Department of English

First-Year Students

Kate Allen graduated summa cum laude from The College of William and Mary in 2012, earning a B.A. in English and Music. She received Honors from the English Department for her senior thesis, which analyzed the role of music in select Shakespearean works, and she was awarded membership into Phi Beta Kappa. Her research interests primarily include drama, performance studies, and the teaching of writing. She is excited to work as a Graduate Writing Associate this year and hopes to go on to pursue a career in teaching.

Clara Ennist graduated magna cum laude from Fordham University in 2012 with her B.A. in English and Political Science, and a minor in Latin American/Latino Studies. Her undergraduate research focused on American Orientalism prior to WWII. As a first-year English MA student, she is looking forward to continuing this research as well as expanding her interests in critical theory and politics.

Mallory Findlay was born and raised in Atlanta, and graduated from Emory University in 2008 with a BA in English. She then spent several years in Frederick, Maryland teaching high school English, but is ready to resume the student role at Georgetown. Mallory’s research interests include Southern literature (especially the works of Faulkner, Percy, McCullers, Welty, and O’Connor) and trauma theory, as well as questions of madness, marginalization, memory, history, and temporality.

Matt Gorgans graduated from Mercer University in 2012 with a degree in English and a secondary education teaching certificate. His senior honors thesis explored literary mash-ups such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies through the lenses of postmodern and gender theories. His primary research interest is the Victorian novel and its enduring presence in today's literature. After completing the MA program, Matt plans to pursue a career teaching high school English. He is excited to be a first-year MA student and Graduate Writing Associate this year.

Emma Graner graduated from Carleton College with a B.A. in political science. She then earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School and practiced in the areas of family law and estate planning before deciding to shift careers. Her interests currently include pedagogy and nineteenth-century British literature. This year, she is very pleased to serve as a Graduate Writing Assistant in the School of Continuing Studies.

Samantha Groark graduated from Xavier University in 2012 with an honors B.A. in English and minors in History, Peace Studies, and Gender & Diversity Studies. She is mainly interested in how 20th century texts reveal economic and social realities, particularly how Cold War era texts produce ideology and represent power or subversion. Her undergraduate thesis, advised by Dr, Ernest Fontana, examines the influence of different translations of Emerson on a 20th century Italian political thinkers. In her first year at Georgetown, Samantha will serve as the 2012-2013 Writing Program Coordinator.

Sara Hildreth is a first-year student in the English graduate program as well as a CNDLS fellow. She obtained her BA from Colorado College with a major in English and a minor in philosophy. After graduating Sara taught at an alternative independent middle school while completing an MA in Educational Psychology at the University of Colorado. Her current interests include psychoanalytic theory, poetry, and questions of identity.

Anne Jefferson graduated summa cum laude from Kalamazoo College where she majored in English and Spanish. She is especially interested in nineteenth-century British literature, gender identity and identity formation, and the orphan protagonist as narrator. After completing the MA in English at Georgetown, Anne hopes to continue on to a PhD program and pursue a career in teaching literature.

Christina LaBarge graduated in May 2012 from the University of Notre Dame with a B.A. in the Program of Liberal Studies, an interdisciplinary Great Books major. She wrote her senior thesis about the presence of poetry in Virginia Woolf's novel "To the Lighthouse". She is finding it hard to narrow her interests, but is intrigued by modern and postmodern literature, narrative and storytelling, poetry, and the novels of David Mitchell.

Jen Nguyen, a first-year graduate student and proud native Texan, graduated from Georgetown University in 2009 with a BA in the English Honors Program. She is excited to be a returning Hoya after spending three years in San Francisco, California, where she was a College Counselor for first-generation, underserved high school students at a Bay Area high school and a Board Member/Chair of the oldest LGBTQ Youth organization in the country. She is interested in literature of movement (vague, purposefully), creative non-fiction, ethnic studies and theories in composition and rhetoric, along with beer, making fancy lemonades, long-distance running, trivia, and jumping onto popular culture bandwagons.

Naoki Okada, a first-year MA student, graduated from Waseda University in Japan where he majored in linguistics. He was interested in literature as well and assiduously attended the reading study-group. He read a variety of literary works from the classics to some of the most celebrated modern selections. He also enjoys reading philosophical essays. He was also a high school teacher in Japan, and hopes to pursue a career in teaching after completing the MA program.

