Catherine Altmaier is a doctoral candidate. Her studies focus on late 20th and early 21st century American literature and culture with an emphasis on mourning and trauma studies. Her dissertation focuses on the portrayal of trauma and mourning in post-09/11 US fiction. She recently presented at the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present's national conference. In 2010, she was the recipient of FSU's Julia Burnett Bryant award. She received her BA in English and Religion and an MA in Literature from Western Kentucky University.

Paul Ardoin is a doctoral candidate whose research and teaching focus on narratology and literary modernism. Alongside Laci Mattison and Professor Gontarksi, he is co-editing a collection titled Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism, forthcoming from Continuum (2013). Other work accepted for publication includes book chapters on Vladimir Nabokov, Jonathan Safran Foer, Winsome Pinnock, and Jean Rhys. He currently serves as a reviewer for The Explicator and reviews books for Transnational Literature. His dissertation research deals with perception and paralysis in Modernist texts.

Regina N. Bradley PhD candidate. Her research focuses on 20th century African American Literature and culture. Regina's dissertation interests investigate postracialism and (de)constructions of white hegemonic privilege in late 20th and 21st century black consciousness and (popular) culture. She has recently presented her work at the National Council of Black Studies Conference and chaired a panel at the National Popular Culture Association annual conference. Regina is a 2010-2011 recipient of the competitive Edward H. and Marie C. Kingsbury Graduate Writing Award. She earned her BA in English from Albany State University (GA) and her MA in African American and African Diaspora Studies from Indiana University Bloomington.

Meaghan Brown is a PhD candidate. Her studies focus on the History of Text Technologies, particularly hand press printing technology in early modern Britain and modern digital humanities. Her article on William Caxton is forthcoming in the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature (2011). In Spring 2011 she participated in the Folger Shakespeare Library's seminar on the History of the Stationers' Company (1557 - 1710). She is currently continuing her research on her dissertation project, examining the influence of printers on early modern English ideas of community and nationhood at the British Library, thanks to a Mellon-CLIR and FLU-International Dissertation Research Fellowships. She received a BA in History with High Honors from Oberlin College and a M.S.I.S. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Joshua Burnett is a PhD student. He specializes in African American literature, with postcolonial literature as a secondary area, and is planning a dissertation on the politics of resistance in works of speculative fiction by writers such as Samuel R. Delany, Nnedi Okorafor, and Colson Whitehead. He has a BA in Liberal Arts from Eugene Lang College and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is a winner of the Bryan Hall Award for Excellence in Teaching First-Year Composition and recently presented his first conference paper, on the depiction of writing as a form of female agency in Edwidge Danticat's novel Behind the Mountains, at the West Indian Literature Conference at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago.

Kevin Carr is a PhD candidate specializing in Renaissance drama and the history of early modern science and technology. His dissertation, under the direction of Elizabeth Spiller, is entitled A Theater of the Senses: A Cultural History of Theatrical Effects in Early Modern England. His work connects the development of theatrical effects of the rise of a new experimental, scientific culture that produces and studies the effects of nature, and often favors the phenomenology of the senses over logic or reason. He has presented papers at the Southeastern Renaissance Conference, as well as the Society for Science, Literature and the Arts. Kevin's essay, "'What thing thou art, thus double-formed': Naming, Knowledge and Materialism in Paradise Lost," was published in Renaissance Papers (2008). He received his BA in Drama from Ithaca College, and his MA from the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

Jennifer Doyle-Corn is a PhD student. Her studies are focused on post-1900 Irish literary and cultural studies. She is especially interested in the contemporary Irish novel and literature relating to the period of the 1916 Easter Rising through the Irish Civil War. She currently serves as the graduate student representative to the American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS) and has recently presented papers at several national conferences. She has been the recipient of the College Teaching Fellowship, the Ermine M. Owenby, Jr. Grant, and a Seminole Torchbearer nomination from FSU as well as a fellowship from the University of Notre Dame to study in Dublin in Summer 2011.

