Lauren Cooper Defense Date: April 18, 2024
Title: “Climate Justice Before the Anthropocene: How Inclement Weather Shaped British and Irish Romanticism”
Advisor: Mike Goode
Committee Members: Crystal Bartolovich and Coran Klaver
Oral Examination Chair: Romita Ray, Arts and Music Histories

Flor Lauria Defense Date: April 12, 2024
Title: “Turbulent Landscapes: Reading the Borders of Contemporary Latinx and Indigenous Literatures”
Advisor: Crystal Bartolovich
Committee Members: Scott Manning Stevens, Silvio Torres-Saillant, and Ethan Madarieta
Oral Examination Chair: Danika Medak-Saltzman, Women & Gender Studies

Alexandra O’Connell Defense Date: April 9, 2024
Title: “Pained Subjects: Self-harm, Sexual Health, and US Citizenship”
Advisor: Carol Fadda
Committee Members: Susan Edmunds, Dorri Beam, Chris Eng (Washington University in St. Louis)
Oral Examination Chair: Michael Gill, School of Education

Rachael Snyder Defense Date: December 15, 2023
Title: “Liberalism and Feminist Political Thought in U.S. Women’s Suffrage Fiction, 1856-1891”
Advisor: Dorri Beam
Committee Members: Susan Edmunds and Patty Roylance
Oral Examination Chair: Carol Faulkner, History Department

Elizabeth Gleesing Defense Date: April 17, 2023
Title: “Second-Person Surveillance: Politics of User Implication in Digital Documentaries”
Advisor: Roger Hallas
Committee Members: Carol W.N. Fadda and Christopher Hanson
Oral Examination Chair: Kendall R. Phillips, Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies

Evan Hixon Defense Date: May 10, 2022
Title: “Hell’s Black Intelligencers; Representing Clandestine Labor on the Early Modern Stage”
Advisor: Stephanie Shirilan
Committee Members: Dympna Callaghan, Crystal Bartolovich, Patricia Roylance, and Elizabeth Rivlin (English Department, Clemson University)
Oral Examination Chair: Brian Brege, History Department

Maxwell Cassity Defense Date: August 9, 2022
Title: "Novel Epidemics: Contagion and Metaphor in US Literature"
Advisor: Susan Edmunds
Committee Members: Carol W.N. Fadda, Harvey Teres, Chris Eng (Washington University in St. Louis), and Chris Forster
Oral Examination Chair: Beth Ferri, Inclusive Education and Disability Studies

Johnathan Sanders Defense Date: February 4, 2022
Title: “Play the Book Again": Towards a Systems Approach to Literary Game Adaptations
Advisor: Chris Hanson
Committee Members: Mike Goode, Will Scheibel, Chris Forster and Julie Grossman, Le Moyne College (Departments of English and Communication and Film Studies)
Oral Examination Chair: Kendall Phillips, Communication & Rhetorical Studies

Ashley "Aley" O'Mara Defense Date: August 19, 2021
Title: “Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither”: Asexuality in Early-Modern Literature”
Advisor: Dympna Callaghan
Committee Members: Stephanie Shirilan, Scott Stevens, Crystal Bartolovich, Patty Roylance and Liza Blake (Department of English & Drama, University of Toronto)
Oral Examination Chair: Amanda Eubanks Winkler, Art and Music Histories

Ruma Sinha Defense Date: August 17, 2021
Title: “Dalit Women, Anti-Caste Aesthetics, and the Politics of Representation”
Advisor: Crystal Bartolovich
Committee members: Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Women’s and Gender Studies, Manan Desai (University of Michigan), Carol W.N. Fadda and Himika Bhattacharya (Women’s and Gender Studies)
Oral Examination Chair: Tula Goenka, S.I. Newhouse

Haejoo Kim Defense Date: May 17, 2021
Title: “Medical Liberty and Alternative Health Practices in Nineteenth-Century Britain”
Advisor: Coran Klaver
Committee members: Mike Goode, Rebecca Garden(SUNY Upstate University), Dorri Beam, Patricia Roylance
Oral Examination Chair: Lois Agnew, Associate Dean of Curriculum Innovation and Pedagogy

Christopher Barnes Defense Date: April 8, 2020
Title: "Prison Sights: Carceral Counter-Visions in Documentary Film"
Advisor: Roger Hallas
Committee Members: Carol Fadda, Chris Hanson, Will Scheibel, and Rachel Hall, Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies
Oral Examination Chair: Robin Lee Riley, Department of Women and Gender Studies

Adam Kozaczka Defense Date: April 11, 2019
Title: "Romantic Legalism"
Co-Advisors: Mike Good and Erin Mackie
Committee Members: Coran Klaver, Dympna Callaghan and Scott Stevens
Oral Examination Chair: William Robert, Department of Religion

