Department of English

Jessica Beckman
Jessica is a second year student student in the English MA program. In 2007 she graduated from The George Washington University with a double major in English and Art History, and a minor in Dance. This year she is pleased to be working as a Writing Center Graduate Tutor and an assistant to the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Her thesis work will focus on the relationship between balance (stasis) and divine knowledge in Milton's Paradise Lost.

Melissa Bentley
Melissa Bentley graduated in 2008 from Brigham Young University with honors in English. Now a second-year graduate student and Writing Center Associate, she tutors in the Writing Center and remains interested in teaching writing. Her research areas include satire, the eighteenth century novel, Romanticism, the Gothic, and political and revolutionary rhetoric.

Roya Biggie
Roya is a first-year graduate student with a BA in English from St. Mary's College of Maryland. She is interested in portrayals and re-imaginings of the body in both the female bildungsroman and British Renaissance drama. This year, Roya is excited to work as a Writing Center Associate.

Shannon Brigham-Hill
Shannon graduated from Harvard College in 1991, having earned her A.B. in History and Literature. She taught overseas in Nepal before completing a J.D. at Columbia Law School in 1996.  Shannon worked for five years as a lawyer with Legal Services in New York City, representing survivors of domestic violence, and for three years as a Senior Staff Attorney at the Children's Defense Fund in Washington DC before starting her Masters in English at Georgetown University.  Her research interests include African American women's literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, and her orals/thesis focus is on 19th century postbellum narratives of slavery and freedom.

Laura Chasen
Laura is a second-year graduate student and a Graduate Associate at CNDLS.  She graduated from Barnard College in 2005 with a BA in English and Dance.  After college, she worked as an English and Humanities teacher in the New York City public school system and tutored area kids.  Her current research focuses on the intersection of the postcolonial and globalization in African fiction.

Kelly Singleton Dalton
Kelly Singleton is a Georgetown alumnae who graduated in 1998 with a BA in English.  She served as an active duty officer in the U.S. Navy for nine years, flying aircraft-carrier based search-and-rescue helicopters during during Operations ENDURING FREEDOM and IRAQI FREEDOM.  Her academic interests include feminist and gender theory, writing studies, Children's Literature, and Shakespeare--both text and performance.

William Daughtrey
William graduated from the University of Virginia in 2005. He is interested in late Victorian/Early Modernism, especially the works of Virginia Woolf.   

Jennifer Didsbury
Jennifer is a second-year graduate student. She holds her undergraduate degree in English from the University of Virginia. She was also the 2006-2007 Lannan Graduate Student Fellow at Georgetown. Her thesis will focus on a feminist analysis of the intersection of class and gender in the plays of Tennessee Williams. She is currently working full-time for a communications consulting firm.

Steven Erkel
Steven is primarily interested in 19th century British literature, especially as it developed in relation to the emerging cultural movements of imperialism and feminism.  Steven received his B.A. from UCLA, where he graduated with high honors in 2008.

Elizabeth Forney
Elizabeth, a second year student in the English MA program, graduated with honors from The George Washington University in 2006 with a BA in English and a minor in Philosophy.  She spent two years working as a paralegal at a law firm in DC.  Her current research focuses on the gothic child in literature.

Elizabeth Frager
Elizabeth Frager is a first-year student in the English MA program. She received her BA from Southern Connecticut State University, where her most recent topic of research was gendered language in James Joyce's Ulysses.  Her current research interests are based in Ancient and Medieval literature, particularly in the aspect of early Christian subtexts.

Meaghan Fritz
Meaghan is a second-year English MA student at Georgetown. She graduated from Georgia State University in December of 2007 with a double major in English and Spanish Literature. Her main area of interest can be seen in the cultural and literary studies of Nineteenth-Century British literature. She is particularly interested in the novels of Jane Austen, and the historical and sociological implications within them.

