There are currently over 30 doctoral candidates in English at Boston College. Along with students in our M.A. program, doctoral students are the sponsors of a year-long colloquium in literary and cultural studies; they place representatives at our Graduate Student Association; and they teach regularly in the English department.
Doctoral Candidates at BC have provided their own listings below.
Natasha Baafi
Natasha is interested in 20th century American literature and culture, 20th century and contemporary Black literature and culture, conscious or "Rasta" reggae music, and Black postmodern fiction. Natasha holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Rutgers University (2000) and an MA in English education from Columbia University (2002). She has taught middle-school English and U.S. history and high school English for several years before pursuing a graduate degree at BC.
Katie Daily
Alison Fanous
Gene Gorman
Gene is a PhD student interested in American Studies and rhetoric and composition. His academic interests include 20th century and contemporary American literature and culture, creative nonfiction, memoir, pedagogy, and film. He is currently focusing his attention on the relationship between memory and American racial and ethnic identities and issues related to home and the American family. Gene holds a bachelor's degree from Duke University (1993) and an MA from St. Louis University (2004) and spent several years as a journalist writing for newspapers in North Carolina, Alabama, and St. Louis. He also worked in marketing and public relations and taught high school before coming to BC.
Nikhil Gupta
Nick is a PhD student at Boston College, completing an exam on Trans-Atlantic modernism. He has already completed an exam on the Literatures of American Expansion. His main research interest is in how modernist texts coopt texts from across the Atlantic in order to re imagine their own national, postcolonial, or provicial space. He has taught courses in Exile, Literary forms that seem out of place, the Modern British Novel, and Modernism Across the Atlantic.
Matthew Heitzman
Matt completed his Bachelor's degree in French and English at Miami University (Ohio), and Master’s degree in English at Boston College. Before joining the graduate community at B.C., he taught high-school English for three years in central France. His research interests include late 18th and 19th Century British travel writing, the history of the British and French slave trade, post-colonial theory and gender studies. He has taught sections of the First-Year Writing Seminar (FWS), Lit. Core classes on travel in literature, as well as Narrative and Interpretation. This year he will teach an elective course on 19th century British imperialism.
Alisa Marko Iannucci
Alisa is working on her dissertation, "Early American Cosmopolitans: Antebellum Writer-Travelers and Cross-Cultural Exchange." She has completed exams in eco criticism and American literature, and taught Narrative and Interpretation, American Literary History I, an elective on American travel writing, and two core courses at BC. She is also a guide at Herman Melville's Arrowhead in Pittsfield, MA and has served as a council member for the New England American Studies Association. Alisa earned her undergraduate degree in English and Anthropology at the University of Virginia and taught for two years in the Peace Corps.
Katherine Kellett
Katherine specializes in early modern literature, and her interests include performance studies, queer theory, and gender studies. At Boston College, she has designed and taught introductory courses such as Freshman Writing Seminar and Studies in Poetry as well as upper-level electives like Early Women Writers and Shakespeare. She has also served as a teaching assistant in the survey course, Introduction to British Literature & Culture I. At Framingham State College, she has designed and taught Literary Study, an introductory course for English majors. She currently works as a writing tutor at Framingham State's academic support center. Katherine’s publications include "Performance, Performativity, and Identity in Margaret Cavendish’s /The Convent of Pleasure/" in /Studies in English Literature 1500-1900/ and "The Lady’s Voice: Poetic Collaboration in Milton’s /Mask/" in /Milton Studies/ (forthcoming). She is working on a dissertation that examines representations of the female body in early modern England.
Kiara Kharpertian
Andrew Kuhn
Colleen Lannon
Colleen is currently working on a dissertation that examines Victorian negotiations of economic changes in mid-nineteenth century novels. Her other interests include the modernist novel, Victorian literature and culture, literature and economics, and British financial history. She has completed exams on nineteenth century British fiction, the rise of the novel, British modernist fiction, and James Joyce's Ulysses. She received her bachelor's degree in English Literature and Language from Harvard, and co-founded a publishing company that focused on emerging trends in management theory and organizational learning. Colleen lives with her husband and son in a 23-family "eco-village" located on an historic working farm in Hartland, VT.