Thomas West III
Defense Date: April 6, 2018
Title: "History's Perilous Pleasures: Experiencing Antiquity in the Postwar Hollywood Epic"
Co-Advisors: Roger Hallas and Steven Cohen
Committee Members: Mike Goode, Carol Fadda-Conrey, L. Kirsten Day (Classical Department, Augustana College)
Oral Examination Chair: M. Gail Hamner (Department of Religion)

Melissa Welshans
Defense Date: December 4, 2017
Title: “Wifely Figures: Gender, Marriage, and Biblical Typology in Early Modern England”
Advisor: Crystal Bartolovich
Committee Members: Dympna Callaghan, Stephanie Shirilan, Patricia Roylance and Jennifer Higginbotham (The Ohio State University)
Oral Examination Chair: Amanda Eubanks-Winkler (Department of Art and Music Histories)

Staci Stutsman
Defense Date: July 13, 2017
Title: “Transgressive Tears: Performance and the Melodramatic Unruly Woman”
Advisor: Steven Cohan; Co-Advisor: Roger Hallas
Committee Members: Carol Fadda-Conrey, Christopher Hanson, Steven Cohan, and Dorit Naaman (Queen’s University)
Oral Examination Chair: Kendall Phillips (Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies)

Sarah Barkin
Defense Date: April 6, 2017
Title: “The Civil Contract of Documentary: Israel, Palestine, and the Political Aesthetics of Intersubjective Witnessing, 2000-2017”
Advisor: Roger Hallas
Committee Members: Carol Fadda-Conrey, Christopher Hanson, Steven Cohan, and Dorit Naaman (Queen’s University)
Oral Examination Chair: Robin Riley (Women's and Gender Studies)

Lindsey Decker
Defense Date: May 10, 2016
Title: “Transnational Genre Hybridity and the British Horror Film, 2002-2012”
Advisor: Roger Hallas
Committee Members: Steven Cohan, Kendall Phillips (Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies; Office of Global Studies), Linnie Blake (Manchester Metropolitan University), and Christopher Hanson
Oral Examination Chair: M. Gail Hamner (Department of Religion)

Peter Katz
Defense Date: August 19, 2015
Title: “Reading Bodies: Associationism, Empathy, and the Ethics of Sensation in Victorian Fiction”
Advisor: Coran Klaver
Committee Members: Kevin Morrison, Patricia Roylance, Mike Goode and M. Gail Hamner (Department of Religion)
Oral Examination Chair: Amy Criss (Department of Psychology)

Steven Doles
Defense Date: November 20, 2014
Title: “Assertive Fictions: Arguments and Audiences of the Postwar Social Problem Film, 1944-1954”
Co-Advisors: Roger Hallas and Steven Cohan
Committee Members: Chris Hanson, Susan Edmunds, and Crystal Bartolovich
Oral Examination Chair: M. Gail Hamner (Department of Religion)

Corey (C.J.) Dosch
Defense Date: July 28, 2014
Title: “Paradoxically Progressive: The Red Progressives and the Creation of a Modern Native American Subjectivity”
Co-Advisors: Susan Edmunds and Scott Lyons (University of Michigan)
Committee Members: Patricia Roylance, Scott Stevens (North American Studies Program) and Dorri Beam
Oral Examination Chair: Carol Faulkner (Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs)

Auritro Majumder
Defense Date: June 6, 2014
Title: “Insurgent Imaginations: Culture, Postcolonial Planetarity and Maoism in India”
Advisor:  Crystal Bartolovich
Committee Members:  Subho Basu (Department of History), Manan Desai, Susan Edmunds, and Carol Fadda-Conrey
Oral Examination Chair: Romita Ray (Department of Art & Music Histories)

Rinku Chatterjee
Defense Date: December 6, 2013
Title: “Peripheral Knowledge: The Witch, The Magus, and the Mountebank on the Early Modern Stage”
Advisor: Dympna Callaghan
Committee: Crystal Bartolovich, Erin Mackie, Stephanie Shirilan, and Patricia Roylance
Oral Examination Chair: Amanda Eubanks Winkler (Music History and Cultures)

Gohar Siddiqui
Defense Date: September 24, 2013
Title: “Déjà Viewed: Nation, Gender, and Genre in Bollywood Remakes of Hollywood Cinema”
Advisor: Steven Cohan
Committee Members: Roger Hallas, Coran Klaver, Tejaswini Ganti (New York University), and Chris Hanson
Oral Examination Chair: Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Women’s and Gender Studies)

Sandeep Banerjee
Defense Date: May 13, 2013
Title: “Landscaping India: From Colony to Postcolony”
Co-Advisors: Crystal Bartolovich and Don Mitchell (Department of Geography)
Committee Members: Kevin Morrison, Subho Basu (Department of History), and Manan Desai
Oral Examination Chair: Susan Wadley (Department of Anthropology)

