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Graduate Students

Jonathan Basile

jbasile@emory.edu

Education: BA, English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University

Major Interests: Deconstruction, Modernist Literature, Irony, Science and Technology Studies, Evolutionary Theory

Working Languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek

Publications: Tar for Mortar: "The Library of Babel" and the Dream of Totality (book), "Misreading Generalised Writing: From Foucault to Speculative Realism and New Materialism", Oxford Literary Review, 40(1), pp. 20–37

jonathanbasile.info

Natalie Catasús

n.catasus@emory.edu

Education:

M.A. Visual & Critical Studies, California College of the Arts, 2015
M.F.A. Writing (Poetry), California College of the Arts, 2015
B.A. (Hons.) Literature / Spanish Language & Culture, New College of Florida, 2011

Major Interests: Cuban and Caribbean literature and visual culture; postcolonial theory; poetry and poetics; oral history; migration studies; trauma and memory studies; pedagogy

Working Languages: English, Spanish, French

Select Publications: Flight, Volumes Volumes Press (2017); Poems in Tupelo Quarterly (2017), VOLT (2016), Denver Quarterly (2015), and Jai-Alai Magazine (2013)

Amir Hussain

Education:
Dissertation Research Exchange, Freie Universität Berlin
DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Intensive Language Study, Universität Leipzig
M.F.A. Creative Writing, Related Area in Cultural Studies, University of Minnesota
B.A. Environmental Studies and English Writing, Minor in Geology, University of Pittsburgh
Major Interests:
Nineteenth and twentieth century poetry, comparative poetics, historical materialism, cultural theory
Working Languages:
English, German, Russian 
Select Poetry Publications:
“Great Blue Whale,” “Questions from a Child,” “The Giant Fish,” Prism Review (2019); “Seagulls,” Grist (2017); “Meditation on Amber,” “The Wharf Boy,” Mizna (2015); “After Hours,” Fugue (2013); “Toasts,” Water~Stone Review (2012); “Hour Poem,” Faultline: Journal of Arts and Letters (2011); “Night Poem,” Beloit Poetry Journal (2010)
Dissertation Project:
My dissertation, “Poetries of the Past: Constellating Tensions in Oscar Wilde, Muriel Rukeyser, and Bertolt Brecht,” is a comparative study of poetry that crosses national and linguistic borders. I analyze the tensions of “lyrical ballads” (William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads) as a form of modern poetry that articulates the experiences of the socially marginalized and I investigate the place of this mixed form as modernist poetry. Drawing influence from Wilhelm Dilthey’s view that poetry in modern times is one of multiple modes of interpreting experience and of “viewing the world” (Poetry and Experience), my project is interested in proliferating the ways in which lyrical ballads can be approached and understood. I therefore combine close reading with historical interpretation as well as the analysis of English and German languages in poetry in order to develop a multifaceted and comparative reading of modern lyrical ballads.

Tiara Jackson

tiara.raven.marie.jackson@emory.edu

Education: B.A. Psychology and Multicultural Trauma, Mills College '15

Major Interests: Black Feminists Theory and Psychoanalysis. Black spirituality, performance, and cultural production as an insistence on everyday living despite the looming presence of Black Death.

Working Languages: English, French, Spanish

Andrew Kaplan

arkapl2@emory.edu

Education:
MA English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
BA (Hons.) English, State University of New York at Oswego

Major Interests:
African-American Expressive Culture, Afro-Pessimism, Radical Black Feminism, Black Nihilism, Black & Political Theology, Continental Philosophy (of Religion), Agamben, (Lacanian) Psychoanalysis, Literary Theories, Literary Modernisms, Film & TV, (Black) Anarchist Theory

Project Description:
My project posits and develops "the Black messianic" as 1) a paradigm of allegorical reading that excavates the politico-theological signatures of anti-/Blackness; in order to 2) speculatively build a way for non-Blacks to radically divest from Humanity and the World in fidelity to, as Frank B. Wilderson III puts it, Blacks' invitation to (learn the steps to) the dance of social death; which is pursued 3) in the name of gratuitous messianic freedom--or, in Jared Sexton's words, "the landless inhabitation of selfless existence."

Working Languages:
English, French

Publications:

"Notes Toward (Inhabiting) the Black Messianic in Afro-pessimism's Apocalyptic Thought," The Comparatist Vol. 43 (2019): 68-89.

"The Apocalyptic Tabula Rasa of Black Messianic Invention: Black Faith and Pure Means in Fanonism’s Insurrectionist Christo-Fiction," Oraxiom: A Journal of Non-Philosophy Vol. 1.1 (2020): 105-121.

"Global Anthropogenesis and the Black Messianic Animal, or Relation’s Ban of Contact with the Ruptured Flesh of the Earth," The New Polis (2020):

https://thenewpolis.com/2020/09/09/global-anthropogenesis-and-the-black-messianic-animal-or-relations-ban-of-contact-with-the-ruptured-flesh-of-the-earth-andrew-santana-kaplan/?preview=true&_thumbnail_id=2271

https://emory.academia.edu/andrewsantanakaplan

Joe Larios

joe.m.larios@emory.edu

Education:
M.A. Philosophy, Louisiana State University
A.B. Modern Culture & Media, Brown University

Major Interests:
Environmental ethics and politics, eco-phenomenology, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, feminism

Working Languages:
English, Spanish, French, German

Publications:
"Bringing Levinas Down to Earth: A Jonasian Reading of the Face," Environmental Philosophy 15.2 (2018): 295-316.
"Levinas and the Problem of Predation: From Fraternity to Kinship." SubStance 48.1 (2019): 26-41.
“Levinas and the Primacy of the Human.” Ethics and the Environment 24, no. 2 (2019): 1-22.

