DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
HONORS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
2015-2016
FACULTY HOSTING THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT’S
HONORS AND AWARDS RECEPTION
Professor Rosemary Hennessy, Department Chair, will host the Honors and Awards
Reception and will speak on the achievements of the undergraduate students.
Professor Hennessy is the L. H. Favrot Professor of Humanities and the English
Department Chair. Her publications include Fires on the Border: The Passionate Politics
of Labor Organizing on the Mexican Frontera (2014), NAFTA From Below: Maquiladora
Workers, Campesinos, and Indigenous Communities Speak Back (2006), Profit and
Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism (2000), Materialist Feminism: A Reader in
Class, Difference, and Women’s Lives (1997), and Materialist Feminism and the Politics
of Discourse (1993). Her research interests include feminist culture and theory, sexuality
studies, and U.S.-Mexican studies. She is beginning a new project on the radical
intimacies of writers on the U.S. Left in the mid-twentieth-century
Professor Helena Michie, Director of Graduate Studies, will speak on the achievements
of the graduate students.
Professor Michie is the author, with Robyn Warhol, of Love among the Archives: Writing
the Lives of Sir George Scharf, Victorian Bachelor (2015), Victorian Honeymoons:
Journeys to the Conjugal (Cambridge UP 2006); The Flesh Made Word: Female Figures
and Women's Bodies (Oxford UP 1987); Sororophobia: Differences among Women in
Literature and Culture (Oxford UP 1991); and co-author, with Naomi R. Cahn of
Confinements: Fertility and Infertility in Contemporary United States Culture (Rutgers UP
1997). She has published articles on feminist theory and on Victorian literature and has
been an NEH and a Guggenheim fellow. She is the co-editor, with Ronald Thomas, of the
essay collection Nineteenth-Century Geographies: The Transformation of Space from the
Victorian Age to the American Century (Rutgers UP 2002). Professor Michie teaches
courses in feminist theory, literary theory, and Victorian literature and culture. She also
teaches classes and workshops on professional writing.
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEGREES
Alexander Adkins
“Postcolonial Satire in Cynical Times” (May 2016)
Director: Betty Joseph
Amanda Ellis
“Detras de Cada Letra: Trauma and Healing in Chicana/o Literature” (Dec. 2015)
Director: Professor José Aranda
Abby Goode
“Democratic Demographics: A Genealogy of American Sustainability” (May 2016)
Director: Professor Caroline Levander
Jennifer Hargrave
“The Romantic Reinvention of Imperial China, 1759-1857” (May 2016)
Director: Professor Alexander Regier
Kimberly Macellaro
“The Dialectics of Form: Reification and Genre in Early Twentieth-Century American
Literature” (May 2016)
Director: Professor Rosemary Hennessy
Laura Richardson
“Reclaiming Authorship: The Modernist Aesthetics of Self-Production in Marianne
Moore, Edith Sitwell, and Djuna Barnes” (Dec. 2015)
Directors: Professors Judith Roof and Cary Wolfe
Meina Yates-Richard
“Echoes of the Future-Past: Slavery and Sonic Testimony in African American and
Diasporic Literature, 1845-Present” (May 2016)
Director: Professor Nicole Waligora-Davis
MASTER OF ARTS DEGREES
Hannah Biggs
Rachel Conrad Bracken
Lorena Gauthereau
Brittany Henry
Rodrigo Paula
Lindsay Sherrier
NEW ACADEMIC POSITIONS
Amanda Ellis
Visiting Scholar in the Center for Mexican American Studies, and Visiting Assistant
Professor in the Department of English, University of Houston, Houston, TX
Joanna Fax
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Program in Writing and Communication,
Rice University, Houston, TX
Abby Goode
Assistant Professor of Early American Literature, Plymouth State University, Plymouth,
NH
Jennifer Hargrave
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Program in Writing and Communication,
Rice University, Houston, TX
Samhita Sunya (2014, Ph.D)
Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian Cinemas , University of
Charlottesville, Charlottesville, VA
Meina Yates-Richard
Assistant Professor of 20th and 21st Century American Literature and Culture, Syracuse
University, Syracuse, NY
EXTERNAL GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS & AWARDS
