PhD Placement Information

Recent PhD Placement Information

Vanita Reddy, Ph.D. 2009
     Dissertation: Re-Modeling Minority: Mapping Critical Femininities in the South Asian American Diaspora
     Dissertation Committee: Bishnupriya Ghosh (dir.), Gayatri Gopinath, Elizabeth Freeman
     First Position: Texas A&M University (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: Texas A&M University (Tenure Track)

Chistopher Schaberg, Ph.D. 2009
     Dissertation: Airport Reading
     Dissertation Committee: Scott Shershow (dir), Caren Kaplan, Colin Milburn, Timothy Morton
     First Position: Loyola New Orleans (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: Loyola New Orleans

Melissa Strong, Ph.D. 2009
     Dissertation: A Taste For Charity: The Cultural Work of American Women's Benevolence Literature, 1850-1910
     Dissertation Committee: Elizabeth Freeman (dir.), Dianne Macleod, Catherine Robson
     First Position: Northeastern State University, Oklahoma (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: Northeastern State University, Oklahoma

Kara Thompson, Ph.D. 2009
     Dissertation: A Romance with Many Reservatons: American Indian Figurations and the Globalization of Indigeneity
     Dissertation Committee: Elizabeth Freeman (dir.), Desireé Martín, Bishnup Ghosh, Juana Marta Rodriguez
     First Position: Oberlin (Visiting Assistant Professor)
     Current Position: Oberlin

Julie Ann Wilhelm, Ph.D. 2009
     Dissertation: The Funny Business of 19th-Century Sentamentalism
     Dissertation Committee: Elizabeth Freeman (dir), Linda Morris, Michael Ziser
     First Position: Lamar University (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: Lamar University

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Shellie Banga, Ph.D. 2008
     Dissertation: A Banquet of Silhouettes: William Least Heat-Moon's Travel Trilogy in Context
     Dissertation Committee: Michael Ziser (dir), Linda Morris, Dean MacCannell
     First Position: Whittier College (Visiting Assistant Professor)
     Current Position: Whittier College

Steven Ryan Blevins, Ph.D. 2008

Dissertation: History Unhoused: Imagining Redress in Post-Imperial Britain (not currently shelved in O'Connor)

     Dissertation Committee: Bishnu Ghosh (dir), David Simpson, Greg Dobbins
     First Position: Florida International University
     Current Position: Florida International University

Seth Forrest, Ph. D. 2008

Dissertation: "Thus Far the Transmission is Oral": Orality, Aurality, and the Poetry of the Black Mountain School

     Dissertation Committee: Alan Williamson (dir), Joshua Clover, Joanne Feit Diehl
     First Position: UC PostDoc.
     Current Position: Catholic University of America and George Mason University (Visiting Professor)

Maura Kathleen Grady, Ph.D. 2008

Dissertation: "I'm telling you she's your man:" the Female Organization Man in Twentieth Century Fiction and Film

     Dissertation Committee: Scott Simmon (dir), Elizabeth Freeman, David Van Leer
     First Position: University of Reno, Nevada (Lecturer and Assistant Director of the Core Writing Program)
     Current Position: University of Reno, Nevada

Jessica Jordan, Ph.D. 2008

Dissertation: Sex and the Goddess: Hyper-Femininity in American Film

     Disseration Committee: Scott Simmon (dir), Marijane Osborn, Kari Lokke
     First Position: University of the Pacific (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: University of the Pacific

Anthony Rudolph Magagna, Ph.D. 2008

Dissertation: Placing The West: Landscape, Literature, and Identity in the American West

     Disseration Committee: Jack Hicks (dir), Alan Williamson, Louis Warren
     First Position: UC PostDoc
     Current Position: Millikin (Tenure Track)

Jung-Kook Paik , Ph.D. 2007

Dissertation: Shakespeare's Strangers, Resistance, and State Power

     Dissertation Committee: Margaret Ferguson (dir), Frances Dolan, Richard Levin
     First Position: Korea University (Lecturer)
     Current Position: Korea University

Jeffrey Ross Smith, Ph.D. 2007

Dissertation: Hazardous Reconstitutions: Imitation and the Production of the Self in Late Nineteenth-Century American Fiction

     Dissertation Committee: Linda Morrs (dir), Elizabeth Freeman, Karl Zender
     First Position: Solano Community College (Lecturer)
     Current Position: Solano Community College

