Current Students
Hannah Allford
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Hannah is currently an Instructor of English at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, N.C., where she teaches critical literacy, composition, early British literature, and an English studies introductory course. Currently, her research interests include late-nineteenth century British literature, gender anxiety, and feminist and queer theories. Connect with her on Twitter.
D'An Knowles Ball
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D'An Knowles Ball is a PhD candidate examining rhetorical sensory affordances and UX/UI engagements that arise in immersive virtual environments. As a communications and digital design professional and instructor, she is primarily focused in visual/virtual rhetoric, new media research methodologies, game studies, aesthetic theory, and material-semiotic networks. Connect with her on Twitter.
Namrata Bhadania
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Namrata Ashvin Bhadania is a full time PhD student at Old Dominion University. Her research interests include rhetoric of health and medicine, digital humanities, gender and media studies, feminist methodologies, rhetoric of identiry, cultural studies and comparative studies. She is examining the epistemological and ontological rhetorical issues of women and gender, especially marginalized women going through psychological and physical risks of cultural practices.
Matthew Bodie
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Matthew serves as Executive Director of Learning Resources at St. Petersburg College (SPC) in Florida. He also teaches courses in English Composition, Language Arts Education, Humanities, and Computer and Information Studies at SPC and University of South Florida. Currently a PhD candidate with concentrations in rhetoric, writing, and discourse studies and a student-designed path in curriculum and instruction, Matthew's research focuses on the internal rhetoric and influence of writing center administrators within the greater academy, especially as associated with program assessment and resource funding. You can connect with Matthew on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Constance Bracewell
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Constance is a native of North Carolina and hold an M.A. in English from Appalachian State University and an M.Ed. in Adult Training and Development from NC State University. She has previously completed 111 hours in coursework and dissertation hours in the PhD program in Literature with the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on situating American Indian literature as a literature of diaspora and a telling counterpoint to the trajectory of ideals of American Exceptionalism. She focuses mainly on the works of Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, and other contemporary fiction authors, but she also dabbles with early American Indian texts and the early American literary canon, American nature writing, and American Indian ecological writing. As a writing teacher, she is interested in stretch/WAC writing and digitally-enhanced approaches to student writing. Visit her website here.
Yannel Celestrin
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Yannel has worked as an instructor at Florida International University, Tidewater Community College, and Old Dominion University. Originally from Miami, Florida, she obtained her BA and MA from FIU in English literature, where she studied postcolonial traditions of rewriting within Francophone Caribbean literature. At ODU, her concentrations are in Literary & Cultural Studies and Rhetoric & Composition. Her research interests include multilingualism/language, politics of translation, intergenerational/historical trauma, archival studies, tensions between memory and historiography, and the politics of cultural identities and citizenship experienced by members/descendants of the Hispanophone Caribbean. Visit her website here.
Macey Lauren Coldiron
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Lauren is a full time PhD student at Old Dominion University. She holds both a Bachelors and a Masters of Arts in English from Appalachian State University in North Carolina. Her areas of academic research include writing program administration and critical diversity and representation in writing curricula. For her PhD, Lauren's areas of concentration are Rhetoric/Composition and Literary/Cultural Studies. Visit her website here.
Rebecca Coleman
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Rebecca is a tenured English professor at Mt. San Jacinto College, a mid-sized community college in Southern California. She teaches a range of courses from college composition to Honors English literature. With keen interests in epistemology (particularly pragmatism) and censorship, Rebecca is exploring the intersections between rhetoric and composition, technical writing, English literature from the medieval period through the long 18th century, and post-secondary English education, particularly in relation to curriculum design.
Bruce Craft
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Bruce A. Craft is an Instructor of English at Southeastern Louisiana University and a backyard chicken farmer. He holds degrees from Tulane, Northwestern State, and LSU. At ODU, his doctoral concentrations are Literary & Cultural Studies and Technology/New Media. His research interests are Southern literature and culture, Grit Lit, digital ethnography, and the intersection between literature and philosophy. Bruce is currently researching how contemporary digital spaces of the New South (re)appropriate past cultural artifacts. Bruce also studies the Louisiana Redbones and the Melungeons of Appalachia. Bruce and his wife enjoy kayaking, fishing, and spending time in the south Louisiana marsh.
