Graduate Teaching Assistants

Genre: Poetry

Degrees(s): BA (English, Spanish), University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Genre: Fiction 

Degrees(s): BA English Creative Writing, Providence College

Mariela Flores is a first-generation, low-income, and queer, writer from Central Falls, Rhode Island. Raised by Central America immigrants, she hopes to write her way out of generational curses and make her parents proud. Her writing is an ode to her beloved one-square mile city, girlhood, and Latinidad. 

Genre: Poetry

Degrees: BA (English, Creative Writing Concentration), University of South Florida

Rose Jenny (she/her) is a writer born in Buffalo, NY and raised in Charlotte, NC. Her work exists at the intersections of performance, transness, faith, mental health, and whatever happens to possess her at any given moment. Her debut poetry chapbook, My Apocrypha, is available through Bottlecap Press. Rose's other selected poems have been published in Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, South Florida Poetry Journal, Pensive Journal, new words {press}, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Her work has received additional support from the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Rose is in the process of writing a closet play (sort of).

Genre: Poetry 

Degrees: BA(International Relations, Minors in Literature & Afro-Diasporic studies), American University 

Sankara “Le Prince Héritier” Olama-Yai (email) is an Afro-diasporic author hailing from Cameroon & the Yoruba Kingdom. They have authored two collections:  “Ebony Wings” and “Ode to our Frailty”,  longlisted for the Black Sexton poetry prize, and, hopefully soon, a third collection, shortlisted for the Thirty West chapbook prize, titled “Afro-Dreaming”. Their work, written through a gender-fluid gaze, explores grief, sexual violence, loss, and the apocalyptic nature of black lives living under the American police state. They are currently looking for a home for their new Manuscript " Fatal {A}sex & Empire Beauty" which enters asexuality, sex culture, capitalism, and imperialism into conflict with each other, pushing for the A in LGBTQIA+ to be more visible within the literary scene.

Genre: Fiction

Degrees: BA in English and Educational Studies, Macalester College

Gianella, or Gia, Rojas (she/they) is a first generation queer Peruvian-American writer born and raised in Miami, Florida. Through stories blurring the line between fiction and nonfiction, they aim to share the magic, and violence, that they’ve seen in their world. Her work is largely inspired by the love, joy, and resistance her communities have shown against oppressive structures. Their writing explores grief, environmentalism, queerness, immigration, and intergenerational dialogue.

Genre: Fiction

MFA Thesis Title: Veera Burning Bright 

Degrees: BA (Hons.) English Language and Literature with Creative Writing, University of Nottingham Malaysia

Swetha S. (she/they) is a writer from Coimbatore, India. Their interests lie in experimenting with form in fiction and writing speculative stories that make the queer experience visceral. Her writing draws from Indian and Tamil storytelling traditions. Their fiction and poetry have been published in Out of Print Magazine, SoFloPoJo, and other journals, and they have been supported by fellowships and awards from the University of Miami and the University of Nottingham. 

Genre: Fiction

Degrees: BA (Hons.) English Literature, St. Bede’s College and MFA in Creative Writing, Boston University

Genre: Poetry

Degrees: BA, Sarah Lawrence College, English literature, French literature

MA, University of Virginia, English Literature 

Palmer Smith is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and an English MA graduate of the University of Virginia. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in The Crime Yard, Newark Library Literary Journal, The Online Journal for Person-Centered Dermatology, For Women Who Roar, and other literary journals. The Butterfly Bruises is her first published collection of work. It won the Gold Medal for the Readers Choice Awards (young adult) and was nominated as a Finalist in the category of Travel and Essays for the Best American Book Awards.  Her poetry addresses grief and memory within the settings of New York City and the Carolinas/Southeastern United States. She also likes to use hybridity and incorporate Latin and French into her poems. She is querying a romance fantasy novel. 

Thesis committee: TBD

Genre: Poetry

Degrees: BA (Literature/Writing), University of California, San Diego

A.A. Tojino (he/they) is a writer and trade school dropout from California. They have been supported by fellowships and attended workshops including Tin House, The University of Miami, and the University of California, San Diego. His writing writhes around the Golden State, carceral institutions, and the Pacific Ocean.