Karen Ross Wilson, Ph.D. 2007

Dissertation: Marriage and the Problem of Evil in Works by John Milton and Margaret Cavendish

     Dissertation Committee: Margaret Ferguson (dir), Frances Dolan, Richard Levin
     First Position: USC (Lecturer)
     Current Position: USC

Sean Michael David Allan, Ph.D. 2006

Dissertation: "Breathin' The Sniper's Breath": Male Presence and Personae in Late Twentieth Century and Contemporary American Literature,

Film and Culture

     Dissertation Committee: Evan Watkins (dir), Riche Richardson, Scott Simmon
     First Position: National Taiwan University (Lecturer)
     Current Position: National Taiwan University

Ann Bliss, Ph.D. 2006

Dissertation: "Fixing" The Family: The Function of the Family Photograph in Albums and Literature

     Dissertation Committee: Elizabeth Freeman (dir), Bishnu Ghosh, Hertha D. Sweet Wong
     First Position: UC Merced (Lecturer)
     Current Position: UC Merced

Mark Bradshaw Busbee, Ph. D. 2006

Dissertation: N.F.S. Grundtvig's Interpretation of Beowulf as a Living Heroic Poem for the People

     Dissertation Committee: Marijane Osborn (dir), John Lindow, Robert Bjork
     First Position: Florida Gulf Coast University (Lecturer)
     Current Position: UC Merced

Helena M. Feder, Ph.D. 2006

Dissertation: Coming into Culture: Ecocultural Materialism and the Bildungsroman

     Dissertation Committee: David Robertson (dir), Alan Williamson, Neil Larsen
     First Position: East Carolina University (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: East Carolina University

Brynne Motiska Gray, Ph.D. 2006

Dissertation: From Swords to Plowshares: Representations of Christian Missionaries in British Literature, 1805-1847

     Dissertation Committee: Kari Lokke (dir), Bishnu Ghosh, Catherine Robson
     First Position: Principia College (Visiting Professor)
     Current Position: UC Davis (Lecturer)

Jennifer Michelle Hoofard, Ph.D. 2006

Dissertation: Flesh Wounds: Reading the Scar as Text in the Work of Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison

     Disseration Committee: Joanne Feit Diehl (dir), Sandra Gilbert, Elizabeth Freeman
     First Position: Mills College (Lecturer)
     Current Position: Mills College

Christian John Kiefer, Ph.D. 2006

Dissertation: A Specifically Human Truth: Fiction and History in the American West (not currently shelved in O'Connor)

     Dissertation Committee: Jack Hicks (dir), Michael Hoffman, Alan Williamson
     First Position: American River College (Lecturer)
     Current Position: Stanford University Education Program for Gifted Youth, Online High School (Instructor Full Time)

Jennifer Samaine Lockwood, Ph.D. 2006

Dissertation: Recollecting a Region: Gender, Tourism, and the Literature of New England, 1870-1900

     Dissertation Committee: Elizabeth Freeman (dir), Linda Morris, Karen Halttunen
     First Position: University of the Pacific (Visiting Professor)
     Current Position: George Mason University (Tenure Track)

Elaine Kathleen Musgrave , Ph.D. 2006

Dissertation: Shadows of Mutiny: Englishness, Masculinity, and the 1857 Indian Uprising in the Victorian Imagination

     Disseration Committee: Catherine Robson (dir), Bishnu Ghosh, Peter Dale
     First Position: Blackwell Publishing (Editorial Coordinator)
     Current Position: Blackwell Publishing

Jodi Rene Schorb, Ph.D. 2006

Dissertation: From Sodomy to Indian Death: Sexuality, Race, and Structures of Feeling in Early American Execution Narratives (not currently
shelved in O'Connor)

     Dissertation Committee: David Van Leer (dir), Elizabeth Freeman, Linda Morris
     First Position: University of Florida, Gainsville (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: University of Florida

Karma Waltonen, Ph.D. 2006

Dissertation: Reading Margaret Atwood in Theory and Practice: Active Reading, Witnessing, and Community

     Dissertation Committee: Lynette Hunter (dir), Gail Finney, Elizabeth Freeman
     First Position: UC Davis (Lecturer)
     Current Position: UC Davis

Daniel Joseph Cook, Ph.D. 2005

Dissertation: Orthodoxy and Aporia in the Victorian Narrative of Unconversion

    Dissertation Committee: David Simpson (dir), Catherin Robson, Peter Dale
    First Position: Saginaw Valley State Univeristy (Tenure Track)
    Current Position: Saginaw Valley State

