Current PhD Students

Fields: Early modern and medieval studies, gender and sexuality studies, ecocriticism, digital humanities

Degrees(s): BA (English), Creighton University; MA (English), University of Miami

Kate M. Albrecht (email) is a fourth-year PhD student of English literature. She is a mentor for Empower Me First and the secretary of the English Graduate Organization. She has presented at conferences such as the International Conference on Education, Symposium on Education and Culture Development of the Greater Bay Area, Medieval and Early Modern Studies Festival, and SAMLA. She has chaired panels at the Nova Southeastern Crossroads Conference and NEMLA. A former instructor of Writing Studies, she is currently the UGrow Writing Studies fellow. She has been awarded fellowships to work on DH projects such as Archbio and co-directs the Early Modern Care project.

Qualifying Exam Committee: Pamela Hammons (chair), Jessica Rosenburg, Lindsay Thomas

Fields: Caribbean literature and popular culture, gender and sexuality studies, theories of space, and diaspora studies

Degree(s): BA (English), Lafayette College

Jovante Anderson (email) is a first-year graduate student in the English PhD program. 

Dissertation: “Austere Lives: Neoliberal Nationalism and the Shaping of the Caribbean North Atlantic”

Fields/Research Interests: Global Anglophone literature, Caribbean literature, Comparative Race and Ethnic Theory, Auto/Biography studies

Degrees: BA (English), Queen Mary University of London; MA (Contemporary Literature), Queen Mary University of London; MA (English), University of Miami

Laura Bass (email) is a sixth-year PhD student. She is currently working on her dissertation project, a transnational (U.K., U.S., and Canada) study that critically examines the racialized, classed, and gendered effects of austerity on Caribbean immigrant communities from the long 1980s to present. Since 2018, Laura has been involved in various capacities with Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal; she is currently the Managing Editor. She has also served as the UGrow Fellow for the Manuscripts and Archives Management Department at UMiami Libraries. In 2020-2021, Laura was selected as the Distinguished Teaching Fellow for the University of Miami Institute for the Advanced Study of the Americas, during which time she designed and taught a Caribbean Studies course under the Latin American Studies Department and the Department of English. Laura has additionally served in research assistant roles for the Office of Community and Civic Engagement’s project, “Race, Housing, and Displacement in Miami”; the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures; and the Cuban Heritage Collection. Laura has presented her research at conferences such as the West Indian Literature conference; MELUS; International Auto/biography Association (Americas Chapter) conference; and the Literary London Society.

Dissertation Committee: Donette Francis (chair), Tim Watson, Jafari Allen, and Asha Jeffers (outside reader).

Fields: 19th century literature, 19th century children’s literature, gothic, gender and sexuality studies

Degrees: BS (Biology & English), University of Miami; MA (English), University of Miami

Erica Christmas (email) is a fifth-year PhD student. Her work seeks to navigate the boundaries between gothic and children’s literature in the fin de siécle.

Fields: disability studies, contemporary literature and media, digital humanities

Degrees: B.A. (Sociology and Creative Writing), College at Oswego, SUNY; M.A. (English) University at Buffalo

Micaela Donabella (email) is a second-year PhD student. While her M.A. thesis focused on political agency in Irish modernism, she currently examines disability representation in contemporary literature and media. She has presented her work at SEGUE (College at Brockport, SUNY)  and will deliver a paper  at the Northeast Popular & American Cultural Association’s annual conference this fall.

Fields/Research interests: Caribbean Studies, Afro-diasporic literature, Afro feminisms

Degree: BA (English and Africana studies), CUNY Hunter College

Sadé Gordon (email) is a second-year PhD student with interests located in Caribbean Space, Migration and Afro-diasporic feminisms. Her latest project "Finding Our Mothers Garden: The Feminine Spirit in Aeriel Space", explores artist Firelei Baez's  visualization of an Afro-diasporic global feminine network in her Untitled mural, which takes a turn toward the spirit to answer Alice walkers  call in "In Search of My Mother's Garden". Sadé is also a former Ronald E McNair scholar and was awarded The Helen Gray Cone Fellowship for Graduate Study in English (2020-2021).

Fields: Caribbean Studies, Haitian  Studies, Black Feminist Theory

Degree(s): BA (English Secondary Education Youth Services), CUNY Queens College

Gabrielle M. Jean-Louis (email) is a third-year PhD student. She primarily works with contemporary Haitian literature and explores the ways in which Haitian women creatives present modes of resistance to sexual anxieties apparent during U.S. imperialism (1915-1934, 1994) to the father-son Duvalier regime (1957-1986). Her forthcoming essay “A Black Feminist Gaze: Haitian Female Artists Reimagining Spiritual Iconography” turns to the work of Myrlande Constant and Naudline Cluvie Pierre to argue how Haitian female artists render a gaze that disrupts patriachial dominance and Eurocentric religiosity.  She has presented at the Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Summer Conference (SSRC-MMGIP).

