance Philology, Columbia University)
Hans Mattingly, Assistant Professor of English, International Horizons College, Dubai
Dissertation Title: “Matrices of Subjectivity: The Discourse of Learning in Victorian Literature”
Chair: John Twyning
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Kimberly Latta, Giuseppina Mecchia (French and Italian)
Michael Mazza, Sergeant, US Army
Dissertation title: “This Fierce Geometry: Uses of the Judeo-Christian Bible in the Anti-Abolitionist and Anti-Gay Rhetoric of the United States”
Chair: Jean Ferguson Carr
Committee: Nancy Glazener, William Scott, Moni McIntyre (Theology, Duquesne University)
2008
Manisha Basu, Associate Professor of English and African Studies (TTS), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Dissertation Title: “Fathers of a Still-Born Past: Hindu Empire, Globality, and the Rhetoric of the Trikaal”
Chair: Marcia Landy
Readers: Paul A. Bové, Ronald A. T. Judy, Nancy Condee (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Jennifer Keating-Miller, Assistant Dean for Educational Initiatives and the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Research & National Fellowships, Carnegie Mellon University
Dissertation Title: “Labyrinths of Language: Representations of Identity Formation in Contemporary Irish Literature”
Chair: James Knapp
Readers: Stephen L. Carr, Colin MacCabe, Paul Hopper (English, Carnegie Mellon University)
Christine Mahady
Dissertation Title: “Corporeality in Turn-of-the-Century American Fiction”
Chair: Nancy Glazener
Readers: Troy Boone, Kathryn Flannery, Lisa Parker (Human Genetics)
Richard Purcell, Associate Professor of English (TTS), Carnegie Mellon University
Dissertation Title: “Ralph Ellison and the American Pursuit of Humanism”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Ronald A. T. Judy, Marcia Landy, Dennis Looney (French and Italian)
Stephen Tumino, Visiting Assistant Professor of English (NTS), City University of New York (Kingsborough)
Dissertation Title: “The Labor Theory of Culture”
Chair: Nick Coles
Readers: Troy Boone, James Seitz, Peter McLaren (Education, UCLA)
2007
Jeffrey Aziz, Lecturer in English (NTS), University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation Title: “Of Grace and Gross Bodies: Falstaff, Oldcastle, and the Fires of Reform”
Chair: John Twyning
Readers: James Knapp, Kellie Robertson, Janelle Greenberg (History)
Julie Hakim Azzam
Dissertation Title: “The Alien Within: Postcolonial Gothic and the Politics of Home”
Chair: Susan Andrade
Readers: Troy Boone, Shalini Puri, Carol Stabile (Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)
Ellen (Gerber) Carillo, Associate Professor of English (TTS), University of Connecticut, and Writing Coordinator/Westbury Campus
Dissertation Title: “Modernist Pedagogies: Conrad, Woolf, Pound, and the Reading Public”
Chairs: Troy Boone and James Seitz
Readers: Colin MacCabe, Phil Watts (French and Italian)
Amy Cook
Dissertation Title: “Narratives of Irony: Representation and Alienation in Carlyle, Eliot, and Pater”
Chair: Eric O. Clarke
Readers: Troy Boone, Philip Smith, Laura Callanan (English, Duquesne University)
Jennifer Cotter, Associate Professor of English (TTS), William Jewell College
Dissertation Title: “Making Feminism Matter Again”
Chair: Marcia Landy
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Eric O. Clarke, Barbara Foley (English, Rutgers University)
Brenda Glascott, Associate Professor (TTS), California State University-San Bernardino
Dissertation Title: “The Ends of Literacy Education: Evangelical Protestantism and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of Contemporary Writing Instruction”
Chair: Kathryn Flannery
Readers: Stephen Carr, Nancy Glazener, Donna Strickland (English, University of Missouri)
Kirstin (Collins) Hanley, Lecturer, Point Park College
Dissertation Title: “Redefining Didactic Convention: Mary Wollstonecraft and Feminist Discourses of Appropriation”
Chair: Stephen Carr
Readers: Don Bialostosky, Jean Ferguson Carr, Amanda Godley (Instruction and Learning, School of Education)
Jeffrey Hole, Associate Professor of English (TTS), University of the Pacific
Dissertation Title: “Invention of an Infidel: Herman Melville’s Literary Heresies and the Doctrines of Empire”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Nancy Glazener, Ronald A. T. Judy, Donald Pease (English, Dartmouth College)