Genre: Poetry

Degrees(s): BA (Jazz Performance, English ), University of Wyoming

Evan Wambeke (email) is a second year MFA candidate. His poetry often engages with western life, americana, masculinity, fine art, film, and fishing. But the sort of river fishing that happens in Wyoming, and even there he isn’t very good so please don’t ask him for any ocean advice. Other jobs he seasonally does are: K-12 substitute teacher, visitor center representative, and (start the music, draw back the curtains) an actor! He has been published by the South Florida Poetry Journal and WyoPoets as well as collaborated  with the Lowe Art Museum and the Whitney Western Art Museum. 

Thesis Committee: Jaswinder Bolina (Chair), Kei Miller (Second Reader)

Dissertation: “The Pornographic Isle”: Jamaica and the Purchase of Postcolonial Modernity

Fields: Caribbean Studies, Queer and Trans Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Porn Studies.

Degree(s): BA (English; Anthropology & Sociology), Lafayette College.

Jovante Anderson (email) is a sixth-year PhD candidate. He is also a pre-doctoral fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute at The University of Virginia. His dissertation traces the multiple imaginaries of erotic sovereignty articulated through the circulation practices, aesthetic investments, and performance cultures of pornography in late colonial and postcolonial Jamaica. The project reads a diverse historical, literary, and visual set of archives from the early twentieth century to the contemporary moment, considering how pornography underwrites multiple, and sometimes contradictory, visions of what it means to be a modern Caribbean subject. Jovante has presented work at various annual meetings including the American Studies Association, The Caribbean Studies Association, West Indian Literature Conference, and Beyond Homophobia. His work has been supported by grants from the American Ethnological Society, the Center for Global Black Studies, and the Nomadic Archivist Project. He also has a journal article forthcoming in GLQ: Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies that examines contemporary trans aesthetics in relation to ecological crisis in the Caribbean. 

Beyond the academy, Jovante enjoys creative writing and was the first co-recipient of the Poet Laureate of Jamaica Young Writers’ Prize for Poetry in 2018. Jovante was also named “LGBT Person of the Year” by the Equality Foundation for All Jamaica in 2020 for work that he continues to do around queer and trans housing insecurity in Jamaica. 

Dissertation: A.I. Got a Feeling: Exploring Hallucinations and the Rhetorics of Computational Distress

Fields: Medical Humanities; Digital Humanities; Caribbean Studies; Postmodern Studies; Critical Geography

Degree(s): B.A.H. (African & African-American Studies, with honors), MA (Anthropology), Stanford University

Ra Bacchus  (email) is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of English. He is a UM Fellow for the 2024-25 academic year and a co-convener of the Queer Studies Interdisciplinary Reading Group. An active digital humanist, he has presented at multiple conferences in Florida, including the 2024 Crossroads Applied Humanities Conference at NSU and the 2024 Marxist Reading Group  Conference on “Marxism & the Digital Public” at UF. Ra’s projects with texts and technologies advocate for interdisciplinary, multimodal, and affective ways of knowing from the Black Atlantic.

Fields: Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Religion Studies, Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies, Postcolonialism, Digital Humanities

Degrees: BA (English), State University of Ceara (Brazil); MA (Applied Linguistics), State University of Ceara (Brazil), MA (English) , University of Miami

Vanessa Barcelos is a 4th-year English student, whose research focuses on the racial dimensions of discourses of witchcraft in the late medieval and early modern period and women writers in the pre-modern era. Before joining UM’s PhD program, she worked for more than a decade as a teacher of English as a Second Language in Brazil. At UM, Vanessa has taught Writing and Literature courses as a Teaching Assistant. She’s recently authored “She, her, me - a witch? Women join the theological debate of witchcraft in 17th-century England” in the journal Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft (to be published soon). She has presented at several national and international conferences, including RSA (Renaissance Society of America) and CSRS (Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies). She also served as a UGrow Fellow at UM’s Center for the Humanities (2023-2024).