Aaron Kirk DiFranco, Ph.D. 2005

Dissertation: Available Ground: Shaping American Nature Poetry

    Dissertation Committee: Michael Hoffman (dir), Alan Williamson, David Robertson
    First Position: Napa Valley College (Tenure Track)
    Current Position: Saginaw Valley State

Dana Yuen Fore, Ph.D. 2005

Dissertation: Masculinity, Disability, and the Literature of Bodies on Display

     Dissertation Committee: Winfried Schleiner (dir), Peter Hays, Catherine Kudlick
     First Position: Sacramento City College (Lecturer)
     Current Position: Sacramento City College

Onnaca Heron, Ph.D. 2005

Dissertation: The Design of Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (not currently shelved in O'Connor)

     Dissertation Committee: Margaret Ferguson (dir), Traill, Raymond Waddington
     First Position: College of the Desert (Lecturer)
     Current Position: College of the Desert

Roy Osamu Kamada, Jr., Ph.D. 2005

Dissertation: Postcolonial Romanticisms: Landscape and the Possibilities of Inheritance in the Work of Jamaica Kincaid, Garrett Hongo and Derek Walcott

     Dissertation Committee: David Simpson (dir), Riche Richardson, Linda Morris
     First Position: Emerson College (Visiting Professor)
     Current Position: Emerson College (Tenure Track)

Marit Johann MacArthur, Ph.D. 2005

Dissertation: Abandoning the House: Landscape Meditation in 20th Century American Poetry (not currently shelved in O'Connor)

     Dissertation Committee: Alan Williamson (dir), Sandra Gilbert, David Simpson
     First Position: CSU Bakersfield (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: Emerson College (Tenure Track)

J. Chris Westgate, Ph.D. 2005

Dissertation: Staging the Metropolis: Theater, Politics & the American City

Dissertation Committee: Scott Shershow (dir), Lynette Hunter, Bill Worthen
First Position: Skagit Valley College (Lecturer)

James Jerome Barilla, Ph.D. 2004

Dissertation: The Nature of Homelands: Narratives of Restoration and Return (not currently shelved in O'Connor)

     Dissertation Committee: David Robertson (dir), Bishnu Ghosh, Slovic
     First Position: Lake Forest College (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: University of South Carolina Columbia (Tenure Track)

Roland Patrick Finger, Ph.D. 2004

Dissertation: Native Americans and Manifest Domesticity

     Dissertation Committee: Michael Hoffman (dir), Alan Williamson, David Van Leer
     First Position: Concordia College Moorhead (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: Concordia College

Janice Hawes, Ph.D. 2004

Dissertation: Monsters, Heroes and Social Identity in Medieval Icelandic and English Literature

     Dissertation Committee: Marijane Osborn (dir), Michael Hoffman, Emily Albu
     First Position: UC Davis (Lecturer)
     Current Position: South Carolina University (Tenure Track)

Molly Clark Hillard, Ph.D. 2004

Dissertation: "Obscure Dread and Intense desire": Folklore, Literature, and the Victorian Self (not currently shelved in O'Connor)

     Dissertation Committee: Catherine Robson (dir), David Simpson, Regenia Gagnier, Jay Mechling
     First Position: Western Washington University (Visiting Professor)
     Current Position: University of South Mississippi (Tenure Track)

Tiffany Aldrich MacBain, Ph.D. 2004

Dissertation: Impurely White: Representations of Racial Contact in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (not currently shelved in O'Connor)

     Dissertation Committee: Linda Morris (dir), Elizabeth Freeman, Turner, Owens
     First Position: Mills College (Visiting Professor)
     Current Position: Univerity of Puget Sound (Tenure Track)

Greg Miller, Ph.D. 2004

Dissertation: Aspects of the Minor Deleuzian Approaches to Carolyn Chute, Peter Greenaway and Suzan-Lori Parks

     Dissertation Committee: Michael Hoffman (dir), Gail Finney, Blake Stimson
     First Position: UC Davis (Lecturer)
     Current Position: Abroad in Poland (on Fellowship)

Sharon O'Toole (aka Wrye Sententia) , Ph.D. 2004

Dissertation: Cyberpunk Visions: Coping with Converging Technologies and Transformations of Human Freedom

     Dissertation Committee: David Robertson (dir), Alessa Johns, Georges Van den Abbeele
     First Position: UC Davis (Lecturer)
     Current Position: UC Davis (Lecturer)