Dathalinn O'Dea
Dathalinn is a doctoral candidate at Boston College. She holds a B.A. in English from Hamilton College (Clinton, NY) and spent three years teaching high-school English and Chemistry in Rhode Island before entering the BC graduate program. Her academic interests include 19th- and 20th-century Irish literature, postcolonial studies, politics and criticism, and Modernism.
Joshua Olivier Mason
Josh is a PhD student concentrating in 19th Century British Literature. Josh recently completed his minor exam entitled "The Contact Zone between Evolution and Religion in Victorian England" and his research interests include 19th and early 20th century fiction, memoir, evolutionary theory, the history of science, biblical criticism, and Jewish Studies. After completing a B.A. in English at Oberlin College, Josh spent four years teaching English and Composition at an Independent School in New York State.
Emma holds a BA in English and Classical Studies and a minor in Theatre History from Kalamazoo College. She has studied drama and literature in Athens and Prague. At Boston College, she concentrates on Early Modern and Restoration drama. Emma is particularly interested in investigating performance, asking how the study of material culture and gender inform the way we "read" on-stage "play." She is currently working on a Restoration comedy exam that considers women on the English stage, performance and fashion. Emma works as a Writing Fellow for a Theatre History course and will TA for British Literature I in Fall 2009.
You can visit her website at: http://www2.bc.edu/~perryem
Lorenzo Alexander Puente
Alex is interested in the study of Post colonialism and Globalization. As a Ph.D. student at Boston College, he has taught undergraduate courses in literature (“Introduction to Literary Studies” and “Literary Themes”) and composition (“First-Year Writing Seminar”). He has worked as tutor and teacher in the Office of AHANA Student Programs and serves as mentor to teaching fellows in the First-Year Writing Seminar Program. Alex Puente received a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and an M.A. in Literature from the Ateneo de Manila University, a Jesuit university in the Philippines. As a Fulbright scholar, he received a second M.A. in English from Boston College. Before coming to BC, Alex taught high school and university level composition and literature for several years at the Ateneo de Manila. He also received a certificate in English Language Teaching and Teacher-Training from Lancaster University (U.K.), and he organized and facilitated teacher-training seminars in the Philippines.
Alex enjoys working with students and is deeply interested in spirituality and social action. At the Ateneo, he moderated a student group engaged in organizing urban poor communities in Manila. He is happily married to Maria Kathleen Puente and is proud father to their son, Francis.
Rebecca Troeger
Rebecca's main interests are 20th century Irish literature, ethnomusicology, cultural studies, trans-nationalism, and American studies. She has completed an MA exam on the intersections of musical and literary studies in contemporary Irish literature and is interested in issues of identity as expressed through these mediums. She has presented conference papers on Julia O'Faolain, James Joyce, and a cross study between Irish ethnomusicology and literature. She has taught the Freshman Writing Seminar and currently works as an instructional assistant through the BC athletic program.
Alison VanVort
Alison’s interests are in eco criticism, American studies, trans-nationalism, and regional studies. She received an M.A. from Boston College and a B.A. from Colby College where she majored in English and minored in Environmental Studies. She has completed a minor field exam on material culture and nature in 1850s American literature and is currently working on a major exam in eco criticism. Her main focus is on representations of nature in literary discourse that attempt to resist exploitation and com modification of land, animals, and people. Alison is a member of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) and has recently taught a course on Literature and Ecology.
Ben Walker
Alice Waters
Alice holds a B.A. in English with a minor in Education from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is concentrating on early modern British literature and culture, specifically interested in gender studies, utopian writing, and science writing of the period. Alice is currently working on an exam exploring utopian and dystopian writing from the early modern period through the eighteenth century. She is also interested in science fiction studies.