Fields: immigrant literature, literature by women, gender and sexuality studies, queer studies, Brazilian diaspora

Degrees: BA (English and Portuguese), Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul; MA (English), Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul; MA (English), University of Miami

Mariana C. Petersen is a student in the PhD program. She has published in journals such as Estação Literária, Letrônica, Anuário de Literatura, and Plath Profiles and presented papers at the 11th Annual Conference of the Association of Adaptation Studies, at the VII Congresso Internacional de Estudos sobre a Diversidade Sexual e de Gênero, and at the The International Margaret Cavendish Society Biennial Conference, among others. She has served as a UGrow Fellow at HistoryMiami (2029-2020) and has experience teaching English and Portuguese languages and literatures to students of different backgrounds and origins. Her dissertation project focuses on Anglophone literature of the Brazilian diaspora and queer studies.

Fields: Early Modern and Renaissance literature, Shakespeare, Exile studies

Degrees: BA (English), Florida International University; MA (English), Florida International University

Madeline Cisneros is a second-year PhD student whose research focuses on modernizing inquiries into Shakespearean drama, particularly through the lens of exile. Before arriving at UM, her Master’s thesis “Forced to Be the Fine Line: How Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Henry V, and George Lucas’ Anakin Skywalker Embody Exile and Estrangement” deconstructed the Shakespearean characters of Hamlet and Henry V alongside the contemporary character of Anakin Skywalker using theories of alienation and metaphoric exile. Before defending, Madeline also competed in FIU’s “3 Minute Thesis” competition, winning second place. As a third-generation Cuban-American, her doctoral research aims to bring Shakespearean texts into close conversation with the Cuban-American exilic condition. 

Fields: 19th-century British literature, 19th-century children’s literature, the gothic, monsters, Women’s Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies

Degrees: B.S. (Biology), University of Miami; MA (English) University of Miami

Erica Christmas (email) is an English Ph.D. candidate whose dissertation explores intersections between gender, sexuality, and materiality in the late 19th century gothic and children’s literature of E. Nesbit. Her research investigates the deconstruction of human identity through corpses, wax figurines, statues, and other collections of inanimate objects. During her time at UM, she has served as the instructor of record for multiple Writing Studies courses that include topics such as “Monsters in Literature.” 

Fields: 20th Century US Literature, Modernism, Digital Humanities, and Queer Studies

Degree(s): BA (English), University of Virginia; MA (Comparative Literature), Dartmouth College.

Fields: Disability studies, media and cultural studies, digital humanities, contemporary literature 

Degrees(s): BA (Creative Writing, Sociology), SUNY Oswego; MA (English), University at Buffalo

Micaela Donabella (email) is a fourth-year PhD candidate. Her research focuses on representations of disability and technology within literary and internet cultures. Prior to beginning her PhD, she spent three years working as a K-12 educator and received an M.A. in English from the University at Buffalo. Micaela served as the UGrow Writing Studies Fellow during academic year 2023-2024 and was formerly a Digital Humanities Graduate Fellow on “Mapping Imaginary Miami,” supervised by Dr. Allison Schifani. Micaela has presented work at various conferences including the American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting and the Northeast Modern Language Annual Convention. She is the current Vice President of UM’s English Graduate Organization.

Fields: Memory and Trauma Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Speculative Fiction, Film, Media and Cultural Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Degree(s): BA (English; Spanish; Women’s Studies), University of Georgia 

Fields: Jane Austen, long 18th century, colonial literature, postcolonial literature and theory, adaptation studies 

Iman Gareeboo (email): is a third-year PhD candidate. Her current research focuses on diasporic and postcolonial adaptations of Jane Austen,. Her interests include the legacy of British colonial education, coloniality and decoloniality, studying diachronic representations of Muslims in Western literature, and rhetoric and learning theory. Iman presented a paper at the British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference on decoloniality as explored in dark academia novels in February 2024.  Prior to the University of Miami, she spent a year working as a teaching assistant in France and a year working in elementary education. She is currently serving as the 2024–2025 UGrow Fellow for the Writing Department and as the Secretary for UM’s English Graduate Organization.