Francisco (Cisco) Lopez

francisco.lopez@emory.edu

Education: B.A. in Philosophy and English, Florida International University (2018). Certificate in Exile Studies, Florida International University (2018).

Major Interests: deconstruction, cultural studies, phenomenology, embodiment, postcolonial theory, affect theory

Working Languages: English, Spanish, French

Isabelle Meyer-Ensass

isabelle.meyer-ensass@emory.edu

Education: M.A. Literature in a World Context, University of Aberdeen, Scotland

Major Interests:
Deconstruction (i.e. Blanchot and Nancy), gender ontology (i.e. genderqueerness), aesthetics, visual- and performance studies (i.e. drag, fashion and photography), psychoanalysis, 19th-20th century German- and French Literature, trauma and disability

Working Languages:
English, German, French

Dez Miller

dez.miller@emory.edu

Education:

B.A. French and Creative Writing, New York University, 2011
M.S.W. (Health Policy), Washington University in St. Louis, 2016
M.F.A. Writing (Fiction), Boston University, 2019

Major Interests: eco-criticism and ecological theories, queer theory, postcolonialism, questions of relatedness and kinship, contemporary literature, late Victorian literature

Working Languages: English, French, Spanish

dezmediah.com

Brendan Moore

btmoore@emory.edu

Education: B.A. (Hons.), French and English, Coe College

Major Interests: Psychoanalysis, feminist theory, queer theory, Francophone literature, 19th and 20th century French literature, literatures of the Americas, HIV/AIDS and literatures of disease and contamination.

Working Languages: French, Spanish

Eric Flohr Reynolds

Eric.Flohr.Reynolds@emory.edu

Education:

M.A. Philosophy, New School for Social Research, 2014
B.A. Philosophy, George Mason University, 2012

Major Interests: 19th and 20th Century Continental Philosophy, Hermeneutics, Critical Theory, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, Technology and Media Theory, the Ethics of Aesthetics and the Aesthetics of Ethics

Working Languages: English, German

Melinda Robb

melinda.robb@emory.edu

Education: BA (Hons.) English and Contemporary Studies, University of King’s College (2010); Certificate from Psychoanalytic Core Program, Emory University Psychoanalytic Institute (2018)

Major Interests: 20th and 21st century theory and literature; queer theory; queer/women’s memoir; autotheory; psychoanalysis (clinical and theoretical); literatures of the Americas; world literatures; modernism; feminist theory

Thesis Project & Title: “Because I Said So: Idiomatic Insistence and Queer, Feminist Refusal in Woolf, Philip, Nelson, and Lispector”

Working Languages: French, Spanish, German

Violeta Ruiz Espigares

vruizes@emory.edu

Education: B.A. Philosophy/German, Grinnell College, 2015.

Major Interests: Psychoanalysis and deconstruction; Early Modern Spanish literature, religion, and surveillance, especially the figure of the marrano and secrets; and the element of blood and its effects in law, philosophy, and literature. 

Working Languages: Spanish, French, German, Latin

Agnes Sastre-Rivera

agnes.sastre-rivera@emory.edu

Education: BA, English Literature with a Certification in Women and Gender Studies, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, 2020.

Major Interests: Puerto Rican and Lesser Antillean Literature, decolonial theory, poetry and non-fiction, trauma and memory studies, creative writing, queer/cuir and gender studies, intersectional feminism, and national discourses.

Working Languages: English, Spanish

Select Publications:

“The Negotiations of a Puerto Rican in (Trans)It: An Exploration of the Journey Through Spaces and Those In-between in lo terciario/ the tertiary by Raquel Salas Rivera.” Caribbean Without Borders: Voices of Change and Resistance. Accepted for publication on July 10, 2020.

“Christian Doctrine, Homosexuality, and Trauma in H. Nigel Thomas' Return to Arcadia.” 2020 Caribbean Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Accepted for publication on June 27, 2020.

“La Labor De Nombrar La Nostalgia: sobre La Distancia es un Lugar de Amanda Hernandez.” Low-Fi Ardentía- Revista De Poesía, 28 Apr. 2020, https://lowfiardentia.com/2020/04/28/la-labor-de-nombrar-la-nostalgia-sobre-la-distancia-es-un-lugar-de-amanda-hernandez/ 

“Lo Absurdo de Ser Una Colonia En El Siglo XXI: La Exploración Del Valor En lo terciario/the tertiary De Raquel Salas Rivera.” Cruce: Crítica Sociocultural Contemporánea, 10 May 2019, pp. 43–47. https://issuu.com/revistacruce/docs/ser_colonia_10_mayo/42

Abigail (Abby) Scribner

ascribn@emory.edu

Education: BA, English and Modern Languages, Kenyon College, 2013

Major Interests: Victorian novels, Foucault, Benjamin, liberalism, subjectivity, interiority, moralism, Marxism, feminist theory, anti-capitalist thought

Working Languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian

Dissertation Title: Robots, Corpses, and Plants: Subjectivity and its Alternatives in the 19th-Century Novel

Publications:

"Liberalism and Inner Life: The Curious Cases of Mansfield Park and Villette," Novel: A Forum on Fiction 53.3 (Forthcoming, November 2020)

Federica Signorini

federica.signorini@emory.edu

Education:

B.A. (Hons) English Literature and American Studies, University of Manchester (UK), 2014
M.A. Post-1900 Literature, Theory and Culture, University of Manchester (UK), 2015

Major Interests:

Contemporary and Twentieth-Century literature, photography and visual art in Europe and Latin America produced by women. Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction, Political Theory, Feminist Studies and Queer Theory.

Working Languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian