The graduate students awarded Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships--Wes Burdine (photo, right), Andrew Marzoni, Michael Rowe, and Benjamin Utter--are researching a wide range of topics: from the literary impact of believing in ghosts to anxious American writers post-WW II. What they share, now, is a year of financial support to finish those final chapters, without needing to plan lessons or grade papers.The strong showing of English nominees--a four of four sweep--comes during a period of historically high program application numbers. In the words of Director of Graduate Studies Katherine Scheil, "This (likely) unprecedented good fortune is a clear testament to the strength of our graduate program and to the important and compelling work that our students have undertaken."
Wes Burdine, whose dissertation title is "'What Was It?': Phenomenal Bodies and Temporality, 1850-1925," is exploring an era when many intellectuals, including literary writers, believed in ghosts and in communication with the dead. This belief of course affected how these modern writers thought about time. "I juxtapose fin de siècle novels and psychical research to understand the ways in which they theorize the human self and its engagement with temporality," Burdine describes. Under the direction of advisers Jani Scandua and Tony C. Brown, he is surveying such authors as Marcel Proust, Charlotte Anne Moberly, Bram Stoker, and William James.
Andrew Marzoni is working on a dissertation, "In the American Vein," focused on American writers between 1945 and 1975 as they competed for audiences distracted by electronic media: radio, TV, and film. Filmmakers faced a similar challenge, as film conventions became codified. Both had to, in Marzoni's words, "rethink their role as artists" by exploding boundaries and reinventing form. Marzoni is advised by professors Siobhan Craig and Maria Damon.
Michael Rowe, advised by Lois Cucullu, argues that the issues of ecological science were presciently recognized in turn-of-the-century literary narratives in his dissertation "Weird Ecology: The Lives of Literary Creatures, 1900-1940." Rowe explains: "I'm most interested in the ways that writers like Jack London, Djuna Barnes, and H.P. Lovecraft obsessed over the nature of animal consciousness and yet ended up talking about ecology in a very contemporary-feeling way: humans are no longer on top, surveying all they (supposedly) command."
Meanwhile, Benjamin Utter travels much further back, to the late middle-ages, to ponder the effects of theology on secular literature, specifically in terms of heroes. His dissertation "Imperfection: Heroism, Sanctity, and the Self in Late-Medieval English Literature" finds biblical or saintly models for such heroes as Sir Galahad and Robin Hood (who made his first literary appearance in the 1300s!). "I suggest that saintly exemplarity yields a complex mode of heroism," he relates, "one that strives toward a transcendent unity yet derives its energy from a sense of fragmentation, inner struggle, and displacement."
Advised by Rebecca Krug, Utter also hopes to finish some side projects, such as articles and book chapters--as do others of this accomplished quartet. They've got the time, thanks to their winning scholarship.
Click here for more news about PhD candidates.
