The English graduate program is a vibrant research community that has produced many distinguished scholars and projects in its history. Here you will find information about recent dissertations defended by our Ph.D. students. For a snapshot of what our current M.A. and Ph.D. students are working on, see Current Graduate Students.
Recent Dissertations
- Matthew Burchanoski, "Lifting the Postmodern Veil: Cosmopolitanism, Humanism, and Decolonization in Global Fictions of the 21st Century" (directed by Dr. Gerry Canavan)
- Paul Spaulding, "Milton's Learning: Complementary and Difference in Paradise Lost" (directed by Dr. John Curran)
- Jannea Thomason, "The Development of the Conceptive Plot Through Early 19th-century English Novels," (directed by Dr. Ben Pladek)
- John Brick, "Gonzo Eternal." (directed by Dr. Gerry Canavan)
- Jackielee Derks, “Intertextuality and Sociopolitical Engagement in Contemporary Anglophone Women’s Writing." (directed by Dr. Leah Flack)
- David Kenney,"Innovation, Genre, and Authenticity in the Nineteenth-Century Irish Novel." (directed by Dr. Leah Flack)
- Mark Wisniewski, "Britain’s Extraterrestrial Empire: Colonial Ambition, Anxiety, and Ambivalence in Early Modern Literature." (directed by John Curran)
- Jason Zirbel, "Inquiry and Provocation: The Use of Ambiguity in Sixteenth-Century English Political Satire” (directed by Dr. Amelia Zurcher)
- Danielle K. Clapham, "When the Foreign Became Familiar: Modernism, Expatriation, and Spatial Identities in the Twentieth Century" (directed by Dr. Leah Flack)
- Hunter N. Duncan,"Reforming Victorian Sense/Abilities: Disabilities in Elizabeth Gaskell's Social Problem Novels" (directed by Dr. Christine Krueger)
- Kathryn Hendrickson, "Genre and Loss: The Impossibility of Restoration in 20th Century Detective Fiction" (directed by Dr. Amy Blair)
- Maxwell Patchet, "A Productive Failure: Existentialism in Fin de Siècle England" (directed by Dr. Leah Flack)
- Justice Hagan, "No Home but the World: Forced Migration and Transnational Identity" (directed by Dr. Jodi Melamed)
- Andrew Hoffmann, "The City as Trap: Twentieth and Twenty-First Century American Literature and the Myth of Mobility" (directed by Dr. Jodi Melamed)
- Brian Kenna, "The Fantastic and the First World War" (directed by Dr. John Su)
- Anna Scanlon, "Insane in the Brain, Blood, and Lungs: Gender-Specific Manifestations of Hysteria, Chlorosis, and Consumption in 19th-Century Literature" (directed by Dr. Sarah Wadsworth)
- Jennifer Arias Sweeney, "Reading Multicultural Novels Melancholically: Racial Grief and Grievance in The Joy Luck Club, Beloved, and Anil's Ghost" (directed by Dr. John Su)
- J.T. Lorino, "The Ethos of Dissent: Epideictic Rhetoric and the Democratic Function of American Protest and Countercultural Literature, 1940-1962" (directed by Dr. Heather Hathaway)
- Sunil Macwan, "Literary Cosmopolitanisms of Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, and Arundhati Roy" (directed by Dr. John Su)
- Tyler Monson, "The View from Here: Toward a Sissy Critique" (directed by Dr. Jodi Melamed)
- Sareene Proodian, "Forbidden Zone Writers: Femininity and Anglophone Women Writers of the Great War" (directed by Dr. John Curran)
- Adrianne Wojcik, "Theatrical Weddings and Pious Frauds: Performance and Law in Victorian Marriage Plots" (directed by Dr. Christine Krueger)
- Bryan Gast, "Changing the Victorian Habit Loop. The Body in the Poetry and Painting of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris" (directed by Dr. Ed Block)
- Katy Leedy, "Discarding Dreams and Legends: The Short Fiction of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Katherine Anne Porter" (directed by Dr. Heather Hathaway)
- Bridget Kapler, "Gendering Scientific Discourse from 1790-1830: Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Marcet" (directed by Dr. Al Rivero)
- Michael Keller, "The Pulpit's Muse: Conversive Poetics in the American Renaissance" (directed by Dr. Angela Sorby)
- Bonnie McLean, "A Single Man of Good Fortune: Postmodern Identities and Consumer Manners in the New Novel of Manners" (directed by Dr. John Su)
- Therese Novotny, "Julian of Norwich: Voicing the Vernacular" (directed by Dr. M.C. Bodden)
- Emily Blaser, "Homecomings: Victorian Women, Travel Writers and Revisions of Domesticity" (directed by Dr. Christine Krueger)
- Daniel Burke, "From Pastoral to Paterson: Ecology in the Poetry and Poetics of William Carlos Williams" (directed by Dr. Heather Hathaway)
- Kathleen Burt, "Debatable Poetry: (Re)Defining The Middle English Debate Poem in Academic Popular, and Physical Contexts" (directed by Dr. John Curran)
- Steven Hackbarth, "Apocalyptic Mentalities in Late Medieval England" (directed by Dr. M.C. Bodden)
- Matthew Henningsen, "Saving the Grotesque: The Grotesque System of Liberation in British High Modernism (1922-1932)" (directed by Dr. John Boly)
- William Storm, "The Creation of Heaven in the Middle Ages" (directed by Dr. John Curran)
- Shaunna Wilkinson, "(Re)Making the Gentlemen: Genteel Masculinities and the Country Estate in the Novels of Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell" (directed by Dr. Diane Hoeveler)