Dissertation: Techno-poetics in the Caribbean: Digital and Post-digital Writings

Fields: Expanded Writing, Electronic Literature, Caribbean Studies, Computation, Migrations

Degree(s): BA (Latin American Literature & Linguistics), UCAB, Caracas; MFA (Creative Writing in Spanish), UI, Iowa City

Nicolas Gerardi Rousset  (email) is a first-year PhD student. His dissertation explores expanded writing projects from the insular and continental Caribbean that use electronic writing to envision alternative futures. His research examines electronic literatures that merge digital computation with poetic thought, tracing developments from the early 1950s through 2019, the year the first quantum computer became operational. Nicolás has presented video art installations, conferences, and readings at various institutions, including the British Council in Venezuela, the Contemporary Art Museum in Caracas, FotoFocus Biennial, Houston Art League, the University of Iowa, Public Space One, and Cruce NYU. Over the past two years, he has received the Ruth Davis Summer Fellowship and the Letterpress Scholarship at La Ceiba Gráfica in Mexico. His MFA thesis, Biolibro de Anacaona, is an artist book with augmented reality that explores, through speculation, a new form of hybrid mycelium humanity. The poetry book narrates how Anacaona transfers her memories and ancient knowledge to a new, younger body, coexisting within it.

Dissertation: Black Feminist Cosmologies: Spiritual Healing in Haitian Women’s Literary and Visual Culture

Fields: Haitian Studies, Black feminist theory, Caribbean Digital Humanities

Degree (s): BA (English and Secondary Education Youth Services), CUNY Queens College; MA (English), University of Miami

Gabrielle Mary Jean-Louis (she/her) (email) is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at the University of Miami, specializing in contemporary Caribbean women's literary and visual culture. Her research delves into the presentation of healing methodologies within intimate Black diasporic feminine spaces. Focusing on literary works by authors such as Edwidge Danticat, Francesca Momplasair, and Debbie Rigaud, as well as visual art by Myrlande Constant and Naudline Pierre, Gabrielle examines how diasporic communities provide Haitian female subjects with avenues for spiritual healing through interfaith dialogues, exposure to African spiritual practices, and Western psychotherapy. In her forthcoming works for the Pérez Art Museum Miami’s Caribbean Cultural Institute and the Journal of Haitian Studies, she applies Haitian feminist theory to analyze spiritual iconography in Myrlande Constant and Naudline Pierre’s works. She has presented her research at the Haitian Studies Association Annual Conference, Modern Language Association Annual Convention, American Studies Association Annual Convention and the West Indian Literature Conference.

Fields: Caribbean Speculative Fiction, African and African Diasporic Literary Studies, Pan-African studies and movements, African Feminisms, Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies

Degree(s): BA (Literatures in English), University of the West Indies, Mona; MA (Pan African Studies), Syracuse University 

Nardia Lipman (email): Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, Ms Lipman is currently a third-year English doctoral student at the University of Miami. Focusing on how African and Afro-Caribbean epistemologies and ontologies are re-engaged in contemporary Caribbean speculative fiction, her dissertation explores themes of enslavement, African retention, pan-African concerns, temporality, and women's experiences, with an emphasis on resistance, liberation, and survival. Prior to her doctoral studies, Ms. Lipman earned her MA from Syracuse University, where her thesis examined the Black Lives Matter Movement and its impact on African American fiction. Ms. Lipman's professional experience includes teaching English in Colombia-South America, Literature and Communication Studies in Jamaica, as well as various administrative roles in the fields of banking and journalism. At the University of Miami, she was honoured as a Dean's Fellow for 2022-23 and received a DEI Mini Grant for her Caribbean Literary Studies Archiving Project in May 2023. An active participant in academic discourse, Ms. Lipman has presented papers at numerous conferences, including the West Indian Literature Conference, the British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference, Society for Caribbean Studies, UK, and the Tri-University Latin America and Caribbean Studies Graduate Student Conference, where she won second place in the Oral Category. At the university, Ms Lipman is a member of both the Caribbean Student Union and the African Student Union, maintaining her connection to her cultural roots, and has held the position of Department Representative in the English Graduate Organisation. She is also a member of several professional organizations, including the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD), the Caribbean Studies Association (CSA), and the Society for Caribbean Studies, UK (SCS). 