Jennifer Sharp graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in 2011, where she studied Political Science and English. After graduation, she spent a year working as an intern at the Airborne & Special Operations Museum in her hometown of Fayetteville, NC, and gained a deep appreciation for the Veterans’ community as a result. Her responsibilities at the museum included researching, writing, and editing artifact labels and designing a focus exhibit with her fellow interns. Her research interests at Georgetown include Medieval Literature, gender studies, and cultural studies.

Isabel Silva graduated Summa Cum Laude from King’s College in 2012 with a degree in Professional Writing, English Literature, and Spanish. While at King’s she sang in the choir and worked as a resident assistant and Spanish tutor. Her current interests include 20th century American literature, linguistics, and Spanish language and literature. After receiving her Master’s from Georgetown she hopes to continue on to a PhD program and pursue a career in teaching.

Maria Spiegel is a first-year graduate student and Graduate Writing Associate. She earned her B.A. in English from Yale, where she composed two senior essays: one on Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, the other on contemporary South Asian fiction. Her current interests include global fiction and composition studies.

Heather Stang graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 2011 with highest distinction. She earned her BA in English and Communication Studies with a minor in Journalism. Her undergraduate research focused on fragmented narratives in postmodern media coverage as well as an emerging post-postmodern trend in literature. As a first-year MA student, she hopes to continue her research in contemporary American and British literature and critical theory.

Sara Dabney Tisdale, the first-year Lannan Graduate Associate, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Virginia with majors in English Literature and Religious Studies and a minor in Drama. Since then, she has worked as a writer, reporter, and editor in the fields of magazine and nonprofit journalism, including stints at The Atlantic Monthly, U.S. News & World Report, Publishers Weekly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and regional alternative weeklies. Sara also harbors a passion for acting, and has studied and performed frequently with local D.C. theaters. She hopes to combine her interests at Georgetown by researching early modern and possibly contemporary English drama through the lens of performance studies.

Maria Vrcek graduated magna cum laude with a BA in English from Rice University in Houston, Texas in 2012. With help from theorists from Bodin to Derrida, she completed a senior thesis titled, "Transforming Sovereignties in Shakespeare's Romances," which explored what it means to be (a) sovereign, the importance of a sovereign to the concept of sovereignty, and what happens to sovereignty when the titled sovereign is somehow absent or incapacitated. Maria is excited to join Georgetown's MA program to continue studying Early Modern drama and literary theory, but is looking forward to enjoyable detours into other periods and genres as well. She is equally thrilled to be teaching and learning as a Graduate Writing Associate. After completing the MA, she plans to continue on to a PhD program with the hope of becoming a professor.

Whitney Williams is a first-year teaching assistant in the Community Scholars Program at Georgetown University. Her primary research interest is literary modernism, specifically the work of T. S. Eliot. She is also interested in William Faulker and Gabriel García Márquez. Whitney is originally from Birmingham, Alabama, where she attended Birmingham-Southern College.

Robert Lee Wolfe III graduated in the spring of 2012 from the University of Maryland at College Park with a B.A. in English, where he lived in the Jimenez-Porter Writers' House during his junior and senior years. He received a University Honors Citation and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honors Society. His research interests include Print Culture, Gender Studies, and 19th Century American Literature. Robert is excited to serve as a CNDLS fellow this year.

Aysegul Yildiz is from Turkey. She graduated from Fatih University in Istanbul with a BA in English Language and Literature. She taught English as a foreign language to university students in Turkey for two years. Her research interests include gender studies, orientalism, and postcolonial theory.

Kate Zavack graduated with honors from UC Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in English. Her primary interests lie in Late Victorian literature and British and Irish Modernism. She hopes to enter a doctoral program upon completing her master's degree at Georgetown.

Second-Year Students

Annalisa Adams graduated magna cum laude from James Madison University with a BA in English. Her research interests include queer theory, gender studies, and eighteenth-century British literature. She is excited to work as a Writing Associate this fall and, after completing studies at Georgetown, hopes to continue to a PhD program.

Katherine Brandwood is a second-year student in the English MA program. Her research interests include the language and ritual of commemoration in 19th-century British fiction, and she hopes to teach high school after completing her MA. Katherine graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 2009 with an A.B. in English, and she is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After graduation, she worked for two years in admissions and international recruitment for the American University in Cairo. She is so excited to be joining the English MAs at Georgetown!