Julie Christine Sears, Ph.D. 2004

Dissertation: Discursive Deviance and the Politics of Perversity in the Novels of Kathy Acker

     Dissertation Committee: Patricia Moran (dir), Elizabeth Freeman, Gayatri Gopinath
     First Position: University of North Texas (Adjunct)
     Current Position: Colling Community College (Lecturer)

Andrew J. Majeske, Ph.D. 2003

Dissertation: Equity in English Renaissance Literature: Thomas More's Utopia and Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene

     Dissertation Committee: Margaret Ferguson (dir), Winfried Schleiner, Peterman
     First Position: CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice (Lecturer)
     Current Position: CUNY John Jay CCJ, Temple Univeristy School of Law (Adjunct), Drexel University Honors College (Adjunct)

Alice Lee McLean, Ph.D. 2003

Dissertation: Eat and Be Eaten: The Aesthetic Pleasure of M. F. K. Fisher and Elizabeth David

    Dissertation Committee: Patricia Moran (dir), Joanne Feit Diehl, Caston
    First Position: Sweet Briar College (Post Doc)
    Current Position:

Dominick Tracy, Ph.D. 2003

Dissertation: Conditioning Ireland: Nineteenth-Century Irish Nationalism and the Rise of the Novel

     Dissertation Committee: Catherine Robson (dir), Lloyd, David Simpson
     First Position: California College of the Arts (Assistant Director of Humanities and Sciences Division)
     Current Position: California College of the Arts

Jane Ellen Louise Beal, Ph.D. 2002

Dissertation: John Trevisa and the English Polychronicon: Authority and Vernacular Translation in Late-Medieval England

     Dissertation Committee: Marijane Osborn (dir), James Murphy, Emily Albu
     First Position: Wheaton College (Visiting Professor)
     Current Position: Wheaton College

Emily Blair, Ph.D. 2002

Dissertation: Virginia Woolf and the Nineteenth-Century Domestic Aesthetic: Poetry the Wrong Side Out

     Dissertation Committee: Patricia Moran (dir), Catherine Robson, Elizabeth Langland
     First Position: Solano Community College (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: Solano Community College

Michael Kenneth Borgstrom, Ph.D. 2002

Dissertation: Passing Fictions: Reading Identity in Nineteenth-Century America

     Dissertation Committee: David Van Leer (dir), Joanne Feit Diehl, Linda Morris
     First Position: San Diego State University (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: Sand Diego State University

Lara Karine Gary, Ph.D. 2002

Dissertation: Motherlands: Re-imagining Maternal Function in Contemporary Women's Fiction

     Dissertation Committee: Joanne Fei Diehl (dir), Patricia Moran, Linda Morris
     First Position: Sacramento City College (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: Sacramento City College

Jan Ellyn Goggans, Ph.D. 2002

Dissertation: The Shape of Community in the Visual West: Land, Water, and Women in the Work of Paul Taylor and Dorothea Lange

     Dissertation Committee: David Robertson (dir), Linda Morris, Cheryll Glotfelty
     First Position: University of California, Merced (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: UC Merced

Paula Claire Harrington, Ph.D. 2002

Dissertation: American Dog: Figuring the Canine in American Literature

     Dissertation Committee: Sandra Gilbert (dir), Joanne Feit Diehl, Linda Morris
     First Position: University of New England (Adjunct)
     Current Position: Colby College (Visiting Professor)

Kathleen Ann Heininge, Ph.D. 2002

Dissertation: "The Broth of a Boy": Manifestations of the Stage Irish Figure

    Dissertation Committee: Bill Worthen (dir), James McElroy, Nora McGuinness
    First Position: California Maritime Academy (Non-Tenure Track)
    Current Position: George Fox University (Tenure Track)

Scott Robert Herring, Ph.D. 2001

Dissertation: Painted Deserts: The Literature and Art of America's National Parks

     Dissertation Committee: David Robertson (dir), Gary Snyder, Marijane Osborn
     First Position: UC Davis (Lecturer)
     Current Position: UC Davis

Cheryl Ann Shell, Ph.D. 2001

Dissertation: "A Peasant Stand Up Thus": Forms of Lower Class Resistance in Shakespeare's Plays

     Dissertation Committee: Richard Levin (dir), Margaret Ferguson, Winfried Schleiner
     First Position: Federal Government (GS 07)
     Current Position: University of Maine, Augusta (Tenure Track)