Hannah Biggs
Archival Fellowship, Malabar Farm State Park (Louis Bromfield’s archives and papers),
Lucas, OH, Fall 2016.
Graduate Student Scholarship, Sigma Tau Delta (International English Honor Society)
Lindsey Chappell
Mellon-Council for European Studies Dissertation Completion Fellowship
Hamilton Prize for the best graduate student article in the field of Victorian studies
Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada
Lorena Gauthereau
Louis Owens Award for the essay: “Vendidos: Affect-culture and the Coloniality of
Selling Out in Luis Valdez’s ‘Los Vendidos’ (1967)”
Western Literature Association
Abby Goode
Women's Studies Dissertation Fellowship
Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
Jennifer Hargrave
American Dissertation Fellowship
American Association of University Women
Outstanding Graduate Student Paper
North American Society for the Study of Romanticism
Sophia Hsu
Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, Honorable Mention
Alexander L. McAdams
Floyd L. Moreland Scholarship
Latin/Greek Institute, City University of New York
Elena Valdez
Office of the State Historian of New Mexico Scholar’s Award
INTERNAL GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS & AWARDS
Hannah Biggs
Marilyn Marrs Gillet Fellowship
Rice University Humanities Research Center
Graduate Fellowship
Rice Journal of Feminist Economics, Houston, TX
Rachel Bracken
Graduate Research Fellowship
Andrew W. Mellon Seminar: "The Quantified Self: a Techno-Human Experiment"
Rice Humanities Research Center
Lindsey Chappell
Amici di Via Gabina Travel Fellowship
Rice University
Humanities Research Center Research Grant
Rice University
Jennifer Hargrave
Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughn Fellowship for AY16
Sophia Hsu
Public Humanities Fellowship
Humanities Research Center, Rice University
Alexander L. McAdams
Dean of Humanities Research Grant
Rice University
Humanities Research Center Research Grant
Rice University
Department of English Research Grant
Rice University
Derek Woods
Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughn Fellowship for AY17
GRADUATE PUBLICATIONS
Alexander Adkins
“Chinua Achebe and the Beautiful Soul.” The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary
Inquiry. Forthcoming 2016
“Neoliberalism, Moralism, and Critique in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic
Verses.”Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. Forthcoming 2016.
Hannah Biggs
“It’s Rather a Funny Story…” Critical Introduction to The Abandoned Farmers by Irvin
Shrewsbury Cobb. Hastings College Press. Forthcoming 2016.
“After the Pulitzer: Louis Bromfield and Midwest Agrarianism.” The Midwestern
Moment: Essays in Early-Twentieth Century Midwestern Regionalism. Vol. 3. Hastings
College Press. Forthcoming 2018.
Rachel Bracken
"The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg and the Diagnostic Gaze as Moral Authority in The
Great Gatsby." Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities 7.2. Spring 2015.
Published online.
Mark Celeste
"Metonymic Chains: Shipwreck, Slavery, and Networks in Villette" Victorian Review
special issue: The Brontës and Critical Interventions in Victorian Studies. ed. Elizabeth
Meadows and Lauren Hoffer. Forthcoming 2016.
Lindsey Chappell
“The Satirist Abroad: Thackeray, Temporality, and Genre,” SEL Studies in English
Literature 1500-1900 56.3. Forthcoming 2016.
“Dickensian Dimensions of Time,” Victorian Review 42.1. Forthcoming 2016.
“Anthony Trollope’s Narrative Temporalities and the Emergence of the Middle East,”
LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory 27.1 (2016): 29–49.
Amanda Ellis
“Brown in the Windy City” New West Indian Guide 89, 1 (2015): 149-151. Review
Article.
Abby Goode
"Burger King and Transnational American Studies." American Studies in Scandinavia 47.2
(November 2015): 103-123.
"No 'Rural Bowl of Milk:' Demographic Agrarianism and Unsustainability in Pierre."
Studies in American Fiction. Forthcoming 2017.
"'Against Sustainability': And Other Provocations for a First-Year Writing-Intensive
Seminar." Sustainability in/and Writing Intensive Courses. Ed. Joseph Lease. Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books' Ecocritical Theory and Practice Series. Forthcoming 2017.