Meghan Brinson earned a BA from the College of Charleston in 2005, where her honors thesis explored images of violence and cannibalism in the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, Rita Dove, and Sylvia Plath. She participated in the Western Michigan Unversity's Prague Summer Program poetry workshops before continuing on to Arizona State University. Meghan recieved her Master of Fine Arts from Arizona State in poetry in 2008. She has published two chapbooks, Fragrant Inferno and Broken Plums on the Sidewalk, and has had poems appear in Copper Nickel, Puerto del Sol, Gulf Coast, The Greensboro Review and others. Her interests are contemporary poetry, women's poetry, images of violence in the literature of contested identities, and critiques of mimesis in imagist/contemporary poetry. Meghan's current creative project investigates theoretical physics and ekphrasis.

Paul DeLeon graduated from the United States Military Academy in 2003, where he majored in English and Electrical Engineering. He has since served in the Army as an Infantry Officer, and recently returned from a year-long deployment to Afghanistan. His interests include writing pedagogy, twentieth century American authors, and the literature of war. After graduating from Georgetown he will have the honor of teaching English to first and second year USMA students.

Benjamin Desmond graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 2007 where he majored in English. He has spent the last four years serving as the First Lieutenant and Navigator aboard the USS LAKE ERIE (CG 70) out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. His interests include 18th and 19th Century Irish Poetry, but his studies will focus on preparing him for his return to the Naval Academy, where he will become a member of the English Department Faculty.

Abbey Dewey graduated from SMU in Dallas, Texas in 2010. She studied English, Journalism and Human Rights. She enjoys traveling and working with students and spent the recent summer living and working in Switzerland. One of her favorite aspects of studying literature is discovering a text in the location about which it was written. Having studied in Texas and New Mexico, she is interested in Chicano/a Literature and Latino/a Literature. She is also interested in working with children in composition and creative writing.

Gina Dominick is a second-year student and Graduate Writing Associate. She graduated summa cum laude from Washington & Jefferson College in 2010, receiving a B.A. in English and Spanish with a Concentration in Professional Writing. Gina hopes to pursue a doctorate in English after completing her M.A., specializing in medieval literature. Her research interests include medieval British literature (especially in the context of fourteenth century religious conflict), Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and ancient and medieval philosophy. She is also hoping to expand into medieval Spanish texts while at Georgetown. When not stuck in the Dark Ages, Gina dabbles in Latin American studies and literature and completed an independent study while at W&J on Mexico’s drug wars.

Colin Dwyer graduated summa cum laude from the University of Southern California in 2011, earning a B.A. in English literature with a concentration in creative writing and a minor in International Relations. As an undergraduate, he focused his English honors thesis on semiotic theory in children's literature. In his first year at Georgetown, Colin will serve as the 2011-2012 Lannan Graduate Student Fellow. Though his interests remain broad at this point, he is currently most excited to pursue studies of the postmodern novel.

Marie Franco, a native of San Francisco, graduated summa cum laude from West Virginia Wesleyan College with a degree in English and a concentration in Creative Writing. While at WVWC Marie served as editor for the college’s literary magazine. Her current research interests include experimental narrative technique in the Modernist and Postmodernist novel, culturally transgressive literature, and American maritime literature.

Jane Funk graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University, where she majored in Comparative Literature with a minor in Italian. She is particularly interested (currently) in poetry, questions of literature and place, and science fiction.

Christie Genochio earned her BA in English from Santa Clara University in 2006, and during that time spent a year studying abroad at Oxford University. Inspired by her experience, she returned to Santa Clara to work on a fellowship-funded thesis examining postcolonial theory in British theatre and children's literature. She spent the next two years teaching high school English in Baltimore as a Teach for America corps member while completing an MA in Teaching at The Johns Hopkins University. Christie then spent two years working in Communications for The Walt Disney Company in California. Her interests include American and British literature (1920-1950), children's literature, portraits of the city, magic realism, irony, dinosaurs, running marathons, J.D. Salinger, seersucker, and trees. It is her intention to complete her MA in English at Georgetown and then continue to pursue a Ph.D. and an academic life filled bicycle baskets and books with those little pre-attached bookmark ribbons.

Shea Kinser graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in English in 2009. Since graduating, Shea has worked as an instructor for educational enrichment programs in Washington, DC. Most recently, she taught English as a second language to high school students in Chile. Shea hopes to pursue a career in teaching after completing the MA program.

Greta Knapp graduated with an Honors B.A. in English and Journalism from the University of Delaware in 2006. She has worked as a reporter for several newspapers and, most recently, as a communications specialist for a large charitable foundation in Phoenix, Arizona. She is principally interested in researching nineteenth-century American literature with a focus on gender studies and questions of individual and community identity.