Fields: Caribbean Studies, Diaspora Literature, Gender Studies, 20 and 21st Century Literary Studies

Degree(s): BA(English; Studio Art), New York University; MA(Liberal Studies), University of Miami

Fields: 1900 to present science fiction, ecocriticism, animal studies, posthumanism, digital environmental humanities

Degree(s): BA (English), MA(English), Lamar University

Dissertation: Choreographies of Value Transfer in 1970s Literature of the United States

Fields: Late 20th Century US Literature, Black and Indigenous Literatures of the Americas, Finance and Economics

Degree(s): BS (Secondary English Education), New York University; MA (English), City College of New York

Rachel Northrop (email) is a fifth-year PhD candidate. She has presented at the NSU Crossroads Humanities Student Conference, UM Graduate Research Symposium, and UM Modern Languages and Literature Graduate Student Conference. In her role as a first-year writing instructor, she has integrated archival visits to the Library’s Special Collections and digital StoryMap-making into her classes. Rachel’s dissertation analyzes a wide range of literary texts to ask how their narratives physically describe–choreograph–scenes where value moves from one place to another. Her project argues that the various ways in which value moves through, with, between, among, and beyond people and their environs show that worth and mattering cannot be contained in money, despite contemporaneous efforts to contain value within standardized (and therefore infinitely tradeable) units of currency.

Fields: Disability studies, Medical Humanities, Crip Theory, Monstrosity, Gender and Sexuality, 18th & 19th c. Transatlantic Studies, Gothic Literature, Victorian Literature, Psychoanalysis, Feminist Theory, Narratology, Critical Race Theory

Degrees(s): BA (English, Anthropology, Women’s & Gender Studies), Florida International University; MA (English), Florida International University

Tiffany Oharriz (email) is a first-year PhD student. Her research focuses on representations of disability, bodily difference, gender and racial alterity and their intersections with monstrosity within literary devices. Tiffany is an Andrew W. Mellow HSI Pathways to the Professoriate Fellow. Prior to beginning her PhD, she focused on interdisciplinary studies at FIU while obtaining an M.A. in English. Her thesis, “The Monster Within: Disability Narratology and the Representations of Bodily Difference and Monstrosity in Gothic Fiction” analyzes the various depictions of monstrosity in Gothic literature through the lens of a new theoretical framework, disability narratology — coded patterns operating within literary texts that pertain to the impaired body and its portrayal as monstrous through repetitive tropes that paint bodily differences such as race, gender, and disability as horrifying. During her studies at FIU, Tiffany has presented her research at various conferences including the HSI Pathways Cross Institutional Conference, Andrew Mellon Humanities Edge Conference, and the 2nd Annual Lorde-Morrison Graduate Student Conference

Fields: Border and Migration Studies, Global South Feminisms, 20 and 21st Century Literary studies, World Literatures, Caribbean Studies

Degrees: BA (English Literature and Languages), MA (Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature) Durham University, UK

Email: pxp691@miami.edu 

Dissertation: ‘This printing blood’: Reproductive Materialities in Early Modern English Literature

Fields: Early Modern Studies, Manuscript Writing, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Digital Humanities

Degree(s): BA (English and History), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; MA (Early Modern English Literature), King’s College London; MA (English), University of Miami

Claire Richie (email) is a fifth-year PhD candidate. Her dissertation research explores the language of reproduction across genres in early modern England through a lens of fluidity and liquidity. She has presented at conferences such as the Sixteenth Century Society Conference, BritGrad, and the Renaissance Society of America conference. She is a recipient of a Digital Humanities Graduate Fellowship and served as the 2022-23 Center for the Humanities UGrow Fellow. Claire has also held short-term fellowships at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library, the Ransom Center, and the Huntington Library. She is co-director of the Early Modern Care project, and her work appears in the Early Modern Digital Review. She is a contributor to the Pulter Project. 