GRADUATE PUBLICATIONS, cont.
Jennifer Hargrave
“‘To the Glory of the Chinese’: Sinocentric Political Reform in Eliza Haywood’s The
Adventures of Eovaai,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 49, 1 (2015): 31–50.
“Romanticizing the Chinese Landscape,” European Romantic Review 27, 3 (2016): 413¬–
21.
Marco Polo and the Emergence of British Sinology,” SEL Studies in English Literature
1500–1900 56.3. Forthcoming 2016.
Sophia Hsu
"Citing and Siting in the Nineteenth-Century British Census." English Language Notes.
Forthcoming 2016.
Mallory Pladus
"Gender Constructivism and Strategic Essentialism in Refuge." ISLE. Forthcoming 2016.
Elena Valdez
“Decolonizing the Supernatural: The Case of Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Hummingbird’s
Daughter (2005).” Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks, Religion: Super Religion. ed.
Jeff Kripal. Forthcoming 2016.
Meina Yates-Richard
"'WHAT IS YOUR MOTHER'S NAME?': Maternal Disavowal and the Reverberating
Aesthetic of Black Women's Pain." American Literature. Forthcoming 2016.
GRADUATE PRESENTATIONS
Hannah Biggs
“‘No, you can ‘ave your book learning. Give me experience every time’: Rural
Knowledge-practices and Urbanized Veterinary Medicine in the Works of James Herriot”
Agricultural History Society Annual Meeting
New York City and Briarcliff Manor, NY
“The Farm as Play: Revelry and Reverence in Cold Comfort Farm and Between the Acts”
Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf
Leeds, England.
“A Tale of House Slippers: The Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Louis
Bromfield” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature
East Lansing, MI
“An Abandoned Farm is a ‘Funny Farm’: Farce and Satire in Irvin S. Cobb’s The
Abandoned Farmers”
Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature
East Lansing, MI
“‘Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie’: Prairie Home Companion’s Mythic Storytelling of Our
Midwest”
Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA) Annual Conference
Seattle, WA
“D.H. Lawrence’s Literary Agrarianism”
The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900
Louisville, KY
“Louis Bromfield and Grandma Moses: Midwestern Influences on Rural Imagery”
Modernist Studies Association (MSA) Conference
Boston, MA.
“'Muck' Matters: Excrement and Filth in British Television Rural Medical Narratives”
Midwestern Modern Language Association (MMLA) Annual Convention
Columbus, OH
Alanna Beroiza
“Siren Sense: The Synaesthetics of Desire”
Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present
Greenville, SC
“Somato-fiction: Gender and Biotechnology in Pedro Almodovar's La Piel Que Habito”
Midwest Modern Language Association
Columbus, OH
"Always On: Atmospheric Media and Race in Claudia Rankine's Citizen"
The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900
Louisville, KY
"The Grain of the Voice in the Age of Atmospheric Media"
American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference
Boston, MA
Sydney Boyd
“Rhythm and Imaginary Landscape No. 1 in Huxley's Point Counter Point.”
NEMLA
Hartford CT,
“Reading Sound: How do we talk about music in literature?”
Research presentation, PEO Chapter Meeting
Houston, TX
Rachel Bracken
“National (Ir)Responsibility: "Typhoid" Mary Mallon, Vaccine Exemption, and the Ethics
of Immunity”
Transforming Contagion Symposium
Phoenix, AZ
“Influenza and Epidemic Temporality in Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider”
Modern Language Association
Austin, TX
“Vaccine Exemption and the Ethics of Immunity: The Body In/And the Body Politic
‘Bodies’"
Interdisciplinary Graduate Symposium
Corpus Christi, TX
Mark Celeste
"'these emancipated epochs of the human mind': The Prophetic Networks of Carlyle's
'Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question'"
INCS (Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies) 2016
Asheville, NC
"Metonymic Chains in Villette"
Dickens Project Winter Conference
Davis, CA
"Ahoy! (or, History as the Open Secret)"
Rice English Graduate Symposium
Houston, TX
Lindsey Chappell
“Tectonic Travel: Romantic Legacies and ‘New Science’ in Egypt”
Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference, 2016
Asheville, NC
“Imagining Origins in Romantic Egypt and the ‘New Science’”