Tarra Kohli graduated from the University of Virginia in 2007 with a double major in History and Politics concentrating in Eastern Europe, and a minor in Religious Studies with a focus on Judeo-Christian foundations. After working at the World Bank for over four years on quantitative analysis and knowledge management, she is now working at RAND Corporation on development portfolio management and evaluations. Her thesis research is on the partition subject and subjectivity in silence.

Danbee Moon is a second-year student in the English MA program. In 2010, she graduated from Yonsei University in South Korea with a BA in Comparative Literature and Culture. Her undergraduate thesis explored the heroines of Bram Stoker's Dracula and Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market. After graduation, she worked as a news assistant at Reuters in Seoul. Her current interests include 19th-century British literature, gender studies, contemporary literature, and past and present influences of translated literary works.

Eurae Muhn graduated from Georgetown University in 2005 with a BA in English. After graduation, she joined the Teach for America program and taught middle school English in the Watts neighborhood of inner city Los Angeles. She then moved back to the DC area, where she is also from, and continued her work in education by teaching at a charter school in Southeast and also creating a retention program for a local college access organization. Eurae is thrilled to join the Georgetown community again and serve as a Graduate Writing Associate this year.

Susannah Nadler graduated from Wesleyan University, where she was awarded honors in English Literature and membership to Phi Beta Kappa. Her undergraduate honors thesis explored the rise of the novel in 18th- and 19th-century Britain. In addition to Romantic and Victorian literature, she also has an enduring interest in the ways that reading and writing shape society. For the past five years, Susannah has been teaching and designing curricula for youth; she plans to be an English teacher. She is excited to be a first-year MA student and CNDLS fellow this year.

Ann Parks earned a B.A. in English and French from Bucknell University and a J.D. from the University of Baltimore School of Law. She spent four years as the assistant legal editor of The Daily Record in Baltimore before joining the communications department at Georgetown Law in 2007. She writes mystery novels in her nonexistent spare time, published a “short-short” story in a national competition collection in 2010 and spent two weeks in June 2011 on a creative writing program in Montreal. Her favorite authors include Charlotte Brontë and Wilkie Collins, and she is looking forward to exploring any and all aspects of 19th-century British literature.

Supriya Sharma is a second-year Master’s student and Graduate Writing Associate. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 2010 with a double major in English and Politics, and in July of that year helped establish a writing center for graduate students of English in her hometown of Kathmandu, Nepal. Supriya is interested in rhetorical and composition theories, and is drawn to the study of narrative voice, identity and subjectivity in women’s writing.

Lee Stablein graduated cum laude from The College of Wooster in 2009 where he earned a BA in English Literature. During his senior year at Wooster, Lee completed a thesis entitled "If You Love the Self, Fashion the Self: An Investigation of Early Modern Self-hood Through the Works of Shakespeare”; in the course of completing this project he received a small grant to do original research at the Newberry Library in Chicago. His senior thesis reflects his interests in Renaissance and Medieval Literature and issues of identity, though he is also interested in horror and pulp fiction and the description of fear and the scary through time.

Dominique Swann graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in English and philosophy. Shortly after she decided to remain a Tutor at the University’s Writing Center. African American literature and the art of slave narratives--including (neo)slave narratives--define her interests. More specifically, she’s interested in non-traditional, contemporary African American literature--especially, women writers including Zelda Lockhart, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Bernice L. McFadden, Heidi Durrow, and Danielle Evans. Day-to-day she finds her Community Scholars students inspiring.

Ashley Terletzky graduated magna cum laude from New York University in 2006 with a double major in Journalism and Metropolitan Studies. Ashley worked in non-profit communications for a year before becoming an English teacher in Millburn, NJ, where she taught AP Language and Composition, English 9, Fiction Writing and Expository Writing while earning her MA in Education. Ashley is interested in issues of setting, gender, truth and performativity in contemporary literary non-fiction.

Carolyn Wakulchik graduated from Bucknell University in 2007 with honors in English, concentrating in Creative Writing while double majoring in Political Science. Her undergraduate thesis examined lyrical “stopping” in Modern lyrical poetry, and she plans to continue studying poetry and lyrical prose. She is particularly interested in gendered consciousness, narratives, and temporality. After graduating from Bucknell, Carolyn taught English for three years in Bethesda.

Daniele Yandel is a second-year English M.A. student and CNDLS fellow. She graduated in 2008 from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study with a concentration in critical science and technologies studies with a strong foundation in anthropology and literary theory. She spent 3 years in Brooklyn working on urban, greening initiatives in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Her interest is studying the contemporary discourse surrounding climate change and environmental activism via the ideas of philosophers like Michel Foucault, Thomas Kuhn, and Donna Haraway.