Keith Hasperg
Keith Hasperg is a New Hampshire native and 2006 graduate of Skidmore College. Having found his interest in British Romanticism as an undergraduate, he would like to continue to study the relationships among post-Restoration, Romantic, and Victorian poetry, with a specific look at how certain poets’ philosophies were affected by religious belief and rationalism. While at Georgetown, he also hopes to enrich his approach to literature with a firm grounding in literary theory. Keith previously tutored ESL students in English composition and worked as an editorial assistant in the Boston area.

Mark Kraemer
Mark, a Michigan native, graduated from Saginaw Valley State University with a BA in English, and has tutored extensively as an undergraduate peer-tutor. His academic interests include renaissance literature, dystopian fiction, dialogic theory, and teaching writing.

Kristen Lewandowski
Kristen Lewandowski is a second-year M.A. student interested in modernist literature, specifically works about women on the British and American home fronts during World War I. She received her B.A. from Boston College in 2008 and has loved her time at Georgetown.

Gabrielle Matthews
Gabrielle is a second-year student in the graduate program. In 2002 she graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts with a BA in English Literature. The topic of her thesis and her particular area of interest is the impact of swordplay and honor codes on early modern social structure and the portrayal of women in fencing texts and Elizabethan and Jacobean literature. She also enjoys reading and studying the Romantic poets and Walt Whitman.

Tamra Milstein
Tami is a second-year student at Georgetown's English MA program. She was born and raised in the DC metropolitan area, and she earned her BA in English from the University of Maryland in 2006. Her thesis work will focus on 20th Century American immigrant fiction. 

Mathew Moses
Matt is currently a second-year graduate student at Georgetown. He received his BA with highest honors from Michigan State University and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Matt's primary interests are 19th and 20th century British and American Literature, narrative theory, and contemporary drama.

Annie Murphy
Annie graduated magna cum laude from Wake Forest University in 2008 with a BA in English. After graduation, she served as an AmeriCorps volunteer, teaching adult basic education in Washington, DC. She is currently a first-year graduate student in the English MA program and a Writing Center Associate. She is particularly interested in the relationship between literature and social justice, and she hopes to study postcolonial and transnational fiction at Georgetown.

Stacy Nall
Stacy Nall is a second-year student in the English MA program. She is a 2004 graduate of University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she earned an honors degree in English Literature and tutored extensively as an Undergraduate Writing Fellow. Her interests include composition and literacy studies and 19th century British and American literature. She is a Writing Center Associate Fellow with Georgetown's School of Continuing Studies.

Karl O'Hanlon
Karl was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and graduated with a First Class Honours from Queen's University in his hometown. He subsuquently taught in Orleans, France, for a year. His interests include (but are not limited to) Southern literature, Indian writing in English, and Catholic theology and ecclesiology. He has been made a UK Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar, and he is thrilled to be studying at Georgetown University.

Roxanne Rashedi
Roxanne Naseem Rashedi is a first year graduate student.  She received her B.A. in English with Highest Honors from the University of California Berkeley where she conducted a nine month thesis project on eroticism, homoerotiscm, and pedagogy in postcolonial contexts.  Roxanne's primary interests are narrative and pedagogical theory, 20th century British and American literature with a bent towards female writers--particularly Toni Morrison, Virgina Woolf, Antonia White, and many others.  This year, Roxanne is excited to work as a Teaching Assistant in the Communication, Culture, and Technology Program.  While not studying and working, Roxanne teaches Vinyasa Flow yoga at Spiral Flight Yoga and Evolve Yoga in DC.

Scott Rossow
Scott's background and research interests include modern/postmodern American literature, reader-response criticism, narrative theory, and the development of the novel.

Caroline Sidman
Caroline Sidman is a second year student in the English MA program.  She graduated in 2008 from the University of California, Los Angeles with a double major in English and Classical Civilization.  She currently works as an assistant to the Director of Undergraduate Studies and as a Writing Center Graduate Tutor.  Her Masters thesis will take the form of an exploration of Early Modern defamation law and slander within several Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic works.