Juli Parrish, Assistant Director of the Writing Center, Lecturer, University of Denver
Dissertation Title: “Inventing a Universe: The Reading and Writing of Internet Fan Fiction”
Chair: Jean Ferguson Carr
Readers: Nick Coles, John Twyning, Amanda Godley (Instruction and Learning, School of Education)
Anastasia Ulanowicz, Associate Professor of English (TTS), University of Florida
Dissertation Title: “Ghost Images: Representations of Second-Generation Memory in Contemporary Children’s Literature”
Chair: Valerie Krips
Readers: Troy Boone, Adam Lowenstein, John Beverley (Hispanic Languages and Literature)
2006
John Adam Johns
Dissertation Title: “Leviathan and Automaton: Teleology and Technology in American Literature”
Chair: Philip Smith
Readers: Paul A. Bové, Ronald A. T. Judy, Kirk Savage (Art and Architecture)
Jennifer Allen Schell, Professor of English (TTS), University of Alaska
Dissertation Title: “Nineteenth-Century American Whaling Narratives: Work, Globality, Nationality, and Gender Identity”
Chair: Nancy Glazener
Readers: Susan Andrade, Jean Ferguson Carr, Kirk Savage (Art and Architecture)
Amy Murray Twyning, Lecturer, Literature Program Assistant, University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation Title: “Detective Narrative and the Problem of Origins in Nineteenth-Century England”
Chair: Colin MacCabe
Readers: Marcia Landy, James Seitz, Nancy Condee (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Christopher Warnick, Associate Professor (TTS), College of Charleston
Dissertation Title: “Student Writing, Politics, and Style, 1962-1979”
Chair: Jean Ferguson Carr
Readers: David Bartholomae, James Seitz, Lester Olson (Communication)
2005
Henry Veggian, Fixed Term Faculty, Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dissertation Title: “Mercury of the Waves: Modern Cryptology and U.S. Literature”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Eric O. Clarke, Marcia Landy
2004
Petra Dierkes-Thrun, Lecturer in Comparative Literature, Stanford University
Dissertation Title: “The Salome Theme in the Wake of Oscar Wilde: Transformative Aesthetics of Sexuality in Modernity”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Eric O. Clarke, Lucy Fischer, Herbert Lindenberger (Stanford)
Judy Suh, Associate Professor of English (TTS), Duquesne University
Dissertation Title: “The Seductive Fallacy: Women and Fascism in British Domestic Fiction”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Eric O. Clarke, Marcia Landy, Barbara Green (English, University of Notre Dame)
Andrew Wood
Dissertation Title: “The Uncertain Individual: A Critical Translation of Alain Ehrenberg’s L’Individu Incertain”
Chair: Colin MacCabe
Readers: Paul A. Bové, Marcia Landy, Philip Watts (French and Italian)
2003
Emily T. Bauman, Master Teacher of Liberal Studies, New York University
Dissertation Title: “Dreaming in Crisis: Angels and the Allegorical Imagination in Postwar America”
Chair: Colin MacCabe
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Ronald A. T. Judy, Nancy Condee (Slavic Languages and Literature)
Angela Farkas
Dissertation Title: “Sensational Tales and Working-Girl Melodrama: Popular Story Paper Fiction and its Readers in Late Nineteenth-Century America”
Chair: Jean Ferguson Carr
Readers: Nancy Glazener, Joseph Harris, Mariolina Salvatori, Janelle Greennerg (History)
Nathalie op de Beeck, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Children’s Literature Minor (TTS), Pacific Lutheran University
Dissertation Title: “Readymade Antiques: The Picture Book in America, 1924-1944”
Chair: Valerie Krips
Readers: Troy Boone, Lucy Fischer, Nancy Condee (Slavic Languages and Literaturs)
2002
Christopher Boettcher, Assistant Professor (TTS), Castleton State College of Vermont
Dissertation Title: “The Shattered Worlds of Standish O’Grady—Myth, History and Imagination in Nineteenth Century Ireland”
Chair: Colin MacCabe
Readers: David Brumble, James Knapp
Patrick Mullen, Associate Professor, Northeastern University
Dissertation Title: "The Aesthetics of Intelligent Sympathy: Irish Nationalism, Homoeroticism, and Global Writing"
Chair: Eric Otto Clarke, Marica Landy
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Colin MacCabe
2001
Reena Dube, Associate Professor of English (TTS), Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Title: “The Discourse of Colonial Enterprise and Its Representations of the Other through Expanded Cultural Critique”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Stephen L. Carr, James Knapp