Fields: Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Women’s Writings, Travel Literature, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Degrees: BA (English and History) and MA (English), Ewha Womans University, South Korea

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; BA (English), City College of New York

Rachel Northrop (email) is a third year PhD student. She has presented at the NSU Crossroads Humanities Student Conference and the UM Graduate Research Symposium. Her archival and literary research inform her work as a first-year writing instructor. Rachel's anticipated dissertation project studies financial and economic value narratives together with US literature published in the 1970s, focusing on bodily interactions with place.

Qualifying Exam Committee: Dr. Tim Watson (chair), Dr. Marina Magloire, Dr. Lindsay Thomas.

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 third-year PhD student and the 2022-2023 UGrow Fellow at the UM Center for Humanities. She has presented at conferences such as the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) and the University of Kent’s MEMS Festival. She has forthcoming presentations at the Sixteenth Century Society Conference and the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA). She has also served as a research assistant for the Archive of Biographical Writings in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (ArchBio) and is a recipient of a Digital Humanities Graduate Fellowship. She is co-director of the Early Modern Care project. Website: clairerichie.com

Qualifying Exams Committee: Jessica Rosenberg (chair), Pamela Hammons, Tassie Gwilliam

Fields: Early Modern and Medieval Studies, Witchcraft, Early Modern Literature, Digital Humanities

Degrees(s): BA (English), Universidade Estadual do Ceará (Fortaleza, Brazil)

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.

Dissertation Committee: Marlon Moore (Chair), Patricia Saunders, Brenna Munro, Terri Francis (Outside Reader)

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 committee: Joel Nickels (chair), John Funchion, Catherine Judd, Kelsey Squire, and Lindsay Thomas

Fields: Early Modern and Medieval Studies, Monster Theory, Psychoanalytic Studies, Digital Humanities

Degrees(s): BA (English), University of Florida; BS (Psychology), University of Florida; MA (English), University of Miami

Kathryn Elizabeth Sanford  (email) is a third-year PhD student of English literature. She currently serves as the 2022-2023 Co-Chair of the English Graduate Organization (EGO). She previously worked as an instructor of Writing Studies, but now serves as Administrative Assistant to the New Chaucer Society. Focusing on medieval and early modern literature, she is primarily interested in utilizing psychoanalytic approaches— namely trauma theory— to dissect narratives of the monstrous. In her future research, she intends to explore how monstrous elements impact romantic narratives in medieval literature.

Dissertation: “All monarchs I hate, and the thrones they sit on”: Libertine Performance, the Diseased Body Politic, and the Rise of Empire from Rochester to Defoe

Fields: Restoration and 18th-century English Literature; early modern studies; comparative global history of colonialism and empire; gender, sexuality, and disability studies; plagues and pandemics; Caribbean studies; Florida history; Puritanism, witchcraft, and the occult; English Civil War and the Age of Revolutions 1650-1850; Romantics, special collections

Degree(s): B.A. magna cum laude (English, honors), B.A. magna cum laude (History) Rutgers University; M.A. (English) University of Miami

Daniel Scherwatzky  (email)  is a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate and scholar of 17th & 18th-century English literature whose current research is focused on the works of John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester and Daniel Defoe. His scholarly interests include libertinism, the intersections of sexuality and politics, global colonial history, the cultures of Florida and the Caribbean, disability studies, Romanticism, and the history of witchcraft and the occult. He also has professional experience in academic libraries, working with rare books and archival materials, including Richter Library’s Cuban Heritage Collection and Florida International University’s Miami Metropolitan Archive. He was a fellow of the JET (Japan Exchange Teaching) Program for two years in Hino, Tokyo, Japan. He holds a B.A. magna cum laude from Rutgers University in English Literature & History and an M.A. from the University of Miami in English Literature.

Dissertation committee: John Paul Russo (chair), Tassie Gwilliam, Catherine Judd

Fields: Seriality Studies, Media Studies, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Digital Humanities, Cultural Studies, Contemporary US Literature.

Degree(s): BA (English), Florida International University

Michael Soriano (email) is a second-year PhD student and 2022-2023 Treasurer of the English Graduate Organization (EGO). Michael is also a Community Leader and Organizer for the 2022-2023 UM Digital Humanities Research Institute (DHRI).

Fields: Caribbean Studies, Ecocriticism, Contemporary Literature, Science and Literature, Digital Humanities

Degree(s): BA (English), University of Miami

Rebecca Vargas  (email) is a second-year PhD student with current research intrests in the intersection between humanities and STEM fields (Biology, Ecology) in interpreting human embodiment in the natural world, with a specific focus on Florida and the Caribbean. They also have an accompanying interest in digital communities and how the formation thereof foster differing ideas of embodiment connected to expanding perceptions of taboo and monstrosity.