Victoria Reynolds Farmer is a doctoral candidate in Renaissance literature and gender studies with a BA and an MA in English from the University of Georgia. She recently presented a paper entitled "Girlhood and Autonomy in The Tempest and Rough Magic" at the 2011 SAMLA. She is beginning a dissertation on novel adaptations of Shakespeare for teen girl audiences. This effort will explore how twenty-first century views of girlhood combine with patriarchal, canonical plots to create an undervalued genre that nonetheless contributes to current constructions of gender in important ways.

Kelly Hall is an ABD candidate, writing a dissertation on late-medieval travel accounts. She earned her BA from Sweet Briar College, spent a year studying at the Université de la Sorbonne in Paris, and earned her MA in medieval studies at the University of York. Recent publications include an article entitled "Life on the Ice" about her work in Antarctica, and she recently presented a paper on "Post-Literary Adaptation and Arthurian Film" at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI. She is the winner of FSU's Excellence in Teaching Award, the recipient of a Dissertation Research Grant, was twice chosen to teach for FSU's International Program in London, and was invited by the University of Portsmouth to lead workshops on travel writing.

Marie Hause is a PhD student in early modern English literature and the History of Text Technologies. She plans to focus on early modern cosmology as it relates to concerns with reading and perception in English poetry and prose. Marie received her MA from James Madison University in 2010, and she is the recipient of a Florida State University Presidential Fellowship. Her most recent conference presentations include "Proto-Colonial Encounters with the European Book and the Conversion at Renfusa in Francis Bacon's New Atlantis" at the UVA-Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference (Sept. 2011) and "One Nineteenth-Century Woman's Response to Pilgrim's Progress: The Construction of Authority in Louisa Marian Waterman's Manuscript The Pilgrim's Progress, Versified in the Quaint Style of John Bunyan" at the 19th Annual British Women Writers Conference (Apr. 2011).

Christopher Higgs is a PhD student. His areas of interest include Modernism, postmodernism, avant-garde, and experimental literature. Chris's second book, a collaboration with Blake Butler and Vanessa Place entitled MEAT, will be published by Roof Books in Fall 2012. Chris's novel, The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney, was published by Sator Press in 2010. He has presented papers including "Gen-Web: The Emergent Literary Coterie" at The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (October 2011), "The Species of the Non-Species: Modernist Monstrosities" at the Modernist Studies Association (October 2011), and "Popular Fiction's Fortune & Experimental Fiction's Misfortune: The Two Sides of Noncanonical Literature," at the College English Association (March 2011). Chris holds an MFA in creative writing from Ohio State University, an MA in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a BA in film from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

Charla Hughes studied English and Italian at Vassar College and spent her junior year abroad studying Italian literature and art history at the Universities of Siena and Bologna. After graduating from Vassar in 2008, Charla completed a certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) with the American TESOL Institute in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and spent the following three years teaching English in Thailand and South Korea. While teaching and traveling, Charla also wrote frequently for Southeast Asia Backpacker magazine, wherein she published many articles, including "Living the Dream," "How to Dress a Backpacker," "The Beach," and "Taking it to the Streets: The Best of Thai Street Food." Charla is pursuing her Masters' degree in 20th Century Literature.

Janelle Jennings-Alexander is a PhD student. Janelle has a BA degree in English from Florida A&M University and an MS degree in Transformative Leadership from Bethune-Cookman University. Her research interests include 20th and 21st century American literature and culture, Modernism and black speculative fiction.

Pete Kunze is doctoral candidate. His research and teaching interests include postwar American fiction, film, masculinity, comedy, and children's culture. He has published several entries in reference materials, and essays on Junot Díaz, E. Annie Proulx, Australian cinema, and the modern family are forthcoming. He regularly presents his research at the annual conference of the American Literature Association, where he is an active member of the American Humor Studies Association and the Kurt Vonnegut Society. Currently he is co-editing a special issue of Studies in American Humor on Kurt Vonnegut as well as finishing his dissertation on masculinity and comedy in postwar American fiction and film. In his spare time, Pete works with Big Brothers and Big Sisters of the Big Bend and serves as Assistant Director of Men Advocating Responsible Conduct, where he works to prevent sexual assault on campus. He received degrees in English and film studies at Rowan University and his MA in literature at FSU.

Kate Lechler is a 3rd year PhD student of early modern drama, with a special focus on the work of Thomas Middleton. Her dissertation project studies contemporary productions of plays by Middleton. She has presented her paper "Lions, Monsters, and Mermaids, Oh My!: Taming Discourse in The Roaring Girl" at the 2011 Blackfriars Colloquy on Women in Performance. She is also active in performing and directing with Capital City Shakespeare, Tallahassee's community Shakespeare company.

Lucy R. Littler completed her PhD. Lucy specializes in twentieth-century American literature with a focus on the meanings of race in contemporary culture. She has been recognized with three consecutive Edward H. and Marie C. Kingsbury Graduate Writing Awards, and her article, "The Implications of 'Chosenness': Unsettling the Exodus Narrative as a Model for Black Liberation in Randall Kenan's A Visitation of Spirits," has been published in The Southern Literary Journal. Lucy has presented her work at various regional and national conferences including SAMLA, NeMLA, CCCCs, and CEA, and in April 2011 she defended her dissertation, American Exodus: Challenging Narratives of Exceptionalism in Twentieth-Century American Literature. Lucy received her BA in English from North Carolina State University in 2002 and her MA in English from Appalachian State University in 2006.

Laci Mattison, a PhD candidate, is currently writing her dissertation, "From Modernism to Transnationality: Virginia Woolf, H.D., Yoko Tawada and Ethical De/territorializations of Subjectivity," in which she argues that language and radical community (that is, an imperceptible community uncontained by categories of nationality, gender, race, and so forth) are integrally related in the writings of Woolf, H.D., and Tawada. In this way, she makes a case for a "trans" theory of Modernism that extends to contemporary transnational writers. Laci is also the recipient of the Edward H. and Marie C. Kingsbury Fellowship Award for the 2010-2011 year and has published multiple times in the selected proceedings from the Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.

Sarah Morrow is a PhD student studying British drama in the long eighteenth century. Her work focuses on staged absence and the connections between literature and the law. She has presented papers at the annual meetings of the South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the College English Association, and the Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society. Her essay entitled "Daddy's Girls (and Boy): Proximate Cause, Social Order, and Aphra Behn's The Rover" is forthcoming in the Sigma Tau Delta Review. Sarah holds degrees and professional certificates from the University of Virginia, Emory University, and Georgia State University.

Madison Natt is a PhD student with an emphasis on 18th and 19th century British literature by women writers. Her research interests include gender studies and queer theory. She received her BA in English and a certificate in journalism from Indiana University and her MA from North Carolina State University.

Scott Ortolano is a doctoral candidate, focusing on 20th century American literature and culture and international Modernism. He is especially interested in personal and communal identity, the inter-war period, and the relationship between mental neuroses, Modernism, and the rise of a consumer culture in America during the first half of the 20th century. He has recently had an article accepted for publication by The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review and presented at a variety of national conferences, including the Modernist Studies Association's national convention, the Faulkner and Yoknaptawpha Conference, the National Council for Black Studies conference, and the American Culture Association/Popular Culture Association's national conference. He received the Edward H. and Marie C. Kingsbury Graduate Writing Award for the 2010-11 academic year and has been the program assistant to the literature program since the 2009-10 academic year.

Lindsey Phillips is a PhD candidate. She specializes in eighteenth-century Caribbean literature and culture, with a particular focus on epidemiology, race, and diet. Her dissertation explores the intersection between diet and labor within the English Atlantic world, specifically examining the function of diet as a metaphor for national and racial identities and the relationship between slavery, consumption, and the emergence of a global market. She has recently presented at national conferences hosted by American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Association. From 2007 until 2011, she has been the recipient of the Harold and Janet Gordon Fellowship, and from 2008 until 2010, she assisted Dr. Cristobal Silva as editor of The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation. She received a BA in English from Georgia Southwestern State University and an MA in English from Florida State University.

Jessica Pitts is a PhD student with a focus on medieval British literature and gender studies. Her research interests include gender and sexual politics; applications of queer theory to medieval literature; Arthurian legends and the subversion of patriarchal chivalric space; representations of women in Middle English language and literature. She earned her BA and MA at Florida Atlantic University and has presented at The Northern Plains Conference on Early British Literature and the Florida College English Association, as well as at several graduate student conferences at FAU.

Liz Polcha is an MA student focusing on gender studies, postcolonial theory, and transatlantic literature. She received her BA magna cum laude from the University of Tulsa in 2010, where she also received the Chair's Prize in English and the First Annual Women's and Gender Studies Outstanding Senior Award. She is currently working on a project on Gloria Naylor and Erna Brodber, serves on the First Year Composition Committee, and acts as an elected member of the Graduate English Advocacy Resource.

Nick Sandles is an MA student in Literature, but is not new to Tallahassee. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Applied Economics in 2001 and his Bachelor of Arts in Literature in April 2011 at FSU. His area of concentration is in colonial, postcolonial, and transnational literary and cultural studies. His current interests include portrayals of Satan in late 20th century literature and themes of self-enlightenment in the works of Central European authors. Lately, he has been researching James Joyce's short story, "The Dead."

Deborah C. Solomon is a PhD candidate studying early modern British literary and cultural studies. She is currently mapping the poetics of the early modern garden, in particular how the major aesthetic debates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (art/nature, profit/pleasure, and the paragone) take shape from the common topoi of poems and gardens. Deborah has authored several book chapters, co-edited Ben Jonson's Major Plays: Summaries of Modern Monographs and has been published in Modern Philology and Sixty-Six: The Journal of Sonnet Studies. Her awards include the 2010 George M. Harper Graduate Award for Outstanding Critical Writing at FSU and first place in the Auburn University Montgomery Graduate Essay Contest, 2000-2002 and 2005-2006. Deborah holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Master of Liberal Arts in English from Auburn University at Montgomery.

Stacey Suver is a doctoral candidate. His studies are currently focused on 20th century American literature, including Modernism and postmodernism. His areas of interest include consumer culture, national identity and American expatriatism during the second half of the twentieth century. He received a BA in literature from the University of South Florida and an MA in American literature from Florida State University.

Sarah Unruh is a PhD candidate. Her studies focus on illness, the body, and ecocriticism in early nineteenth-century Britain. She recently presented a paper "Corpses, Tombs, and Sepulchral Breakfasts: Emergent Cemetery Culture and Dark Ecology in Liber Amoris" at the Nineteenth Century Studies Association Conference in Milwaukee in March 2009. Her dissertation, "'Something Fouler than the Earth': Nature, Death and the Body in Romantic Literature," was defended in April of 2011. She has received the Ryburn Fellowship for each year of her doctoral degree. She received a BA in English from Flagler College and an MA in Romanticism from the University of Bristol, England.

Andrew Walker is a doctoral candidate, specializing in post-1900 literature and Modernism. His interests are, primarily, focused on American poetry, southern literature, critical theory, and religion and literature. A portion of his master's thesis, "Miming the Poem: Influence and Imitation in Robert Lowell's Poetic," was presented at the 2010 conference for Literature and Belief, and he presented his paper "Impoverished Vistas: Walt Whitman and Post-Bellum Autonomy and Culture" at the annual College English Association conference. He received his MA in English from Liberty University in 2011.

Aimee Wilson is a doctoral candidate studying twentieth century transatlantic fiction and gender studies. Her dissertation explores the intersection of modernist literature and the birth control movement. Aimee's review of Adrian Parr's Hijacking Sustainability recently appeared in Symploke, and her critical essay "Under the Guise of Tradition: Female Circumcision and Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'" is published in the fourth and fifth editions of Making Literature Matter. Aimee recently assisted Dr. Timothy Parrish on the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to American Novelists. She has presented papers at national and regional conferences, including "The Anxiety of Inception: Gothic Conceptions in Modernist Fiction" at the Modernist Studies Association Conference. Aimee holds an MA in English from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, a BA in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has studied at the University of Sevilla in Sevilla, Spain.

Yeonjeong Yun is a PhD candidate studying critical theory, cultural studies, postcolonialism, and science fiction, with a particular emphasis in the antagonism and resistance in Antonio Negri's work as they apply to literature. Yeonjeong completed an MA at Dongguk University, Republic of Korea.