Fields: Black Diaspora, Black Queer Studies, Cinema Studies, Caribbean Studies, Black Europe, Ethnography

Degrees: BA (African American Studies, French), Yale University; MA (English), University of Miami

Jordan Rogers (email) is a PhD Candidate in English. He is writing a dissertation on Black Queer Cinema, from a global perspective. During his time at UM, he has held a range of fellowships, including the University of Miami Fellowship and the Mellon Graduate Fellowship at the University of Miami Center for Global Black Studies. He is the recipient of the 2019 Brazilian Initiation Scholarship (BRASA), and two UM Institute for Advanced Study of the Americas/Tinker Grants (2019, 2023). He has also translated work from Italian and Portuguese to English, interned in film archives, produced documentary films, and curated museum exhibitions.

Fields: Nineteenth-century American literature and twentieth-century American literature

Degrees: BA (English), Iona College; MA (English), Iona College

Michael Sacks (email) is a sixth-year graduate student in the English Department’s PhD program.  Michael’s dissertation explores the portrayal of urban and rural areas in selected works of the following writers: Mary Wilkins Freeman, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Sinclair Lewis.  Michael has previously served as the managing editor of the James Joyce Literary Supplement.

Dissertation: The Portrayal of Urban and Rural Areas in Selected Works of Mary Wilkins Freeman, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Sinclair Lewis

Fields: British early modern drama, science studies, performance studies, gender studies, Renaissance literature

Degree(s): B.A. (English, University of Mississippi); MA (English, University of Miami 2024)

Sydney Shamblin Anderson (email) is an English Ph.D. candidate with a Medieval and Early Modern Studies Concentration. Sydney’s dissertation examines the intersections of experimental science, anatomy, and performance studies in early modern revenge tragedies, charting how the materiality of live performance affords playwrights revolutionary means of anatomical “experimentation.” Her research investigates how Renaissance playwrights utilized stage properties as experimental technologies to challenge and reshape emerging anatomical and cultural conceptions of the female body. Sydney’s interdisciplinary approach to science studies, gender studies, and Renaissance literature is reflected in her pedagogy. As an instructor of record at the University of Miami, she has designed courses such as “Bad Women in Renaissance Literature” and “Ecocritical Shakespeare.”

In addition to her research, Sydney is deeply engaged in academic service. As the Founding Chair of the Shakespeare Association of America (SAA)’s Graduate Committee (est. 2024), Sydney leads initiatives to promote graduate student scholarship in one of the leading academic associations for Shakespeare studies. At the University of Miami, she currently serves as President of the English Graduate Organization, UGrow Fellow for the Center for the Humanities, Vice President of the Graduate Student Association, and Graduate Representative to the Board of Trustees Academic Affairs Committee. 

Fields: 19th century studies, radical print history, seriality studies, digital humanities, media and television studies, Lacanian psychoanalysis.

Degree(s): BA (English), Florida International University; MA (English Literature), University of Miami

Michael Soriano (email) is a fourth-year PhD candidate. His research focuses on serialized print production, distribution, and consumption among 19th-century US and Caribbean radicals in the labor movement, abolitionist movement, and socialist and anarchist political movements. Prior to his PhD, Michael worked as a substitute teacher, media studies instructor, and English teacher for Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Michael is an Andrew W. Mellow HSI Pathways to the Professoriate Fellow. Since the 2023 academic year, Michael has served as the UGrow Digital Humanities Fellow and was a DH Graduate Fellow on “Mapping Imaginary Miami” under the supervision of Professor Allison Schifani. As a UGrow Fellow, Michael works under the supervision of Dr. Kelly Baker Josephs on “Manchineel + Seagrapes,” a dramatic archive for unpublished and out-of-print plays by Caribbean playwrights. He is co-organizer of the Digital Humanities Research Institute (DHRI) and the Digital Humanities Interdisciplinary Research Group (DH IRG) at the University of Miami. In 2024, Michael was awarded a DH Graduate Fellowship for his work digitizing the Chicago-based anarchist periodical, The Alarm. He has presented at various conferences, including The Caribbean Digital and the International Television Commercial as Short Film Conference, and has written pieces in In Media Res. He is currently the Department Representative for UM’s English Graduate Organization.

Dissertation Committee: John Funchion (Chair), Allison Schifani, Tim Watson