Gail (Sullivan) Hammill, Assistant Professor (TTS), American University in Dubai
Dissertation Title: “Soldier Relics: Masculinity, Sacrifice, and Literature of the American Civil War”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Nancy Glazener, James Knapp, Marianne Novy, Kirk Savage (History of Art and Architecture)
J. Paul Narkunas, Assistant Professor of English, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Dissertation Title: “The Imperialism of Everyday Life: Encounters and Peregrinations with the Inhuman”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Ronald A. T. Judy, Marcia Landy, Terry Cochran (University of Montreal)
Elayne Tobin, Master Teacher of Liberal Studies (NTS), New York University
Dissertation Title: “Fearing For Our Lives: Biography and Middlebrow Culture in Late Twentieth-Century America”
Chair: Marcia Landy
Readers: Colin MacCabe, Dana Polan
Brenda Whitney, Lecturer in English (NTS), University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation Title: “Non-Representational Realism: Morrison, Ben Jelloun, Rushdie and the Subject of Freedom”
Chair: Colin MacCabe
Readers: Susan Z. Andrade, Jonathan Arac
2000
Abdul Dardery, Assistant Professor, South Valley University, Egypt
Dissertation Title: “Postcolonialism: An Egyptian-English Perspective”
Chair: James Knapp
Readers: Susan Andrade, Stephen L. Carr, Laurence Glasco (History)
1999
David Sidore, Associate Professor of English (TS), Macon State College
Dissertation Title: “Being in Control: The Ending of the Information Age”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Marcia Landy, Carol Stabile (Communication)
Robert Tally, Associate Professor (TTS), Texas State University
Dissertation Title: “American Baroque: Melville and the Literacy Cartography of the World System”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Ronald A. T. Judy
1998
Jay Andrews, Instructor of English (NTS), Temple University
Dissertation Title: “The Emergence of Corporate Subjectivity: Literature, Imperialism, and the Transformation of American National Consciousness”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Marcia Landy
Lynn Casmier-Paz, Associate Professor of English (TTS), University of Central Florida
Dissertation Title: “The Effects of Literacy in English Language Slave Narrative”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Nancy Glazener, Ronald A. T. Judy, James Seitz, Henry Krips (Communication)
Cela Mascarenhas, free-lance writer
Dissertation Title: “Constructions of National Identity in the Victorian Novel: Readings of Six Novels”
Chair: Marianne Novy
Readers: Eric O. Clarke, Carol Kay, Janelle Greenberg (History)
Elizabeth Matway, Senior Lecturer in English and Chair of the College Writing Board, University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation Title: “Uncertain Histories: Writing And Rewriting National Narratives”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Jean Ferguson Carr, Nancy Glazener, Kirk Savage (History of Art and Architecture)
Patricia Saunders, Associate Professor of English (TTS), University of Miami
Dissertation Title: “Beyond Caliban: (Dis)Forming Identity and Being in Contemporary Anglophone Caribbean Literature”
Chair: Shalini Puri
Readers: Susan Andrade, Nancy Glazener, John Beverley (Hispanic Languages and Literatures)
1997
Nancy Atkinson, Associate Professor of English (TTS), University of Northern Alabama
Dissertation Title: “When Miracles Become Magic: Witchcraft and the Effort to Reform Religious Practice in Late Medieval and Early Modern England”
Chairs: Sarah Beckwith, Marianne Novy
Readers: John Twyning, Janelle Greenberg (History), Peggy Knapp (English, Carnegie Mellon University)
Melanie Dawson, Associate Professor (TTS), College of William and Mary
Dissertation Title: “From Carnival to Nostalgia: The Play of Cultural Literacy in the Nineteenth-Century Parlor”
Chair: Jean Ferguson Carr
Readers: Joseph Harris, Susan Smith, Paula Kane (Religious Studies )
Theresa Doerksen, Associate Professor of English (TTS), Mansfield University
Dissertation Title: “Constructing the English on Catholic Foundations: National Identity, Religion, and Gender in the English Novel, 1748-1860”
Chair: Carol Kay