Cristina De Leon-Menjivar
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Cristina's research centers on the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM); specifically, she looks at how rhetoric helps us understand the perceptions and treatment of people with chronic illness. She got into the field through her own experiences dealing with chronic illnesses, most of which are considered autoimmune conditions. Using this experience, plus her training in rhetoric, she looks to piece together how patients, providers, and caregivers can improve communication for better health outcomes. Notably, she leans on scholarship in ancient Greek and Roman medicine to help her better understand today's conversations and issues. Her work has appeared in Hispanic Healthcare International, and she has a forthcoming article in Constellations: a Cultural Rhetorics Publishing Space. Connect with Cristina on her Instagram account: @thespoonierhetor.
Amy Flessert
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Amy is a part-time PhD student concentrating on rhetoric and media studies, while also working as a full time assistant professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College. Her foremost research interest includes the intersection of ESL language speakers in the college composition classroom and how to best help these students succeed at college writing tasks. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
Dana Gavin
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Dana is a PhD candidate at Old Dominion University, and an adjunct at colleges in the Hudson Valley of New York. Her research focuses on the human/non-human assemblages embedded in the developing print culture in Victorian England. She is working on digital projects to enhance her research in these areas, with the goal of making those projects accessible to the public. She also invested in feminist rhetoric, media depictions of masculinity, and popular culture. Visit her website here and connect with her on Twitter.
Nicole Hancock
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Nicole is a PhD candidate interested in pragmatic research for community college teacher-scholar-activists. She teaches basic writing, first-year composition, and Shakespeare at Southwestern Illinois College. Her dissertation research focuses on placement assessment reform; she is interested in basic writing reform and meeting the needs of community college students, in all of their splendid variety. Connect with her on Twitter.
A Lorean Hartness
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A Lorean Hartness is a PhD Candidate whose concentrations are Literature/Cultural Studies and Media Studies. Her research focuses the intersection between poetry and the postcolonial diaspora, using poetics to understand how contemporary transnational poets assert voice and agency as acts of resistance. Connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Colin D. Halloran
Colin D. Halloran is a U.S. Army veteran who documented his combat experiences in Afghanistan in his memoir-in-verse Shortly Thereafter, which won the 2012 Main Street Rag Poetry Books Award and was named a Massachusetts Must-Read Book. He has also published the poetry collections Icarian Flux and American Etiquette, along with many essays and short stories. When not writing, Halloran leads workshops that seek to promote personal and international healing and reconciliation through writing and the arts. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Fairfield University and is pursuing a PhD at Old Dominion University, concentrating in Literary and Cultural Studies & Rhetoric, Writing, and Discourse Studies.
Eman S. Hassan
Eman S. Hassan is a full-time high school English teacher from Howell, New Jersey. She is earning her PhD in English literature with an emphasis on literary & cultural studies and women's and gender studies. Eman is very interested in the way mankind is drawn to the concept of a broken heart in literature and what essential roles heartache and trauma can play in defining a work of literature. Eman also hopes to study the voices of marginalized women in twentieth and contemporary American literature.
Jaclyn Henegar
Jaclyn Henegar (she/her/hers) is a graduate assistant at ODU, where she works as the Assistant Director of English Assessment. Previously, she's worked in elementary education tutoring, customer service, animal care, and administrative coordinating. Jaclyn's concentrations are in literary/cultural studies and rhetoric/composition, and her primary areas of interest and research are in American Studies, with an emphasis in Native American/Indigenous Studies. Within this emphasis, she's interested in the exploration of weaponized whiteness, particularly in the context of white women, and monuments of "imaginary" or co-opted Native American figures and the culture work they do in enabling white Americans to "lay claim to the land" by making Native history their history. Jaclyn is also deeply passionate about writing center/freshman composition work and looks to couple her interests in a feasible way.
Ruth Annaliese Holmes
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Ruth is a PhD candidate who teaches composition and British literature at Lord Fairfax Community College. Her research interests include sociocultural influences on writing practices, author-reader relationships, print culture, the eighteenth-century British novel, and feminist and queer methodologies.
Travis Holt
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Travis Holt is an assistant professor of English at Liberty University and primarily teaches Basic Writing and American literature survey courses. He is a PhD candidate researching student agency formed by the use of composition textbooks, focusing on what factors contribute to this formation and what impact it has on pedagogy. At the conclusion of his PhD, he plans to stop asking questions such as "What did I get myself into?" and instead start asking "Why did I do that to myself?"