Dickens Universe Winter Conference, 2016
Davis, CA
“Fractal Time, Fractal Space: Dickensian Dimensions of History”
The Long, Wide Nineteenth Century Conference, 2015
Santa Cruz, CA
“Genre, Imperialism, and Temporal Aesthetics in Thackeray’s Cornhill to Grand Cairo”
North American Victorian Studies Association, Annual Conference, 2015
Honolulu, HI
“Futures of Historicism: Space, Time, Things”
Rice University English Symposium, 2015
Houston TX
Amanda Ellis
“Healing in the Chicana Imaginary”
Mexican American Culture
Houston, TX
“The Poetics of Mexican American Healing Practices”
Health Care in the Latino Community
Houston, TX
Lorena Gauthereau
“Vendidos: Intersections of Affect, Class, and Coloniality in Luis Valdez’s ‘Los Vendidos’
(1967)”
VI Jornada de Fronteras/Borderline: Cultura e Historia, Espacio, Liminalidad y Nación,
Tecnológico de Monterrey
Monterrey, NL, Mexico
“Vendidos: Affect-culture and the Coloniality of Selling Out in Luis Valdez’s ‘Los
Vendidos’ (1967)”
Visual Culture in the Urban West, Western Literature Association
Reno, NV
“Vendidas: The Gendered and Colonial Dynamics of Selling Out in Luis Valdez’s ‘Los
Vendidos’ (1967)”
Borders and Frontiers in American Literature, American Literature Association
Symposium
San Antonio, TX.
Abby Goode
"Burger King and Transnational American Studies" (with AnaMaria Seglie)
Modern Language Association
Austin, TX
Jade Hagan
"On the Power of Property in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France"
North American Society for the Study of Romanticism
Winnipeg, Canada
Jennifer Hargrave
“The Uncommon Missionary: Intercultural Exchange in Robert Morrison’s China; A
Dialogue”
East Central/American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
West Chester, PA
“Romantic Poetry within the Chinese Landscape”
North American Society for the Study of Romanticism
Winnipeg, Canada
Brittany Henry
"Border Thinking as an Alternate Spatiotemporal Logic in Lunar Braceros: 2125-2148"
Western Literature Association Annual Conference
Reno, NV
Sophia Hsu
"Reproduction and Biopolitics in the Victorian Sensation Novel"
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, 2015
Houston, TX
"Statistics, Biopolitics, and Synecdochic Characterization"
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, 2015
Houston, TX
"Victorian Biopolitics, or, How I Became a Historicist"
Rice University Graduate Symposium, 2015
Houston, TX
"Pesca's Woman in White: Italy, Liberalism, and the 'Foreignness' of Sensation Fiction"
North American Victorian Studies Association, 2015
Honolulu, HI
Alexander L. McAdams
“‘One Flesh, One Heart, One Soul”: Flesh, Desire, and Materialist Wandering in Paradise
Lost”
City University of New York Graduate Center
New York, NY
Mallory Pladus
“Contingently Manifest: Velazquez 'Across the Continent'”
C19: Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists
State College, PA
Elena Valdez
“Stirring Echoes: Folkloric Difference and Américo Paredes’ Cancionero”
Conference on Américo Paredes: Border Narratives and the Folklore of Greater Mexico
Los Angeles, CA
“Borderlore, Borderlands, and the Gothic in Luis Alberto Urrea’s Hummingbird’s
Daughter”
VI Jornada Internacional de Fronteras/Borderlands: Cultura e Historia
Monterrey, Mexico.
Clint Wilson
“'nothing but Nature entirely abandon’d of Heaven': Pioneering Posthumanism in
Robinson Crusoe"
29th Annual Conference of SLSA
Houston, TX
“Illegal Alien Phenomenology: Who, or What, Determines Our Ontological Futures?”
45th Annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900
Louisville, KY
Meina Yates-Richard
"ReSounding Echoes of Trauma: Diasporic Testimony in Aimé Césaire’s Notebook of a
Return to the Native Land and Toni Morrison’s A Mercy”
ICI Biennial Conference: The African Diaspora in the World
Nashville, TN
“Sounding Diasporic Testimony: Echoes of Trauma in Notebook of a Return to the Native
Land and A Mercy”
College Language Association Conference, 2016
Houston, TX
DEPARTMENT HONORS AND AWARDS FOR GRADTUATE STUDENTS
Shirley Bard Rapoport Essay Prize
This essay prize is awarded every year for the best essay by a graduate student in the
English Department. Morris Rapoport established this endowed prize as a memorial to
honor his beloved wife and lifetime partner, Shirley Bard Rapoport, and her love of
writing and literature.