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Sarah Beckwith, Richard Tobias, Claudia Johnson (Princeton University)
Bianca Falbo, Associate Professor of English (TTS), Lafayette College
Dissertation Title: “Authorship and the Circulation of Literature Practices in the Anglo-American Field of Cultural Production, 1790-1860”
Chair: Jean Ferguson Carr
Readers: Stephen L. Carr, Nancy Glazener, Joseph Harris, Patrizia Lombardo (French & Italian Languages and Literatures)
1996
Amy Gleichert-Bothner, Noir Medical Technologies
Dissertation Title: “Changeable Parts: History and Contemporary American Women Writers”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Jean Ferguson Carr, Nancy Glazener, Sabine Hake (German Language and Literature)
Mark Kemp, Lecturer and Department Advisor, English Department, University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation Title: “Backyards and Border Patrols: North American Nationalism and the Construction of Postcolonialism”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Susan Andrade, Nancy Glazener, Donald Pease (English, Dartmouth College)
Yi Zheng, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Chinese Studies, University of Sydney
Dissertation Title: “Beginnings and Elsewheres: The Romantic and Other Sublime and Sympathetic Glories”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Paul A. Bové, Stephen L. Carr, Ronald A. T. Judy, Henry Krips (Communication)
1995
Rashmi Bhatnagar
Dissertation Title: “The Idol Toleration: Jonathan Swift’s Anti-Colonial Critique of the Emergent Discourses of Toleration and Secular Learning in Ireland and Whig Historiography, 1690-1711”
Chair: Stephen Carr
Readers: Carol Kay, Mariolina Salvatori, Hugh Kearney (History), Fritz Ringer (History)
Christine Ross, Associate Professor of English (TTS), Quinnipiac University
Dissertation Title: “The Natural Law of Standard English and the Practical Criticism of Emily Dickinson”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: David Bartholomae, Jean Ferguson Carr, Henry Krips (Communication)
1994
Rane Arroyo, deceased 2010, formerly Professor of English and Creative Writing, University of Toledo
Dissertation Title: “Babel, USA: A Writer of Color Rethinks the Chicago Renaissance”
Chair: James Knapp
Readers: Marcia Landy, Richard Tobias, Ron Sakolsky (University of Illinois, Springfield
Barbara Schroeder, Director, Corporate and Foundation Relations, Children's National Medical Center, Washington, DC
Dissertation Title: “Educating Female Subjects in England, 1780-1850: A Study of How the Literary and Cultural Representation of the Education of Women Illustrate the Ways in Which Education Both Subjugates and Empowers”
Chair: Stephen L. Carr
Readers: Carol Kay, Marianne Novy, and Janelle Greenberg (History)
Wenying Xu, Provost and Chief Academic Officer, Jacksonville University
Dissertation Title: “An Ethic/Aesthetic of Freedom: Rethinking the Relationship Between Artistic Freedom and Social Responsibility”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Stephen L. Carr, Philip Smith, C. Montgomery Broaded (Butler University)
1993
Irem Balkir, deceased 2006, formerly Assistant Professor of American Culture and Literature, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
Dissertation title: “Cosmopolitan Reconsidered: Henry James in His Contexts as a Challenge to Contemporary Thought”
Chair: Jonathan Arac
Readers: Paul A. Bové, Carol Kay, Bruce Robbins (English, Columbia University)
Matthew Cooper, Lecturer, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Dissertation title: “Intellectual Illuminations: Episodes of Rivalry and Partnership in Literary Modernism”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Carol Kay, William Fusfield (Communication)
Laura Dice, Assistant Dean and Director of Freshman Programs, University of Pittsburgh
Dissertation title: “Ambivalence and Authority: The Influence of Religious Nonconformism on the Representation of Women in Works by John Milton, Daniel Defoe, and D. H. Lawrence”
Chairs: Colin MacCabe, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Readers: Robert Hinman, James Knapp, Hugh Kearney (History)
1992
Monette Tiernan, Division Chair of English, Glendale Community College
Dissertation Title: “Aesthetic Autonomy and Discursive Practice”
Chair: Paul A. Bové
Readers: Stephen L. Carr, Marcia Landy, John Beverley (Hispanic Languages and Literatures)