Student Bios

Emma Branning graduated Magna Cum Laude from DeSales University in 2025 with BAs in English, Musical Theatre, and Education, and has been working as a full-time secondary English teacher since then. She focuses particularly on Early Modern Drama, specifically Shakespeare, but also harbors a deep interest in Renaissance and Medieval literature. She tends to focus her research on women within texts, especially the sociological and religious impacts on women, which is the topic she completed her undergraduate research on. She adores cross-disciplinary work in history and theatre, and hopes to synthesize those areas with literature within her writing and research. She hopes to continue to teach at the secondary level, with the ultimate goal of pursuing professorship at the university level. When not in the classroom, either as a teacher or student, she can be found singing, sewing, crafting, or petting any animal within arm's reach.  

Juliana graduated summa cum laude from Denison University in 2024 with BA’s in English Literature and Environmental Studies, with an Environmental Communication concentration. Her passion for writing and instruction grew during her time as a Writing Consultant for Denison’s Writing Center and as a Teaching Assistant for the English Department. These studies and a plethora of other adventures helped her write her two senior theses, each focusing on different aspects of ecofeminism and narrative studies: “Ecopoetry as a Catalyst for Environmental Understanding” and “Ecofeminist Narratives in Angela Pelster’s Limber ,” which won an award in Denison’s Robert T. Wilson Scholarly Essay Competition. At Villanova, Juliana hopes to continue learning about ecocriticism, especially applied to women’s studies and poetics. She would also be so giddy to learn more about satire and absurdism in literature. Post Villanova adventure, she hopes to pursue a PhD in Literature and to find herself teaching....

Puja Phuyel graduated from Penn State Harrisburg in 2025 with a BA in English and a minor in American Studies. As an undergraduate, she was an active member of the LGBTQIA+ student organization and advocated for civic engagement by organizing voter registration efforts that helped more than 100 students register to vote in local, state, and national elections. Her research interests include queer theory, gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial literature, nationalism, diaspora, and cultural memory, with a particular focus on the intersections of identity, migration, and belonging. Outside of her academic work, she enjoys reading literary fiction, exploring bookstores and cafés, and hiking. She recommends reading The Ecosystem of Exile Politics: Why Proximity and Precarity Matter for Bhutan's Homeland Activists by Susan Banki and This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

Elliot Raine graduated from Plymouth State University in 2026 with a BA in English and a minor in Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies. As an undergraduate, he was the President and a founding member of PSU's Queer Student Union. His research interests include queer theory, trans theory and postmodernism. In his free time, Elliot likes to curl up with a horror novel and his cat. If you're looking for a book to read, he would recommend Lee Mandelo's The Woods All Black and Mariana Enriquez's Our Share of Night .

Alexis graduated from West Chester University in 2026 with a BA in English and a minor in Social Work Concepts. While there, she worked as a Peer Educator at the Center for Women and Gender Equity, with her most favorite responsibility being helming their book club each semester. Alexis was similarly involved with WCU’s independent, student-run newspaper, The Quad . Alexis’s research interests include print culture and Asian Amerian literature. In undergrad, she completed two funded research projects focused on Edith Maude Eaton/Sui Sin Far, the first of which examined how Eaton utilized her writings within her short story collection, Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912), to respond to popular culture representations of San Francisco’s Chinatown in tourist literature. The following project used Eaton’s recently rediscovered writings within Mary Chapman’s Becoming Sui Sin Far (2016) to analyze the influence of place of publication on Eaton’s representation of Chinese identity. Alexis also has...

Juliana Catania graduated from Siena University in 2026 with a BA in English and a minor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. With passions for community building and creativity, Juliana spent time as a Resident Assistant, English Department Social Media Intern, and club leader for Chaotick (Siena’s hip-hop dance club) throughout her undergraduate studies. She also developed a love for teaching and pedagogical training as a Peer Writing Tutor at Siena’s Writing Center. Juliana’s academic interests include Victorian Literature and contemporary feminist theory, more specifically: anti-carceral feminism, ecofeminism, and sex worker feminism. As an undergrad, Juliana examined material readings of sex work and nature in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton and Thomas Hardy’s  Tess of the d’Urbervilles to better understand the experiences of marginalized women, survivors of sexual violence, and sex workers in Victorian Society. At Villanova, Juliana hopes to continue exploring how con...

Lauren Deaton graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in English Literature, a BA in Media and Professional Communications, an Honors Degree, a minor in Film and Media Studies, and Certificates in Children's Literature and Public and Professional Writing. Her multi-media senior thesis, “The Life of Jean Grey”, which was supported by the Pitt Humanities Center, worked with monster theory to examine the depiction of the X-Men hero Jean Grey as monstrous in the Phoenix and Dark Phoenix Sagas. Her work has previously appeared in “Forbes and Fifth”, and the student run magazine “Studio 412”. At Villanova, Lauren hopes to continue her studies of women as monsters, building on her foundation of monster, horror, and feminist theory. She also wishes to continue to develop her analytical and creative nonfiction writing skills. In her free time, Lauren enjoys reading, watching movies, crafting, thrifting, and trying new coffee shops.

Leland Calistri graduated from Bucknell University with a B.A. in English and Classics. He credits a formative seminar on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man for shifting his scholarly focus towards issues of culture and identity within American literature. This culminated in his senior thesis titled “In The Country,” where he analyzed the effects of the American pastoral on Appalachia through The Devil All The Time by Donald Ray Pollock. At Villanova, Leland hopes to continue investigating how certain American authors contributed to the formation of what he calls the “pastoral project.” He also wishes to gain insights from other literary periods and schools of critical thought. Specific areas of interest include Early American literature, Irish literature, and 19th-century American literature. In his free time, Leland enjoys fishing, hiking, writing poetry, and listening to music.

Javier Correoso is a Cuban-American graduate student born in Santiago de Cuba and residing in New Jersey. He graduated in 2025 from Rutgers University-New Brunswick with a B.A. in English and Political Science. Under the supervision of Professors Alfredo Franco and Adam Dalva, he presented his honors thesis in creative writing, titled "The End of the Carnival," which earned Highest Honors and the Henry Rutgers Scholar Award. The thesis was a book-length short-story collection that covered life in present-day Cuba and the Cuban-American diasporic identity. It blended techniques of literary fiction and surrealism with themes of nostalgia, politics, and culture. At Rutgers, Javier attended English courses focused on classic and contemporary American literature, classics, and the short story medium. He also tutored writing for the English Department.  At Villanova, he intends to deepen his knowledge of the literature of the Americas, the works of the Latin American Boom, and Engl...

Nikola Stojcic graduated from UCLA in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Science in Physiological Science. Initially pre-med, Nikola eventually came to her senses and immersed herself in English courses, where she developed a love for medieval literature. Her final paper for her capstone seminar explored the depiction of religious portents across classical and early medieval works. At Villanova, she hopes to deepen her knowledge of medieval literature, with a particular interest in examining chivalric romance from a queer perspective. At the opposite end of the literary spectrum, she is interested in post-modern writers like David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, and Jennifer Egan whose works investigate loneliness and alienation in modern life. Nikola has also received an M.F.A. in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute in 2023. She hopes to continue writing creatively while pursuing her academic interests at Villanova. In her free time, Nikola enjoys wa...