Elizabeth Stearns
Defense Date: April 1, 2013
Title: “Jailbreakers, Villains, and Vampires: Representations of Criminality in Early-Victorian Popular Texts”
Co-Advisors: Erin Mackie and Mike Goode
Committee Members: Kevin Morrison, Coran Klaver, and Susan Edmunds
Oral Examination Chair: Carol Faulkner (Department of History)

Soumitree Gupta
Defense Date:  January 29, 2013
Title:  “Coming Home: Mobile Women, Non-Linear Temporality, South Asian Diasporic Texts”
Co-Advisors: Susan Edmunds and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Women’s and Gender Studies)
Committee Members: Roger Hallas, Gayatri Gopinath (New York University) and Carol Fadda-Conrey
Oral Examination Chair: Jacqueline Cuevas (Women’s and Gender Studies)

Jessica Kuskey
Defense Date:  October 24, 2012
Title: “The Body Machinic: Technology, Labor, and Mechanized Bodies in Victorian Culture”
Advisor: Coran Klaver
Committee Members: Mike Goode, Kevin Morrison, Chris Forster, and Erin Mackie
Oral Examination Chair: Jacqueline Orr (Department of Sociology)

Tanushree Ghosh
Defense Date: July 15, 2011
Title: “Guilty Looks: The Pain and Pleasures of Liberal Reform in Late-Victorian Britain”
Co-Advisors: Mike Goode and Linda Shires
Committee: Roger Hallas, Kevin Morrison, and Asma Abbas
Oral Examination Chair: Carol Faulkner (Department of History)

Cristina Stasia
Defense Date: April 29, 2011
Title: “Heroine Abuse: Feminism, Femininity and the Female Action Hero”
Advisor: Steven Cohan
Committee: Roger Hallas, Coran Klaver, Susan Edmunds, and Chris Hanson
Oral Examination Chair: Susan Wadley (Department of Anthropology)

Obiwu Iwuanyanwu
Defense Date: April 20, 2011
Title: “In the Name of the Father: Lacanian Reading of Four White South African Writers”
Advisor: Silvio Torres-Saillant
Committee: Michael Echeruo, Cecil Abrahams (Fairleigh Dickinson University), Susan Edmunds, and Gregg Lambert (Humanities)
Oral Examination Chair:  Karl Solibakke (Arts and Sciences)

Rachel Collins
Defense Date: July 1, 2010
Title: “Toward a Literary Geography: Space and Social Consquences in U.S. Literature, 1900-1920”
Co-Advisors: Susan Edmunds and Amy Lang
Committee: Coran Klaver, Silvio Torres-Saillant, and Don Mitchell (Department of Geography)
Oral Examination Chair: Gerald Greenberg (Arts and Sciences)

Michael Dwyer
Defense Date: June 28, 2010
Title: “Back to the Fifties: Pop Nostalgia in the Reagan Era"
Advisor: Steven Cohan
Committee: Susan Edmunds, Roger Hallas, Patricia Roylance, and Jane Feuer (University of Pittsburgh)
Oral Examination Chair: Susan Wadley (Arts and Sciences)

Jonathan Singleton
Defense Date: April 5, 2010
Title: “Biblical Quotation in the Victorian Novel” 
Co-Advisors: Michael Goode and Linda Shires
Committee: Erin Mackie, Coran Klaver, and James Watts (Department of Religion)
Oral Examination Chair: Patricia Cox Miller (Department of Religion)

Dawn Lausa
Defense Date: March 16, 2009
Title: “Descartes' Daughters: Thinking-Machines and the Emergence of Posthuman Complexity” 
Advisor: Gregg Lambert
Committee: Donald Morton, Branka Arsic, Martha Gail Hamner (Department of Religion), Gregory Thomas
Oral Examination Chair: Gerald Greenberg (Associate Dean, Arts and Sciences)

Nandini Sengupta
Defense Date: April 15, 2009
Title: “Representations of Colonial Intimacy in Anglo-Indian Narratives” 
Advisor: Coran Klaver
Committee: Romita Ray, Amy Aisen Elouafi, Carol Fadda-Conrey, and Michael Goode
Oral Examination Chair: Ann Grodzins Gold (Department of Religion)

Sarah Russo
Defense Date: April 22, 2008
Title: “Women's Self-Writing and Medical Science: Harriet Martineau, Charlotte Bronte, Harriet Jacobs, and Elizabeth Stoddard”
Co-Advisors: Linda Shires and Amy Lang
Committee: Coran Klaver, Susan Edmunds, Patty Roylance
Oral Examination Chair: Pat Miller (Department of Religion)