Joanna M. Fax for her essay, “The Deregulated Lesbian: Affective Labor in
Postwar Pulp”
Margaret C. Ostrum Summer Research Grant

Sydney Boyd will travel to Germany and Austria to research opera and theories
of opera at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, the Schopenhauer Archive in the
Universitätsbibliothek of the Universität Frankfurt am Main, and the Salzburger
Festspiele.

Lindsey Chappell will travel to Florence, Italy, to research Victorian accounts of
the Risorgimento in several private and national archives.
Caroline S. and David L. Minter Summer Research Grants

Rachel Bracken will be traveling to New York City's Municipal Archives, the
Immigration Museum on Ellis Island, Manhattan's Tenement Museum, the New
York Academy of Medicine, and the New York Public Library to study living
conditions, public health interventions, and the impact of the Tenement House
Acts (of 1867, 1879, and 1901) in New York's immigrant neighborhoods during
the late nineteenth century.
Chair’s Best Dissertation Prize
Each year this prize is awarded to the best dissertation in the English department.

Jennifer Hargrave for her dissertation, "The Romantic Reinvention of Imperial
China, 1759-1857"
Director: Professor Alexander Regier
RICE UNIVERSITY SERVICE
Evan Choate
Graduate Student Representative
Alex McAdams
Graduate Student Representative
Scott Pett
GSA/HGSA English Department Representative
Laura Bilhimer, Annie Lowe, Mallory Pladus
Organizers of the Fall 2015 English Graduate Symposium:
“Modalities: Politics and Poetics”
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT PRIZES
Caroline S. and David L. Minter Award for Outstanding Graduating English Major
This award is given out every year to a graduating English major with an extraordinary
GPA and whose transcript demonstrates a breadth of scholarship.

Patricia Wong
Minter Summer Research Awards
These awards are given out every year to students whose research over the summer will
benefit their work in English during the following semester.

Magen Eissenstat

Sophie Newman
Lady Geddes Essay Writing Prize
This prize is an annual writing competition for the best academic paper by a currently
enrolled freshman or sophomore.


First Place – Sonja Hamer for her essay, "How Cold an Arcadia"
Second Place – Zhizhen Rao placed second with her essay, "The Paradoxical
Utopian City"
Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing at Rice University
This $5,000 award is given out every year to a graduating student who has completed
course work in creative writing at Rice University.

Carrie Le
Academy of American Poets Prize
This national prize sponsored by the Academy of American Poets recognizes the best
poem written by an undergraduate student at Rice University. The English Department
matches the prize money from the Academy.

Courtney Brown
Huisick Award for Exceptional Service
This one-time award is given out in 2016 only in recognition of this student’s exceptional
service to R2: The Rice Review and to the English Major.

Courtney Brown
R2: THE RICE REVIEW STUDENT PRIZES
Rice Review Awards
The Rice Review is a student-run literary journal at Rice University committed to
publishing the best prose, poetry, and creative nonfiction written by undergraduate
students, as well as interviews with renowned authors. The journal was founded in 2004
by creative writing professor and author Justin Cronin and made possible by the
generosity of the Huisick, Epstein, and Williams families. Each year R2 gives out awards to
those students whose work merits additional recognition.
George Williams Prize for Fiction
First Place – Sharon Syau for “What Do You Love”
Second Place – Katherine Stewart for “Jumping Fences”
George Williams Prize for Poetry
First Place – Cyrus Ghaznavi for “The Smell of Chrysanthemums”
Second Place – Lisa Huang for “appendix”
George Williams Prize for Creative Nonfiction
First Place – Steffannie Alter for “Revisionist”
Second Place – Lisa Huang for “Folding Blankets"
Cover Art Prize
“Red Horizon” by Eric Eschenbrenner
The English Department also recognizes Professor Ian Schimmel who serves as faculty
advisor to R2: The Rice Review, and who goes above and beyond to help and mentor
those students who serve on the editorial staff of this wonderful journal.
UNDERGRADUATE SENIOR THESES
The Senior Thesis in English is an optional advanced research project whereby students
undertake a year-long process of research and writing while working directly with their
faculty advisor. The senior thesis project culminates in a 50+ page research paper on a
topic of their choosing.
Courtney Brown*
"’Black and the Box It Came In’: Identity and Notions of Inauthenticity in 21st-Century
African-American Literature and Film"
Director: Professor Nicole Waligora-Davis
Courtney Brown*
"Godsongs"
Director: Professor Paul Otremba
Thomas Chen
“Diaspora’s of Contemporary American Literature”
Director: Professor Krista Comer
Miles Kruppa*
"Exacting Extraction: Onto-Representations of Gold In and Out of the Ground"
Director: Professor Judith Roof
Jake Levens*
"The Spacetime Con"
Director: Professor Judith Roof
Tina Nazerian*
"The Two Sides of Journalism: Stage, Film, and ‘The Front Page’"
Director: Professor Judith Roof
Patricia Wong*
"Pride and Prejudice and Information: Jane Austen’s Novel And Three Screen Versions"
Director: Professor Judith Roof
*Student received University Distinction in Research and Creative Works