Dissertation Record
Dissertations published by doctoral awardees in English Language and Literature have addressed an immense variety of topics, ranging widely in history, geography, genre, and method.
Doctoral students in English at Cornell typically begin work on their dissertations after their third year in the program, following completion of their Advance-to-Candidacy exam. Students draw on a corresponding range of faculty expertise both within and outside of English and their special committees frequently include faculty from multiple departments.
The following is a list of published doctoral dissertations from the last 5 years, in order of year published, including the names of the alum and their special committee chair. For older data visit the Dissertation Record Archive.
2023
Alumnus | Title of Dissertation | Chair |
---|---|---|
Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire | Afro-Nationalism: The Transcontinental Poetics of Newly Black Fiction | Caroline Levine |
Philippa Chun | Memento Mori: Attending to the Dead in Nineteenth-Century American Literature | Shirley Samuels |
Verdie Culbreath | Towards a Literary History of the Rest Cure (1869-1931) | Elisha Cohn & Dan Schwarz |
Christina Fogarasi | Therapeutic Culture and the Anti-Confessional Narrator | Elizabeth Anker & Elisha Cohn |
Laura Francis | Irregular Pearl: Spanish-English Translations and for Formation of an English Baroque | Philip Lorenz |
Kelly Hoffer | Against the Transparency of the Word: Metaphor and Visuality in Contemporary American Poetry | Elizabeth Anker |
Joseph Miranda | Browning out: Suspended Relations of Lantinx Literature | Mary Pat Brady |
2022
Alumnus | Title of Dissertation | Chair |
---|---|---|
Ama Bemma Adwetewa-Badu | Network Poetics: The Making of Anglophone Poetry | Jonathan Monroe |
Marty Cain |
Rural Avant-Garde: Mapping Contemporary U.S. Poetry Collectives Outside |
Jeremy Braddock |
Abram Coetsee | New York Subway Style Writing: Aesthetics, Infrastructure and Technology | Jeremy Braddock |
Ben Fried | The Empire of English Literature: Editing the Global Anglophone, 1947-1993 | Amy Villarejo |
Seth Koproski |
Did We Believe in Dragons?: The Physiologic Tradition, Wonder and Ethnicity in |
Samantha Zacher |
Nathaniel Likert | Botany of the Mind: Character and Experience in Early Modern England | Elizabeth Anker |
Austin Lillywhite | Raw Feelings: Ecologies of Race and Sexuality in Contemporary American Literature |
Jeremy Braddock |
Molly MacVeagh |
Maintenance Work: Climate Fiction and Process Biology |
Elisha Cohn |
Gary Slack | Editing Black Aesthetics: Hoyt Fuller, Toni Morrison and 'The Black Book' | Andrew Galloway |
Seth Strickland | Rewrite this Book: Compilation and Experimental Literary Practices in Piers Plowman and Late Medieval English Book Culture |
Caroline Levine |
Krithika Vachali | Novel Relations: Collection Epistemologies in Nineteenth Centure British Literature |
George Hutchinson |
2021
Alumnus | Title of Dissertation | Chair |
---|---|---|
Mariana |
Living in Excess: Narrating Violence and Presence in Native American |
Mary Pat |
Elizabeth |
Dirty Computers: Erotic Data Poetics |
Kate |
Malcolm |
Implied Shelters |
Caroline Levine |
Christopher |
Multitude Modernism: Democratic Epiphany in |
George |
Pichaya (Mint) |
Fictions of Materiality in the Eighteenth-Century Novel |
Laura Brown |
Olivia |
Archiving Otherwise: The Rhetoric, Ethics, and Poetics of Contemporary |
Roger Gilbert |
Gabriella |
Speculative Pasts, Radical Politics: Historicizing in Black and |
Elizabeth Anker |
Grace Catherine |
The Poet's Matere: Materiality, Temporality, and the Making of Literary |
Andrew |
Noah Lloyd |
Caught Up in the Arrangement: Forms of Literary Life in the |
Laura Brown |
Madeline |
Anthropomorphic Representations: Blurring Animal-Human Boundaries |
Elisha Cohn |
Bojan |
Figures of Catastrophe: Tragedy, Law, and Lateness in Victorian Realism |
Ellis Hanson |
Elisabeth |
Victorian Microcosms: Environmental Formalism in the Novel |
Elisha Cohn |
Hema |
Species and Psyche: Anthropomorphism and Environmentalism in |
Laura Brown |
Brianna |
"The Kinship of Her Pain": Intimate Healing in American Women's Fiction |
Shirley Samuels |
2020
Alumnus | Title of Dissertation | Chair |
---|---|---|
Mariana Alarcon | Living in Excess: Narrating Violence and Presence in Native American and Chicana Literature | Mary Pat Brady |
Elizabeth Alexander | Dirty Computers: Erotic Data Poetics | Kate McCullough |
Malcolm Bare | Implied Shelters | Caroline Levine |
Christopher Berardino | Multitude Modernism: Democratic Epiphany in American Interwar Literature | George Hutchinson |
Pichaya Damrongpiwat | Fictions of Materiality in the Eighteenth-Century Novel | Laura Brown |
Olivia Milroy Evans | Archiving Otherwise: The Rhetoric, Ethics, and Poetics of Contemporary Documentary Poetry | Roger Gilbert |
Gabriella Friedman | Speculative Pasts, Radical Politics: Historicizing in Black and Indigenous Fiction | Elizabeth Anker |
Grace Catherine Greiner | The Poet's Matere: Materiality, Temporality, and the Making of Literary History in Chaucer and Lydgate's Inset-Lyric Poems | Andrew Galloway |
Noah Lloyd | Caught Up in the Arrangement: Forms of Literary Life in the Eighteenth Century | Laura Brown |
Madeline Reynolds | Anthropomorphic Representations: Blurring Animal-Human Boundaries in the Nineteenth-Century Novel | Elisha Cohn |
Bojan Srbinovski | Figures of Catastrophe: Tragedy, Law, and Lateness in Victorian Realism | Ellis Hanson |
Elisabeth Strayer | Victorian Microcosms: Environmental Formalism in the Novel | Elisha Cohn |
Hema Surendranathan | Species and Psyche: Anthropomorphism and Environmentalism in Human-Animal Metafiction | Laura Brown |
Brianna Thompson | “The Kinship of Her Pain”: Intimate Healing in American Women's Fiction | Shirley Samuels |
2020
2019
Alumnus | Title of Dissertation | Chair |
---|---|---|
Marquis Bey | The Blacknesses of Blackness: Fugitivity, Feminism, and Transness | Dagmawi Woubshet |
David Cosca | Demonizing Unions: Religious Rhetoric in the Early 20th Century Strike Novel | Eric Cheyfitz |
Jane Glaubman | Deplorable Cultus: Populism, Globalization, and The Lord of the Rings | Amy Villarejo + Jeremy Braddock |
Amber Harding | The Not So Great House: Domestic Space, Subjectivity, and Homecomings in the English Modernist Novel | Ellis Hanson |
Nasrin Olla | Reaching for Opacity: Contemporary Afrodiasporic Literature | Jonathan Culler + Margo Crawford |
Zachary Price | Molecular Terror: Medical Vision, Biopolitics, and Visceral Effects in Contemporary Cinema | Ellis Hanson |
Ruoji Tang | Nature's Persistence: Romanticism and the Rhetoric of Implication | Cathy Caruth |
Katherine Thorsteinson | Narratives of Disposability: Race and Ecology in Contemporary Media | Elizabeth Anker |
Claire Whitenack | Poison and Disease in Anglo-Saxon Medicine and Metaphor | Samantha Zacher |