Angela Jacobs
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Angela currently works as an English educator at a public charter high school, where she teaches World literature, British literature, AP Literature and Composition, and Astronomy (writing-intensive course) in Brown Summit, NC. Her research interests include first-year composition, pedagogy, transfer, assessment, feminist methodologies (in particular Black feminism), and Victorian literature (in particular the Black British experience to include the 18th century).
Sarah Johnson
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Sarah is the Writing Program Administrator at a private K-12 school in Chattanooga, TN. Her research interests lie at the intersection of rhet/comp and pedagogy with a narrower focus on dual enrollment composition and identity constructs.
Jessica Kubiak
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Jessica Kubiak is an associate professor in the Language, Literature, and Writing program at the State University of New York's Jamestown Community College, where she teaches developmental coursework, honors coursework, first year composition, and literary and cultural studies. Her background in adult education, literacy, area studies, and experiential learning inspires her critical pedagogy and motivates her research on the violence of instruction in first year composition. Her work in the digital humanities informs her teaching and research as well, resulting in projects on crowdsourced digital compositions and on the roles of interface in reading. Though she lives on a small goat and chicken farm in rural western New York with no broadband access, she is an active mentor-from-afar to early practitioners via LinkedIn and tries to update her website regularly.
Terry Lovern
Terry Lovern is an adjunct instructor at Radford University in Southwest Virginia where he teaches first-year composition and literature. He is earning his PhD with concentrations in Literary & Cultural Studies and Rhetoric, Writing, & Discourse Studies. Terry's interests include Queer Studies, Comic Book Studies, Horror Studies, visual rhetoric, and creative writing. His current focus is queer representation in comics.
Sarah McGinley
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Sarah McGinley is a senior lecturer at Wright State University in Ohio. Her current work centers on how fans of Boys Love manga and anime use affective and acquisitive strategies to build community, form identity, and satisfy desire. Her research areas are fan fiction, male/male romance fiction, and Japanese pop culture in translation with a focus on gender and sexuality.
Bnar Mustafa
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Bnar Mustafa is a full-time Ph.D. student at Old Dominion University. Originally, she is from the Middle East 'Kurdistan'. Her concentrations are Literary and Cultural studies & Rhetoric, Writing, and Discourse Studies. Her research interests are "The challenges refugees face in learning English in the U.S. the consequences after they learn English on their well-being". She as a feminist researcher, specifically focusing on refugee Muslim women's issues on the Hampton Roads community. She has a Master in 'Humanities' and a 'Women's Certificate' at ODU. Currently, she is a tutor at the writing center at ODU.
Sana Sayed
Sana Sayed is a Senior Instructor in the Department of English at the American University of Sharjah (AUS), located in the United Arab Emirates. Prior to joining AUS, she taught composition courses as an adjunct instructor in Southern California. Her current areas of research interest include theories of assessment, accountability, equity, and pedagogy for multilingual learners in higher education institutes. Her areas of teaching interest are composition, rhetoric, and literature.
Rebecca Yearsley Signore
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Rebecca is a PhD student with a primary concentration in literary and cultural studies. Her research interests include graphic narratives as auto/biography; realism and modernism in American literature; and new materialism. As the Director of University Academic Success Initiatives at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Rebecca oversees services that support student learning and persistence. Her professional experiences in writing centers and academic support services inform her research on the rhetoric and discourse of student success in higher education. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
Julie Sorge Way
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Julie teaches British Literature and writing courses at James Madison University. Her research explores the evolving narrative of female identity in 19th and 20th-century women's periodicals and advice literature, digital humanities, critical making, and UX design in the archive. Visit her website here and connect with her on Twitter.
Rachel Willis
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Rachel Van Hofwegen Willis is an instructor of English in the Westover Honors College at the University of Lynchburg, teaching courses in composition, literature, and fun special topics like the cultural legacies of Sherlock Holmes or the ecologies of dystopian fiction. She is interested in the intersection of literature, rhetoric, and the culture industry, and her research interests include the digital humanities, violent masculinities, rhetoric and culture, and pedagogy.
Bethany L. C. Wilson
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A PhD candidate and high school assistant principal, Beth Wilson has used her dual focus on discourse studies and pedagogy to inform writing instruction, teacher professional development, and program administration at the K-12 level. Her dissertation examines the rhetorical roles of teachers in professional development, particularly the audience/rhetor shifts they make when using Twitter as an avenue for professional growth. Visit her website here.
