Issue 12.2 (Summer 2016)

Contributor Biographies

Heather Berg is a graduate of Carroll University ('16) with a double major in English and Spanish. She completed research examining the appeal of Shakespeare in Latin America during the summer of 2015 with a Pioneer Scholar grant from Carroll University and presented a paper regarding food and Irish nationalism in James Joyce's Ulysses at the MUSE Literati Conference in Madison, WI earlier this year. She also serves as a copy editor for Carroll's student newspaper, The New Perspective.

Tayler Bowser is a senior at Carroll University ('17) double-majoring in Biology and Professional Writing with minors in Biochemistry and Spanish. She is interested in technical writing, editing, and communications. In addition to consuming copious amounts of coffee and tea, she enjoys traveling and hopes a future career will allow her to experience different cultures.

Linda Braus is a junior at Carroll University (’18) double-majoring in English and Communication. She is interested in literature, print and digital journalism, and social media. At Carroll, she serves as co-Editor-in-Chief of the student newspaper, The New Perspective. Her main career objective is to edit professionally in order to help writers improve their stories, particularly in a literary or journalistic atmosphere.

Lauri Dietz is the Director of the University Center for Writing-based Learning (UCWbL) at DePaul University. Her PhD is in Early Modern Literature with a secondary specialization in Nineteenth-Century British Literature. Her current research interests include writing across the curriculum, ePortfolios, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and peer education. In addition to collaborating with Lara Karpenko on projects focused on undergraduate research and professional development, she regularly delivers workshops and facilitates trainings on teaching in higher education. She is also an elected Representative-at-Large for the International Writing Center Association and has helped plan and host multiple regional and international conferences related to writing center studies and peer writing tutoring.

Samantha Dittmer: No biography.

Davis Endries is a graduate of Carroll University ('16) with a double major in English and Communication. He is interested in print and digital journalism, social media, and business management. At Carroll, he was a co-creator of the Student Veterans office and was the communication director for the second issue of Portage Magazine, an online literary magazine. His main career goal is to work in project management where he can help cross-functional teams communicate effectively.

Sondra Erwin is a graduate of Carroll University ('16) with a double major in Psychology and English. She is a member of Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology. At Carroll, she served as the Center Spread editor for the student newspaper, The New Perspective, and was the Public Relations Chair for Q&A, the gay-straight alliance on campus. In the future, she plans to earn a degree in Forensic Psychology. 

Ryan D. Fong is an Assistant Professor of English at Kalamazoo College, where he teaches courses in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literature as well as gender and sexuality studies. He is currently at work on a book manuscript that analyzes the afterlife of Victorian narrative forms in contemporary British fiction. His article on the visual history of Oliver Twist is forthcoming in Victoriographies, and his essay on J.G. Farrell's novel The Siege of Krishnapur will be appearing in the collection Neo-Victorian Humour: The Rhetorics and Politics of Comedy, Irony, and Parody.

Melissa George is a returning Carroll University alumna. Having already graduated with a degree in Communications, Melissa has returned to Carroll in pursuit of an English degree. She is interested in literature and the cinema. She has previously published works in Carroll’s school newspaper, The New Perspective, and in their literary magazine, Century. Her main career goal is to work for a publishing company as a commissioning editor, where she can help an author’s publishing dreams become a reality.

Nora Gilbert is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Texas and jointly specializes in the areas of Victorian literature and classical Hollywood film. She is the author of Better Left Unsaid: Victorian Novels, Hays Code Films, and the Benefits of Censorship (Stanford University Press, 2013), and has articles published or forthcoming in PMLA, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Film & History, and Victorian Review. She is presently at work on two separate but thematically related book projects that are provisionally titled Gone Girls: The Runaway Woman Narrative in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Fiction and Unwomaned: Hollywood Stardom and the Threat of Female Independence.

Mohammed Hamdan is an Assistant Professor of Anglo-American literary studies in the Department of English at An-Najah National University. His doctoral thesis explores female sexuality and nineteenth-century transatlantic psychic and corporeal forms of communication. He is currently interested in comparative studies on exile, landscape, and national identity in modern Palestinian-Israeli fiction and the representation of Middle Eastern women in the literature of love and war. His work has appeared in Ninteteenth-Century Contexts, Symbiosis, and National Identities. 

Tamar Heller, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati, is the author of Dead Secrets:  Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic (Yale UP, 1992), and has co-edited Scenes of the Apple:  Food and the Female Body in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Women’s Writing (SUNY 2003) and Approaches to Teaching Gothic Fiction:  The British and American Traditions (MLA, 2003).  In addition to publishing articles on such figures as Charlotte and Emily Brontë, J. S. Le Fanu, Margaret Oliphant, and Edith Wharton, she has worked extensively on Rhoda Broughton, and has edited both of Broughton’s earliest novels, Cometh Up as a Flower (Pickering and Chatto, 2004) and Not Wisely, but Too Well (Victorian Secrets, 2013).  She is currently finishing a study of Broughton’s work entitled A Plot of Her Own:  Rhoda Broughton and English Fiction.  

Jennifer Janechek is currently a PhD candidate in the English Department at the University of Iowa. She received her master's in English literature from the University of South Florida. Her research interests include disability studies, masculinity studies, literature and technology, and Victorian and modernist literature. Her dissertation explores the influence of sound technologies invented for the deaf on the narrative technique of Victorian and modernist authors. Her work has appeared in Dickens Studies Annual, The Victorian, Disability Studies Quarterly, Nineteenth-Century Disability: Cultures & Contexts, and Literature/Film Quarterly.

Lara Karpenko is an Associate Professor of English at Carroll University. Her research interests include Victorian literature and culture, gender studies, readership history, and the novel. Her published work has appeared in such journals as the Victorian Review, Nineteenth-Century Studies, and the Victorians Institute Journal. Along with Shalyn Claggett (Mississippi State), she is editor of the collection Strange Science: Investigating the Limits of Knowledge in the Victorian Age forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press. Karpenko also has a research interest in the field of Teaching and Learning and has co-written an article with Lauri Dietz (DePaul University) that appeared in the Journal of Effective Teaching.

Mary Kolberg is a graduate of Carroll University (’16) with a major in English and a minor in Marketing. She is interested in social media, literature, and breaking into the non-profit sector. Moving forward, Mary has recently accepted a career position at ANAB as a Client Coordinator, which will allow her to utilize her reading and writing abilities.

Emma Liggins is Senior Lecturer in English at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Recent publications include Odd Women? Spinsters, Lesbians and Widows in British Women’s Fiction, 1850s-1930s (Manchester University Press, 2014), and The British Short Story (with Andrew Maunder and Ruth Robbins) (Palgrave, 2011). She has also published an article on Vernon Lee and the supernatural in Gothic Studies (2013) and an article on the Woman’s Signal in Victorian Periodicals Review (2014). She has a chapter on modernist women’s ghost stories in The New Woman to Now: Women Writers of Short Stories ed. Emma Young and James Bailey (Edinburgh University Press, 2015). She is currently editing a special edition of Women’s Writing on Women’s Writing of the First World War.

Michelle Orr is a junior at Carroll University (’18) double-majoring in Communication and English. She enjoys working on Carroll’s student-run newspaper, The New Perspective. and radio station, WCCX. As she begins her junior year in the fall, Michelle hopes to strengthen her writing and editing skills in her classes and extracurricular activities.

Jamie Pomis is a graduate of Carroll University (’16) majoring in Fine Arts with an emphasis in Book Arts and minoring in Graphic Communications. She served as the Art Editor for Portage Magazine’s First Edition (2015) and has an interest in illustration, creative writing, and editing. Her main career objective is to become an illustrator and write her own series of new adult novels.

Editors' Note: It is with heavy hearts that we report that Jamie passed away unexpectedly in July of this year. This issue is dedicated to her memory.

Catherine Pope was awarded her PhD by the University of Sussex in 2014 for her thesis on feminism in the novels of Florence Marryat. Catherine now works in researcher development and is writing a monograph on Marryat to be published in 2018.

Amanda Shryock is a graduate of Carroll University (’16) with a major in English and minor in Biology. She enjoys movies, music, and travelling. In the future she hopes to edit professionally and attend graduate school to pursue her passion for Modernist poetry.

Eric Van Driska is a senior at Carroll University double-majoring in History and English. His interests include literature, cello, and learning Mandarin Chinese, the last of these leading to a month abroad in Chengdu, China for the summer of 2015. When not at late-night orchestra rehearsals, he enjoys watching cult classics. His aspirations include returning to China to teach English and performing editorial work at a publishing company.

Madelyn Wegener is a sophomore at Carroll University (’19). She is majoring in Graphic Communication with a minor in Creative Writing. At Carroll she volunteers as a Pioneer Academic Advising Leader (P.A.A.L.). Her interests include literature, graphic design, and social media. Her career goals include working and creating advertisement pieces for businesses and companies of all varieties.

Jackie Wilcox is a senior at Carroll University (‘17) majoring in English with a minor in Secondary Education. She is the lead manager of Carroll University’s football team and enjoys photographing the team during games. Her greatest passion is teaching, and she works as a tutor and childcare provider.

Livia Arndal Woods is a Teaching Fellow at Queens College (CUNY). Her research focuses on Victorian literature and culture, medical humanities, gender studies, reading practices, media studies, and digital pedagogies. Her work appears in Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Victorian Network, a forthcoming edited collection, Theorizing Syphilis and Subjectivity, and the Winter 2016 special issue of Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies on “Relations,” which she guest-edited. She is working on a book manuscript on literary critical methodologies and the representation of pregnancy in Victorian novels.

Annie Zinnen is a junior at Carroll University (‘18) with a double major in English and Psychology. She served as assistant editor for the Carroll-based literary magazine, Portage Magazine, in 2016. She is interested in a career in editing professionally. She wishes to pursue a career in which she can combine her love of literature and psychology.