Graduate School


I'm a 3rd year PhD student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I'm based in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. I occasionally teach in the Department of Spanish in the School of Romance Languages. I finished my MA in Spring, 2007 and am presently working on a dissertation project that examines the linguistic and epistemological points of contact of 16th and 17th-century English and Spanish colonialist discourses. By looking specifically at their uses of the language of friendship, invocations of gendered natures, and theories of mixture, I hope to show that the foundational images upon which these two colonial powers have been built -- English planter and Spanish miner -- are much more similar than our scholarship suggests.

Qualifying List
Having experienced multiple incarnations, my final exam list can be found here. Here are some sample questions and supplementary questions that I drafted.
Major: Philip Gura, Rosa Perelmuter, and Tim Marr (director)
Minor: Jessica Wolfe (exam chair) and Mary Floyd-Wilson

MA Thesis
"Literary Transculturations: The Erotic Energy of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Edward Taylor's Religious Verse"
Director: Philip Gura
Reader: Eliza Richards

Coursework
Proseminar in American Literature, beginning through 1900; Philip Gura, Fall 2005
19th Century American Poetry; Eliza Richards, Fall 2005
Christian and Classical Influences on Pope and Swift; Tom Stumpf, Fall 2005
Proseminar in Renaissance Literature; Jessica Wolfe, Spring 2006
Aesthetics of the Baroque; Rosa Perelmuter, Fall 2006
Proseminar in 18th Century and Feminist Theory; Ruth Salvaggio, Spring 2007
William Shakespeare, Political Theorist; Laurie Shannon (Duke), Spring 2007
Introduction to Yucatec Maya; David Mora Marín, Spring 2007
Portuguese I and II; Regina Santos and Marcelo Amorim; Fall 2006 and Spring 2007
Love and Death in the American Novel: Revisited; Philip Gura, Fall 2007
Polytropic Romances; Jessica Wolfe and Marsha Collins (audit); Fall 2007
Colonial and Nineteenth Century Latin American Literature (audit); Rosa Perelmuter; Fall 2007
Survey of Indigenous Mesoamerican Languages (audit); David Mora Marín; Fall 2007
Seventeenth-Century Religious Thought (directed reading); Philip Gura; Spring 2008

Teaching Position
For a statement on my beliefs about teaching, click here.




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