Kim K. Hales
Kim K. Hales has been teaching English at the Roosevelt Campus of Utah State University since 2012, receiving a full-time appointment in 2015. Her courses emphasize community impact and interaction through writing. She is invested in all aspects of student development and progression, specializes in concurrent enrollment, and is proud of the level of community engagement students are exposed to in her courses. Kim is the most recent Editor-in-Chief of Utah State's Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence. She also serves on many committees including Utah State University's Strategic Enrollment Master Plan Committee and the Mentoring Committee. She is a member of the Faculty Senate and currently serves as the chair of the Faculty Evaluation Committee. Finally, as a member of the Department of English, she serves on the American Studies Committee. Kim is eager to engage in a Literature and Culture Studies emphasis at ODU and hopes to find interesting ways to use literature to teach composition as well as use composition to help students engage in their studies of literature.
Edward Mahoney
Edward Mahoney has been teaching English as an adjunct for five years in Southern California. Currently, he teaches at Pepperdine University, Azusa Pacific University, and College of the Desert. He mostly teaches first year composition courses but loves every opportunity to teach literature. Previously, Edward worked in mental health with group home children, which has influenced his research interests. Focusing on Literature and Cultural Studies and Rhetoric and Composition, his research interest examines representations of cultural trauma in literature, especially by second (and subsequent) generation trauma survivors. So far, Edward has explored second generation Jewish literature, African American literature, and Asian American literature. He is curious to work with Irish literature and American Southern literature.
Matthew H. Wood
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Matthew is a PhD student focusing on cultural studies. Their primary research area is popular culture in digital spaces, particularly internet and gaming communities. Matthew is also an educator with strengths in instructional technology, as well as a nationally certified counselor identified with narrative and existential theories. Visit their website here.
Dany Clem
Current research interests of Dany Clem (genderqueer, they/them pronouns) relate to equitable classroom design and discourse analysis. They enjoy survey building and assessment development, and they intend to use their degree to help their communities and underrepresented demographics. To that end, they plan to pursue feminist and activist rhetoric, disability studies, and digital writing at ODU.
Connie Diffenderfer
Connie Diffenderfer is an Instructor of English at Bushnell University in Eugene, Oregon where she teaches writing and literature classes. Her previous research has primarily considered the philosophical and theological discourse surrounding ideas of hospitality and how those ideas manifest themselves in modern and postmodern literature. Connie is interested in exploring several areas of literary criticism. The first centers around representations of motherhood: identity, agency, intersectionality, etc. While she feels most "at home" working within the Modernist era, she is also interested in a comparative analysis of representations of motherhood. The second employs the historical and social context of cemeteries as a method for literary criticism.
David Prihoda
David Prihoda is an adjunct English professor and writing specialist at two small colleges in Kansas. He teaches various writing and literature courses, but enjoys Protest Literature, Introduction to Literature and Film, and, most importantly, a class he designed from the ground up entitled Narrative in eSports. The final class listed is "most important" because it is a labor of love born of his earnest desire to integrate video game literature into the classroom. This interest led him to ODU. David is a passionate gamer with a specific interest in RPGs that investigate agency. Some of David's other hobbies/interests include Victorian literature, his wife's piano-noodling, Batman, parenthetical asides, and basketball. He is also a Fulbright scholar and burgeoning conference frequenter.
Tricia I. Thomas
Tricia I. Thomas began her journey as a student within the English PhD program at ODU Fall 2023. Her concentrations are Literary and Cultural Studies and Rhetoric, Writing and Discourse Studies. While completing the English MA program at ODU, she was afforded the opportunity of receiving a Graduate Assistantship and was able to both serve in the Writing Center as a Tutor and as a First-Year Composition (FYC) instructor. Currently, she serves, virtually, as an instructor in FYC at Tennessee State University. Her research interests include Literary theory; Black language and literacy; Feminist and womanist literature; Rhetoric and composition; The Black tradition; Black Liberation Theology; Nineteenth Century literature; Gothic literature; Anti-Racist Pedagogies and Methodologies; Higher Education Andragogies; Higher Education Administration; Program Implementation and Planning; Recruitment and Retention in higher education. Thomas is the Founder and Director of Teach One Reach One, Incorporated, a non-profit organization that aims to enlighten, empower, and enrich urban communities through seminars, scholarships, and success programs.