Student Bios

Susan earned her BA in English and German at Mount St. Mary’s University in 2000. She then lived and worked in Germany for a year, tutoring students in English, developing her fluency, and traveling throughout Europe. Her literary interests are varied, as favorite authors include Dickens, Melville, Coelho, McCourt, and Angelou; she bears a particular love for Shakespeare. Considering her experience as an actor, she hopes to pursue studies with an emphasis on drama and the performed written word. Susan is a fulltime high school English teacher and mother of Jude and Paul, ages 3 and 4 months, respectively. In the unlikely chance that she isn’t grading, changing diapers, or reading bedtime stories, she enjoys brewing mint tea in the Moroccan style, singing impromptu backup vocals for friends, and binge-viewing Derek or Flight of the Conchords with her husband, Brian.

Born and raised in New Orleans, but having lived in Columbus, Ohio for the past eight years, Julia received her degree in English at the College of Wooster in May 2014. While at Wooster, she completed a year-long independent study project examining females as heroes in young adult fantasy literature. She is deeply interested in gender studies, including feminism and queer theory, and she is interested in exploring Irish literature as a potential focus of study in the future. In fact, Julia has an affinity for Irish culture and has been learning to play the Irish fiddle for the past two years. In addition to her passion for Celtic music, she also loves playing the piano, and you will usually find her listening to music in her spare time. Some of her other favorite pastimes include reading, creative writing, and traveling.

Embodying Villanova’s slogan “Once a wildcat, always a wildcat,” Jennifer Bradley is back for her MA in English literature after graduating from Villanova University in 2013. She earned her BA in English and pursued minors in writing and rhetoric, Spanish, and psychology. Jennifer hopes to combine her love for literature and psychology in her research interests, which predominantly concern 20th century American literature and gender studies.

Christine Kelley earned bachelors in English Literature and History at Elizabethtown College. While a student there, she researched and designed a 27-panel literary exhibit celebrating the life of Sylvia Plath for the Lancaster Literary Guild. Her interests are primarily in 20th and 21st century poetry, but her reading is omnivorous and eclectic. She also enjoys novels, especially modern and postmodern. Among international authors, she loves the Japanese, especially Haruki Murakami and Yasunari Kawabata. Current research interests include Syrian poetry. Christine enjoys writing poetry and knitting in her spare time.

Payton studied English Literature as an undergraduate at Texas A&M University. She has previously studied the intersect of war literature and idealized masculinity using texts from various American eras, but also has interests in Southern and Chicano subfields. Payton enjoys coffee, every variety of bread product, and walking through the city (even though she can only afford to window shop).

Eric earned his BA in English from Penn State University in 2011. His fields of interest include late 19th- and early 20th-century American literature and media studies. In the past, he has written on issues of revision in Henry James’s Roderick Hudson and has explored questions of human experience in an increasingly technological world, using Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy as a parallel. Eric’s two great loves are wine and the written word, and when he isn’t in the classroom you’ll find him, glass in hand, either reading up on all things enology or just tasting… always tasting…

Justin graduated with a BA in English from St. Joseph’s University in 2009, where he ran track and cross country. He volunteered with Americorps for a few years in California, Arizona, and Montana, leading backcountry conservation crews, before writing for a Florida daily newspaper and working on an organic farm in Tanzania. His traveling curriculum included Conrad, Faulkner, and Cormac McCarthy. His father read him an Illustrated Classics edition ofMoby-Dick as a child and the book has been a part of his life ever since. His interests include nature writing in fiction, and identifying themes of environmental stewardship that serve as a call to social action, particularly in late 19th and early 20th century American literature. In his spare time Justin enjoys long distance running and writing fiction about the desert.

Michelle graduated from Widener University in 2013 with a BA in English. She also minored in creative writing and was active in theater and choir. She never grew out of playing pretend, and that is reflected in her literary interests: early modern drama, video game studies, audience study, and interpretative communities on the internet (fandom). She is interested in texts that are, or might be, experienced (or “played”) visually, aurally, and interactively, in very specific times and very specific spaces—an interest that has led her face-first into the digital humanities. Michelle loves her gaming PC, her furry children, a good glass of wine, and indoor rock climbing with her Companion Cube.