Mary Waters, Ph.D. 2001

Dissertation: Professional Literary Criticism by British Women Writers, 1789-1832 : The Nation’s Literature and the Culture of Criticism (not
currently shelved in O'Connor Library)

     Dissertation Committee: Kari Lokke (dir), Catherine Robson, David Simpson
     First Position: Temple University (Visiting Professor)
     Current Position: Wichita Sate University (Tenure Track)

Mark Allen Bauer, Ph.D. 2000

Dissertation: This Composite Voice: The Role of W. B. Yeats in James Merrill's Poetry

     Dissertation Committee:  Alan Williamson (dir), Joanne Feit Diehl, Kari Lokke
     First Position: Yale (Non-Tenure Track)
     Current Position: Yale (Associate Director, Office of Internaional Education and Fellowships; Non-Tenure Track)

Christine Amanda Colon, Ph.D. 2000

Dissertation: Convictions of the Heart: Religion, Morality, and Reform in the Works of Joanna Baillie, Anne Brontë, and Adelaide Procter

     Dissertation Committee: Kari Lokke (dir), Catherine Robson, Alessa Johns
     First Position: Wheaton College (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: Wheaton College

Bruce T. Donehower, Ph.D. 2000

Dissertation: Strange Prisoners: New Mythology and the Crisis of Endarkment in the Literature of England and Germany During the Late Eighteenth
and Early Nineteenth Centuries

     Dissertation Committee: Karl Menges (dir), Max Byrd, Gail Finney
     First Position: CalSTRS (Chief of Mid Tier Systems)
     Current Position: UC Davis (Lecturer)

Erika Kreger, Ph.D. 2000

Dissertation: Plain speaking : American Women Writers and the Periodical Sketch Form, 1820-1870 (not currently shelved in O'Connor Library)

     Dissertation Committee: Joanne Feit Diehl (dir), Linda Morris, Halttunen
     First Position: San Jose State (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: University of Washington, Graduate School (Director of Development)

Stephanie Elizabeth Wells, Ph.D. 2000

Dissertation: Expatriate Fictions: Sexual Identity, National Identity, and the Imaginary World in 20th-Century American Expatriate Literature

     Dissertation Committee: Alan Williamson (dir), Michael Hoffman, Sandra Gilbert
     First Position: Orange Coast College (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: Orange Coast College

Susan Hudson Fox, Ph.D. 1999

Dissertation: Two Stories: Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf and Their Literary Other[ness]/The Men and Women of 1918

     Dissertation Committee: Sandra Gilbert (dir), Patricia Moran, Michael Hoffman
     First Position: UC Davis (Lecturer)
     Current Position: UC Davis

Rod Anthony Romesburg, Ph.D. 1999

Dissertation: Butterfly in the Garden: Chaos Theory and Contemporary Nature Writing

     Dissertation Committee: David Robertson (dir), Gary Snyder, Jack Hicks
     First Position: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: Rollins College (Lecturer)

Eileen Hermann-Miller, Ph.D. 1998

Dissertation: Eugene O'Neill: The Misprized Modernist

     Dissertation Committee: Peter Hays (dir), Seth Schein, Gail Finney
     First Position: Dominican University (Non-Tenure Track)
     Current Position: Dominican Universty

Joseph Robert Mills, Ph.D. 1998

Dissertation: Laughter in a Wasteland: The Satire of James Thurber, George S. Schuyler and Dawn Powell

     Dissertation Committee: Michael Hoffman (dir), Linda Morris, Gail Finney
     First Position: North Carolina School of the Arts (Lecturer)
     Current Position: North Carolina School of the Arts

Sally Broadbent Palmer, Ph.D. 1998

Dissertation: Relegated Relations: The British Aunt in Nineteenth-Century Fiction

     Dissertation Committee: Catherine Robson (dir), Kari Lokke, Dianne Sachko MacLeod
     First Position: South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (Tenure Track)
     Current Position: South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

Judith Mary Rose, Ph.D. 1998

Dissertation: "The First Fruits of a Woman's Wit:" Re-appropriation of the Metaphor of Conception by Early Modern Women

     Dissertation Committee: Raymond Waddington (dir), Juliana Schiesari, Louise Schleiner
     First Position: Allegheny College (Visiting Professor)
     Current Position: UC Davis (Lecturer)

Doctoral Dissertation Collection Dissertations & Master's Theses

Collections & Catalogues History Using the Library O'Connor Library English Department UC Davis