Student Bios

Shea Rowell-Szpila is a recent graduate from Mount St. Mary's University, where she completed her degrees in English and music, with minors in French and theology. She prefers interdisciplinary approaches to artistic analysis, and is particularly fascinated by the overlap between literary and musical artistic expression, which she hopes to explore further at Villanova. This fall, Shea will begin her work as a graduate assistant with the Graduate Studies Office, and looks forward to becoming a part of the community of Villanova graduate students. As a newlywed who recently moved away from her hometown in rural Virginia, Shea is excited to make Pennsylvania her new home. In her free time, you can find Shea sitting outside with a book, playing her trumpet with the Chester County Community Band, and drinking copious amounts of tea.

Kristen Wallace joins Villanova's English department after graduating from Colorado State University – Pueblo with her BA in English and a minor in Philosophy. While her passions in literary study are wide-ranging, she is particularly fond of exploring how characters display (or are denied) agency within a text and how those texts can inform a way of existing that ensures that diverse and marginalized peoples have a space to be agentic in their own lives. At Villanova, Kristen fully expects to continue this line of scholarship in her own academic pursuits, as well as in her tutoring pedagogy. Her favorite books include The Count of Monte Cristo, Fragile Things, the entire Harry Potter series, and, most recently, Station Eleven. In her leisure time, Kristen's favorite ways to satisfy her curiosity are eating at chef-driven restaurants, taking photos of peculiar bugs in her mother's garden, and listening to podcasts about justice, design, and human experience. As a Colorado...

Alex Liska graduated with a BA in English Literature and a Minor in French from West Chester University, where he was president of the English Club. Since graduating in 2018, he has worked as a marketing associate for Thirty West Publishing House, an independent press based in Philadelphia that publishes handmade chapbooks of poetry and fiction for first-time authors. He will begin his Master’s in English this fall at Villanova, where he looks forward to continuing his exploration of Medieval and Early Modern literature and faith. He aspires to take his passion for literature and academia to a full professorship one day. In his free time, Alex enjoys fantasy and science fiction media, classic and folk rock music, and traveling with his girlfriend Julianna. His favorite novel is The Lord of the Rings .

Zac joined Villanova’s program after graduating Magna Cum Laude from Ohio State University with a BA in English and a minor in Physical Anthropology. At OSU, he explored a wide array of courses ranging in topic from Early Medieval Feminist Writers to Postcolonial Children’s Stories. The most influential course for him was the 19th Century British Novel where he read Wilkie Collins for the first time. