91����

Graduate English Students

---

• Samia Ahmed, PhD Student

  

  Samia is originally from Bhopal, India but now lives in New York where she is enrolled in the PhD creative writing program at 91����. Her work can be found in The Kenyon Review, Coffin Bell Journal, deLuge Literary and Arts Journal, Bluestem Magazine and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Old Dominion University. 

  Research Interests:

  Contemporary Fiction, Postcolonial Studies, Eco-criticism, Historical Fiction, Gender Studies, Translation.

  Publications:

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  Honors and Awards:

  “Bhopal, 1984” Honorable Mention AWP Intro Journal Award 2021, judged by Mary Grimm
  “When They Came For Us” Honorable Mention Jerri Dickseski Fiction Prize, judged by Janet Peery
  “A Cup of Chai and Never After” Nominated for Best of Net Anthology, Sundress Publication
  “Ars Poetica” Finalist 2018-19 ODU College Poetry Prize organized by the Academy of American Poets, judged by Ilya Kaminsky 
  Provost’s Doctoral Summer Fellowship, this distinguished Fellowship is given to a select number of students in recognition of their clear academic potential to do exceptionally high-caliber graduate work
  Graduate Teaching Assistantship, Department of English, General Literature and Rhetoric, 91���� ($17,000)
  David Scott Sutelan Memorial Scholarship for exceptional merit
  The Sutelan Scholarship was established in 1995 and is awarded annually to one or two final-year MFA students who demonstrate exceptional merit
  SEES Graduate Travel Award ($500)
  Graduate Teaching Assistantship, College of Arts & Letters, Department of English, Old Dominion University ($10,000)

  
  Education:

  MFA (fiction)- Department of English, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, 2021 
  Thesis: When They Came for Us, stories
  Thesis Advisor: Kent Wascom
  Committee Members: John McManus, Benjamin Kingsley
  M.J. (Masters in Journalism) Department of Journalism, Makhanlal Chaturvedi National
  University, Bhopal, India, 2017
  B.A. Honors-Department of Economics, Institute for Excellence in Higher Education, Bhopal, India, 2015
  Major- Economics, Minor- English Literature

• Areej AlQowaifly, PhD Student

  

  Areej is a doctoral candidate in English Literature. Her dissertation centers around the intricate relationship between narrative, ethics, and memory. She focuses on the emerging field of Narrative Ethics, delving into how narratives convey, challenge, or reinforce ethical values. Informed by disciplines such as psychology and psychoanalysis, she investigates the concept of "memory narrative," which explores how memories are interpreted, constructed, and shared. By examining the interplay between memory, narrative, and ethics, Areej seeks to illuminate the complexities of human experience and contribute to a deeper understanding of identity, culture, and historical understanding.

  
  Advisor

  Dr. Jeffner Allen

  
  Research Areas

  Modern/postmodern global Literature, Narrative, Memory studies, Ethical theory, Kafka.

  
  Education

  Masters of Arts in English Literature, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS

  Bachelor of Arts in English, and a minor in Education, UQU, Makkah, SA

• Roudri Bandyopadhyay, PhD Student

  

  Roudri Bandyopadhyay is a creative writing nonfiction graduate who completed her MFA from Virginia and is now a part of the 91���� to pursue her PhD in the same field. As a writer, she is greatly inclined to write about real-world women and their stories, all intertwined with age old beliefs, traditions, rituals, and often texts from the ancient Indian literature that has shaped the minds of so many. Her interests further dwells into unfolding intergenerational trauma, displacement, and the effects of colonialism in a post colonial world.

  
  Advisor

  Susan Strehle

  
  Research Areas

  Post colonial literature and South Asian feminism

  
  Publications, Conferences, Etc.,

  
  Education

  MFA in Creative Writing Nonfiction

• Claire Beaver, PhD Student
  Claire Beaver is a multidisciplinary writer living and working in New York. Her work has been featured in sans. press, Last Leaves Magazine, and more. Her first poetry chapbook, bones, ashes, fire, was released from Bottlecap Press in 2023. She earned an M. Phil in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin.

• Alycia Calvert, PhD Student

  

  Alycia Calvert is a 3rd year Fiction PhD. She graduated with MFA in Fiction Creative Writing from UNLV in 2022. She was recently shortlisted for the Writer's Rebel Flash Fiction Competition. She has a weakness for a small indy journal and her work has been featured in several including, The Hunger Journal, The Banshee, Pyre Magazine etc... You can find her work at

  Research Interests:

  Feminism, Monstrosity, Modern Literature, Flash Fiction, French Translation, Narrative Structure, 

  Advisor:

  Claire Luchette

  Publications:

  Arquetopia Foundation and International: Resident 

  Shifting Tides Anxious Borders: Presenter 

  Maison Verte Résidence d’Artiste: Artist in Residence 

  Black Mountain Institute Festival: Wave in: Presenter

  “A.I.Daptation” and "Nesting Garden" shortlisted for the Extinction Rebellion: Writers Rebel Flash Fiction Competition, May 2024.

  “Mama Paula’s Baby Jam.” The Banshee Journal Issue 3, February 2024

  “Unboxing Day.” Pyre Magazine, January 2024

  “Woodpecker House Guest” Flash Flood National Flash Fiction Day, June 2023.

  “No Drought of Sound in the Desert.” Double Down with Nevada Humanities, October 2022. 

  
  Education:

  Master of Fine Arts— Creative Writing
  Department of English 
  College of Liberal Arts
  Graduate College
  University of Nevada, Las Vegas
  December 2022

• Lisa Compo, PhD Student

  

  Lisa Compo has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Colorado Review, EPOCH, Arts & Letters, Chicago Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is a PhD student in SUNY 91����’s creative writing program and obtained her MFA from UNC – Greensboro. She has received several nominations for the Pushcart award and Best of the Net. She is the Social Media Manager for the literary magazines Harpur Palate and The Shore. 

  Research Interests:

  Poetry, Poetry of Place

  Education

  MFA from University of North Carolina at Greensboro

• Sam Corradetti, PhD Student

  Sam Corradetti’s work has been supported by Mississippi Review, The Fabulist, Fourteen Hills, Folklore Review, the Rin Kelly scholarship for speculative fiction, the American Boccaccio Association’s Giuseppe Velli Creative Prize, the Yellow Door fellowship at Prospect Street Writers House, a Bookends fellowship at the Lichtenstein Center of Stony Brook University, and others. Sam received an MFA from Temple University and is currently a PhD candidate in English at 91����.

  
  Research Areas

  Short fiction, speculative fiction, hybrid & experimental form, myth & folklore, queer narratives, multiethnic literature, medieval studies

  
  Education

  MFA, Creative Writing - Fiction, Temple University

  MS, International Marketing, Saint Joseph's University

  BS, Italian, Saint Joseph's University

• Samantha Covais, PhD Student

  Sam's academic research focuses primarily on masculinity and philia in 20th and 21st century American literature with a concentration on the works of John Steinbeck. She is also interested in the intersection of philosophy, theology, and literature. When she's not on campus, you can find her running, hiking, or cheering on the Phillies and the Mavericks!

  
  Research Areas:

  20th and 21st century American literature; masculinity studies

  
  Publications, Conferences, Etc.:

  Presentations at NeMLA, the International Steinbeck Conference, SEPCHE, John R. Milton Writers’ Conference, PAMLA, NEPCA;

  Publications in the Steinbeck Review, CONCEPT, and the Hemingway Review;

  
  Education:

  Chestnut Hill College, BA; Villanova University, MA;

• Derek Ellis, PhD Student
  

  DEREK ELLIS is a writer from rural Kentucky. He is currently a PhD candidate at 91���� University. He holds a BA in English Literature from Western Kentucky University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. His work has appeared in Five Points: A Journal of Literature and Art, Prairie Schooner, Action Spectacle, BODY, and Leavings Literature Magazine.

  
  Advisor:

  Tina Chang

  
  Research Areas:

  Creative Writing and mid 20th Century American Literature

  
  Publications, Conferences, Etc.:

  Poem -

  
  2 Poems -

  
  Poem:  

  
  Poem:  

  
  3 Poems -

  
  Education:

  B.A. in English Literature - Western Kentucky University (2015) 

  M.F.A. in Creative Writing - University of Maryland, College Park (2019)

• Ella Flores, PhD Student

  Ella Flores is a first year Ph.D. candidate in poetry at 91���� and received an MFA from Northern Michigan University.

  
  Advisor:

  Susan Strehle

  
  Research Areas:

  Poetry, History of the Americas, Paleoanthropology, Linguistics

  
  Publications, Conferences, etc.:

  Summerset Review, South Caroline Review, Willow Springs, RHINO and others. 

  
  Education

  BA from Salisbury University, MFA from Northern Michigan University

• Lena Gemmer, PhD Student

  Lena N. Gemmer is a multimedia artist originally from the quiet foggy town of Montara CA. She received her BA in English and History from Allegheny College in Meadville PA, and her MFA in Writing from University of New Hampshire. Her work has been published in Wild Roof Journal, Burningword Literary Journal, The Bangalore Review, among others. When she is not in graduate school pursuing a PhD in English CW at SUNY 91����, you can find her taking photographs or scolding her Norwegian Forest cat Mitchy.

  Research Areas:

  hybrid memoir, creative writing pedagogy, nonlinear narrative

  Advisor:

  Alexi Zentner

  Selected Publications

  
  Photography: “The Edges of a Storm” Changing Skies: Hindsight Literary Journal, forthcoming. 

  Collaboration Multimedia Art: “Manifold,” If We: Connections Through Creative Process, Wild Roof Journal, August 2024. 

  Fiction: “Under the Oak Tree,” Bardics Anonymous, Issue #2 (forthcoming)

  Fiction: “Kitchen Cabinets,” Bardics Anonymous, Issue #2 (forthcoming)

  Fiction: “Amanda,” Bardics Anonymous, Issue #2, (forthcoming)

  Contributor Essay: “How My Cat Became My Muse in Flash Fiction,” Wild Roof Journal, June 2024 

  Creative Nonfiction: “Dinosaurs Before Dark,” The Bangalore Review, May 2023. 
   May 2023 Young Dawkins III Prize, English Department, University of New Hampshire 

  Awards

  
  2022-2023 Full Tuition Teaching Assistantship, English Department, University of New Hampshire

  
  2021-2022 Half Tuition Scholarship, English Department, University of New Hampshire

  
  Spring 2017    Sigma Tau Delta, National English Honors Society, Allegheny College 

  Education 

  
   2024 - 2028: SUNY 91����, English Department, English CW PhD Candidate

  
  2021- 2023:  University of New Hampshire, English Department, MFA in Writing

  
  2016 - 2020 Allegheny College, English & History Department, English & History B.A. 

• Joseph Heiland, PhD Student

  Joseph is a first-year PhD student at 91����, where he studies English and creative writing. He holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. His work has appeared in Lumina Journal, Eastern Iowa Review, and Reed Magazine

  Research Areas

  Narrative, Form, Cultural Studies, Film & Media Studies  

  Education

  BA, Ithaca College; MFA, Sarah Lawrence College

• Kaustav Mitra, PhD Student

  

  Kaustav Mitra is a PhD student in English at 91���� (State University of New York). His research explores the intersections of postcolonial literature, feminist theory, and histories of Orientalism, focusing on how literary and cultural forms negotiate identity and selfhood under colonial modernity. He is especially interested in questions of displacement, modernity, and the negotiation of home and world in travel narratives and transnational encounters. He thinks and writes between Kolkata and New York, sharing his spaces (and chairs) with two cats.

  
  Research interests:

  Orientalisms; postcolonial theory; history of the novel; cultural studies; comparative literature; global modernisms;

  Honors and Awards:

  First in Academic Performance, Recipient of Gold Medal; and Prof. Gopal Halder Memorial Medal, Jadavpur University, 2024.
  Runner-up for M.A. Award for Student Performance and Thesis, Ashoka University, 2022.

  Education:

  M.A. in Comparative Literature (conc. Latin American Literatures), Jadavpur University, 2024
  M.A. in English (conc. Modern Literature and Culture), Ashoka University, 2022. 

• Grace Miller, PhD Student

  Grace is from Rochester, NY. While attending Nazareth College, she studied at Université Rennes 2 and Universidad Católica de Valencia San Vicente Mártir. She received her MA in 2021 from 91���� in Comparative Literature. 

  Research:

  Historical Amnesia, Native American Literature, Postcolonial Theory, Trauma Studies, Intergenerational Trauma, US Imperialism, American Pluralism

  Publications:

   

  
  Education:

  M.A., Comparative Literature, 91���� 
  B.A., French Language and Literature with minor in History, Nazareth College 2019
  B.A., Spanish Language and Literature with minor in Psychology, Nazareth College 2019

• Jennifer Powers, PhD Student

  

  Jenn Powers is a writer and artist from New England. She’s currently at work on a mystery thriller novel and a poetry collection. She has over 70+ publications in literary journals, such as Witness, Gemini, Lunch Ticket, Prime Number, and The Pinch, among others. Her work has been anthologized with Kasva Press, Scribes Valley Publishing, and Running Wild Press and nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and The Pushcart Prize. In addition, she is a recipient of the Link Fellowship for Fall 2024 semester. Please visit www.jennpowers.com for more information. 

  Research Interests:

  Gothic Literature, Contemporary Mysteries and Thrillers, and Creative Writing

  Advisor:

  Alexi Zentner

  Publications, Conferences, Etc.,

  Please visit . 

  Honors and Awards:

  Please visit . 

  Education:

  PhD-English Literature and Creative Writing

• Amanda Riccitelli, PhD Student
  Amanda Riccitelli is an English Ph.D. student at 91����. Her research interests include transatlantic literature of the long 19th century and monster fiction. She is especially interested in sea monsters and narratives of the ocean. She received her B.A. and M.A. in English from The College of New Jersey. When she’s not researching, she can be found working on her latest knitting project while watching Star Trek.

• Suzanne Richardson, PhD Student

  Suzanne Richardson earned her MFA at the University of New Mexico. She is a writer living in 91����, New York, and a Ph.D. student in creative writing at SUNY 91����. Her writing has appeared in Bomb Magazine, Gulf Coast, Poet Lore, Florida Review, DIALOGIST, Columbia Journal and New Ohio Review, among others. Find more of her writing at: www-suzannerichardsonwrites.tumblr.com/ 

  
  Research Areas

  Creative Writing: Memoir

• Anthony Saracino, PhD Student

  

  Anthony Saracino is a PhD candidate interested in the intersection of literature, philosophy, and religion. Dr. John Kuhn chairs his dissertation project, which examines Early Modern English translations of Boethius's sixth-century Latin work, The Consolation of Philosophy. His other research interests include mystical theology, particularly as expressed by medieval and Early Modern women; metamodernism; and the work of J.R.R. Tolkien.  

• Hena Sarkar, PhD Student

  Hena is a PhD candidate and is interested in the complicated relationship between dance and masculinity in Indian cinemas from the 1950s through the early 2000s. Her research interrogates how this relationship is mediated by class, caste, industrial relations, and socio-technological processes.

  Advisor

  Monika Mehta

  Honors & Awards

  Public Humanities Fellow with IASH, supported by Humanities NY (2024-2025)

  IASH Doctoral Fellowship (Fall 2026)

  Dissertation-Year Fellowship (Fall 2025)

  Francis Newman Endowment for Research Travel (Fall 2025)

  Harpur Graduate Student Travel Grant (Fall 2025)

  Education

  MA - Jadavpur University (2020)
  BA - Jadavpur University (2018)

• Randy Shelley, PhD Student

  

  Prior to attending 91����, Randy Shelley earned an MFA from Hollins University. His work has appeared in American Literary Review, The Greensboro Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Fiction Southeast, and elsewhere. In 2018, his story collection was a finalist for the C. Michael Curtis Book Prize with Hub City Press. He lives in Syracuse, NY.

• Saloni Shokeen, PhD Student

  

  I am from New Delhi, India. Currently in my third year of PhD at the department of English, SUNY 91����. Prior to being a full time academician, I was a professional Taekwondo athlete. I think my experiences in sports have significantly shaped me as a person today.

  Research Areas

  I am interested in literature's treatment of the environment, especially rivers. Studying rivers as diverse and heterogenous voices, I am curious about their existence at the peak of imperialism and their transformations since then. Along with this, my research area includes areas such as: Epistemological studies, Post-colonial theory, Modern World Literature, Existentialism and Oceanic Studies.

  Advisor

  Dr. Joseph Keith

  Publications, Conferences, Etc.,

  I am currently working on a column and article for the journal Open Rivers and a book chapter for a collection of essays titled The Planetary Subaltern. Also, I have written for environmental blogs like Arcadiana about my river experiences. 

  I have published an essay titled,A Repository of Possibility and Freedom: Reading Arjuna's Existential Crisis through Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety " to Prajñā Vihāra: Journal of Philosophy and Religion.

  Honors & Awards

  Provost Doctoral Fellowship (2022-2026)

  Education

  I finished my Undergrad from Miranda House, University of Delhi (2014-17). Following this I enrolled in my Masters at University of Delhi in 2017 until 2019, college allotted by the department was Miranda House.

• Nimisha Sinha, PhD Student

  

  Nimisha's interests are at the intersection of Environmental Humanities and Human Rights Scholarship. She works on both literary and visual cultures that respond to climate violence and articulate resistance via a claim to rights. She offers classes on 'Cultures of Human Rights,' and 'Climate, Crime and HMRT.' She is the 2024 IASH Public Humanities Fellow, for which she is working in collaboration with environmentalists around 91���� areas to create a storytelling project.

  Research Areas

  Environmental Humanities, Human Rights

  Advisor

  Dr. Alexandra Moore

  Publications, Conferences, Etc.,

  Sinha, Nimisha. “Speculative Fictions for Decolonial Futures.” Studies in Social Justice, vol. 17, no. 3, 3, Oct. 2023, pp. 340–49. journals.library.brocku.ca, https://doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v17i3.4385.

  “Visualizing Climate Violence: The Visual Cultures of Recognition, Witnessing, and Testimony” at the 22nd Annual Meeting of ACLA

  “Reading Generic Disruptions in Contemporary Migration Narratives” at CCNY’s Third Critical Perspectives on Human Rights Conference

  “Visual Technologies of the Climate Migrant, Refugee, and Evacuee” - Special Session at the 2024 MLA Convention, Philadelphia, USA

  “Filmic Non-Spectatorship: A Recent Examination of Boycotts in Bombay Cinema“ at Shifting Tides, Anxious Borders (STAB), Department of English, 91����

  Sinha, Nimisha. “‘I See What I Have Been Dreading’: Witnessing Food and Violence in Waiting for the Barbarians and In the Heart of the Country.” Digital Literature Review, vol. 8, no. 1, 1, Apr. 2021, pp. 27–35. openjournals.bsu.edu, .

  Honors & Awards

  2024: Humanities Center Initiative – Public Humanities Grant (Humanities New York)

  2024: Honored by Services for Students with Disabilities (BU) at Faculty Recognition Event

  2021: Material Visual Worlds Transdisciplinary Area of Excellence Fellowship, 91���� University

  Education

  M.Phil English, University of Hyderabad

  MA English, Jawaharlal Nehru

  BA English, University of Delhi

• Dennis Steiger, PhD Student
  Dennis Steiger is a doctoral student at 91����. He studies Victorian literature, with a particular focus on character and temporal experience in the novel form. He is also interested in the novels of Thomas Hardy, and the sensation novel, including the surrounding cultural events of the 1850s and ’60s in Great Britain. He received an M.A. in Teaching from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and an M.A. in English at 91����, where he wrote a Master’s thesis on anime and the multiplanar camera’s effects through limited cel animation on viewing experiences. 

• Logan Spencer, PhD Student
  Logan Spencer is a first-year PhD student at 91����. They graduated summa cum laude with university honors with BAs in English and History from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a BA in French from Penn State University. They received their MA in Medieval Studies from Western Michigan University. Logan specializes in Old French and Middle English romances and Arthurian literature with a focus on queer and trans readings. They are also interested in ecocriticism, systems of knowledge, and medievalisms. They are a recipient of the 2025-2026 Harpur Summer Research Award.

• Bri Thompson, PhD Student

  

  Bri Thompson is a PhD student in English at 91����, who loves to explore the intersection between the mythical, the medieval, and the modern. Having previously examined the ways that tabletop roleplaying games like D&D function as a participatory neomedievalism, she is looking to expand her research into other cultures and the remnants of their premodern histories that have been passed down into our present. In what little remains of her spare time, Bri writes science fiction / fantasy novels and is a single mother to a copious number of plant children.

• Jordan Traut-Jellad, PhD Student

  

  Jordan Traut-Jellad is a PhD candidate in English studying Women's Material Culture. She was awarded the Francis Newman Endowment for research, Harpur's Edge High-Impact Student Learning Endowment, and the Lieberman grant for her ethnographic fieldwork with women weavers in the Atlas mountains in Morocco.  Notably, her 2026 article " ReMatriating Power from Patriarchy and Colonial Violence: Considering Indigenous Feminist Futures in North America" was published in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies.

  Jordan is the founding editor of The Manuscript: Journal of Taylor Swift Studies (JOTSS), the first double-blind peer reviewed academic journal in the field. For this contribution, she was invited to organize  “Mirror Ball: Reflecting the Interdisciplinary Infrastructure of the Field – A Round Table with JOTSS and The Taylor Swift Bibliography Project” at the 2026 Southwest Popular American Culture Association Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Additionally, in 2025-2026, she served as the President of the English Graduate Organization. 

  Jordan obtained her M.A. in English from Millersville University of Pennsylvania where she specialized in Native American Literature. She has two B.A. degrees in English and Anthropology. She also has global education and leadership experience, earning an Asian Studies certificate from Kansai Gaidai University in Japan, where she participated in a homestay program, and a Central European Studies certificate from Jagiellonian University in Poland. She has led alternative spring break service-learning programs for Penn State (Lakota Nation, SD) and Marywood University (Guatemala). Her M.A. thesis fieldwork took place in Manistee, Michigan with the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians.

  Research Areas

  Indigenous Feminism, Post-Colonial Masculinity, Pluricultural Identity

• Michael Williamson, PhD Student

  

  Michael is from Houston, Texas. He has a cat named Jada. Michael's interests broadly include postcolonial theory and materialist histories in South Asia, Africa, and the United States; the urban; theories of space; migration; cosmopolitanism; the nation; development; globalization; race; gender; means of identity formation and self-fashioning; literary theory; as well as borders and other metonymic and physical sites of power from the mid-twentieth century to our contemporary moment. 

  
  Research Areas

  20th and 21st century Global Literature 

  
  Publications, Conferences, Etc.,

  Creative Work: 

  Between Two Homes: A Novel, Onion River Press, February 2024 

  Journal Articles and Academic Chapters:

  “Criminalizing Movement: Stasis and Mobility in Contemporary Fiction,” The Global South, Special Issue: Incarceration and Resistance, Indiana University. (Fall 2025)

  “Paving the way from Colonialism to Decolonization: Joyce Cary’s Infrastructure and Chinua Achebe’s Counter Representation,” Bandung: Journal of the Global South, Special Issue: Coloniality, (In)Justice, and literature of the Global South, Vol. 12, Issue 3, Brill Academic. (Forthcoming October 2025)

  “In ʿishnā lan nansā wa-lan nusāmiḥ: Transitioning from a Necropolitical Today to a Decolonial Tomorrow,” Cairo Studies in English: Journal of Research in Literature, Linguistics and Translation Studies, Special Issue: Conjuring up Decolonial Alternatives: Subversive Navigations of Transnational Colonialisms, Cairo University. (December 2024)

  “National Belonging and the War on Terror: Islamophobia in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire,” International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies, Special Issue: Conversations on Conviviality and Critical Diversity Studies, Witwatersrand University. (December 2024)

  “Intervals of Impotence: Symbolic Castration as Lynching in Black American Fiction,” Decoding Lynching: Reading of African American and Dalit Literature. Ed Shubhanku Kochar. (Forthcoming, Brill)

  “Textualizing the Muktijuddho: Literary Witnessing and the Bangladesh Genocide,” Marginalities in South Asian Literature: Text, Context, and Theory. Eds Arunima Ray, Karuna Rajeev, and Goutam Karmakar. (Forthcoming)

  “Literary Structural Adjustments: Characters, Form, and Genre in A Fine Balance and Five Star Billionaire,” Reiterating Urbanisms: Staging the City in Literature and Media from the Global South. Eds Subashish Bhattacharjee and Indrajit Mukherjee. (Forthcoming, Bloomsbury Academic)

  “‘For I Can Here Disarm Thee With This Stick’: Magical (In)Abilities and Transitional Economies in The Tempest,” Woke Shakespeare. Ed Ian McCormick. (November 2024)

  
  Education

  M.A. in English, the University of Vermont, 2023

  B.A. in English and History, the University of Houston, 2020

  A.A. in Liberal Arts, Lone Star College, 2016

• Liz Ann Young, PhD Student

  

  Liz Ann Young grew up in Michigan and then spent a few decades bouncing around the country between Washington, Vermont, Montana, and New York. She has worked in dozens of industries to support her poetry habit and has been the poetry editor of Atlas + Alice for almost a decade. She lives on a farm in the woods with lots of animals, her husband, and a few small humans she made. 

  
  Publications, Conferences, Etc.,

  "Saint Barbara" - Autofocus

  "Thinking of My Husband’s Mistress” and “Breakfast”  - Book of Matches 

  “Next to Your Shotgun” - San Pedro River Review 

  “A History Major” - Tinderbox Poetry Journal

  “Her Nails Were Dirty” - CHEST 

  “Vapor Rising” and “Day Lilies” - Big Muddy 

  “Prince Charming” - Black Heart

  “This is the Story of the Scar beneath Your Lip” - Inscape

  “The Day after We Broke Up” - Out of Our

  “Seventy Percent Chance of Storm in Hamilton, NY” - Alehouse

  
  Education

  Michigan State University, BA in English

  Michigan State University, BA in History

  Vermont College of Fine Arts, MFA in Poetry

• Zunaira Yousaf, PhD Student

  

  Zunaira Yousaf is pursuing her PhD in English Literature. She works on postcolonial theory, indigenous literature, and digital humanities. She received the 2023 Graduate Student Excellence Award from 91���� as well as the Public Humanities Grant from Humanities New York. She translated into English the first Sindhi novel, Zeenat, to make indigenous literature accessible to a global audience. She is committed to community engagement and social justice, and actively participates in various literary and academic conferences. When Zunaira is not working she spends time with her three super creative kids.

  
  Research Areas:

  Postcolonial literature, Indigenous literature, Digital Humanities, Decolonization, Environmental Literature

  
  Advisor:

  Birgit Brander Rasmussen

  
  Publications, Conferences, Etc.,: 

  Pakistani New Yorkers (Website):

  Zeenat (translated Mirza Kalich Beg's Sindhi novel Zeenat into English) Jamshoro: University of Sindh Press, 2009.

  Book Review: “American Dream: From Utopia to Nightmare,” International Research Journal of Arts and Humanities, (Vol.36) Jamshoro: University of Sindh, 2008, pp.151-155 

  South Asian Digital Humanities (Seminar organizer and presenter), ACLA, Montreal, Canada

  Postcolonial Digital Humanities (Panel organizer and presenter), MLA, Philadelphia, PA

  “Nostalgia and Refugees in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West,” 54th NeMLA Convention, Niagara Falls, NY.

  “Planetarity” as a Subaltern Perspective: A Study of Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, Forman Christian College University Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan

  “Planetarity in The Hungry Tide”, 50th NeMLA Convention, Washington, DC (March)

  “Nostalgia and Identity in Mohsin Hamid’s Fiction”, 49th NeMLA Convention, Pittsburgh, PA

  “The Precariousness of Muslim Women in Post-9/11 United States: A Study of Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams”, 18th South Asian Literary Association Conference, NYC, NY 

  “A Passage to the United States: A Postcolonial Study of The Reluctant Fundamentalist" 48th NeMLA Convention, Baltimore, MD (March)

  “The Unchanged Imperial Structures: A Study of Forster’s A Passage to India and Hamid’s 

  The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, The Graduate Conference, Comparative Literature Department, University at Buffalo 

   “The Rhetoric of the Repressed: A Study of E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India” 17th Biennial Rhetoric Society of America conference, Atlanta, Georgia (May 2016) 

  “Terror and the Self”, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, Nov. 5-6, 2015

  
  Honors & Awards:

  Dissertation Year Fellowship (Fall 2024)

  Francis Newman Endowment Award for Archival Research in Pakistan

  Graduate Student Excellence Award in Service and Outreach, 91����

  Public Humanities Grant from Humanities New York

  Provost’s Doctoral Summer Fellowship, Department of English, 91����, New York.

  Education:

  PhD Candidate

  MA English (91����)