Michelle Sims
Michelle graduated from Emory University with a BA in English with Honors in 2009. She is interested in Medievalism, particularly the Late Middle Ages. She is especially interested in examining Chaucer in comparison to his source works, as well as researching the historical roles of women in relation to how they are portrayed in literature.

Roxanne Smith
Roxie Smith graduated from Centenary College of Louisiana in Shreveport with two degrees: one in English with minors in Gender Studies and Religion, and the other in French with a minor in Professional Writing.  After two years working in Marketing in DC, she is a first-year graduate student at Georgetown whose research interests primarily focus on the voice of contemporary American subcultures and minorities.

Kara Spencer
Kara is a second-year M.A. student.  Originally from Shallotte, NC, Kara graduated with a B.A. in English from UNC-Chapel Hill with Honors in 2006.  She has most recently conducted research on Victorian Masculinities.  Her primary interests include Victorian gender studies, Romantic poetry, and depictions of the fourth dimension in literature.  As a Writing Center Associate Fellow, Kara co-instructed first year writing courses at Georgetown.  She currently serves as Assistant to the Director of Undergraduate Studies and also as a graduate tutor at the Georgetown Writing Center.   She currently is employed as a Legislative Correspondent for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Cheryl Spinner
Cheryl graduated summa cum laude with a BA in English from Queens College CUNY in 2008. Research interests include electricity and literature; the electromagnetic telegraph and the brain; neuroscience; the politics of science; the figure of the male doctor in 19th century American literature; 19th century suffragists and abolitionists; the history of abortion in America; late 18th and 19th century British and American literature.

Veronica Sudekum
Veronica is interested in representations of nature in literature. Romanticism and Transcendentalism are movements she hopes to investigate at Georgetown. Darwin's writings particularly interest her. She is also a fan of folklore. She attended Stanford University, where she graduated with a BA in 2006.  She taught and worked at a community newspaper before entering Georgetown.

Yee-Hang Tam
Yee-Hang, or Ben as he is fondly called, grew up in Hong Kong and earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Hong Kong in 2008 with first class honors. His research interests include all periods of American literature, queer studies, historiography, the Frankfurt School, Marxism and 20th century American cultural studies.

Katharine Torrey
Katharine holds a Bachelor of Humanities and Arts in American History and Drama from Carnegie Mellon.  In 2008, she earned an MA in Humanities from Marymount University.  Her research interests include the literature of the Harlem Renaissance, women's autobiographical strategies, and the intersections between popular narratives of American history and popular science fiction.

Olga Tsyganova
Olga is a second-year MA English student, and a recent (2007) graduate of the George Washington University's English and Creative Writing Program. Her interests are in contemporary connections between the rhetorical structure of American poetry and visual art, as well as the history of publication of the poetry periodical, and canonization of poetic works. A former resident of Odessa, Ukraine, she now resides in Adams Morgan and frequents the many readings and exhibitions available to DC-area residents. She works for TIGTA (Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration) as a program analyst, providing research assistance in addition to contributing to the writing and editing of the Semi-Annual Report to Congress.

Calvin Woodruff
A native of southwest Louisiana, Cal received a BA in English and French from Birmingham-Southern College in 2007.  While in Birmingham, he taught high school and completed a year of graduate study at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  Cal specializes in 19th century British and French literature, particularly fin-de-siècle writers.  His thesis will explore the ways in which nostalgia, epiphany, and romantic love inform conceptions of the afterlife for writers such as Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Marcel Proust, Alfred Tennyson, and Oscar Wilde.

Sarah Workman
Sarah is a second-year student in the English MA Program. She graduated from Cornell University in 2005, where she studied English and Spanish.  This is Sarah's second year working with The Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, where she is assisting the Thresholds of Writing Project.  Her thesis will focus on the intersection of postmodernism and representations of the Holocaust in the work of Dara Horn and Nicole Krauss.

Melissa Yuckel
Melissa completed her undergraduate studies at North Carolina State University with a concentration in World Literature.  She is interested in Gender Studies and Postmodern Literature, and finds this biography far too serious to be to her liking.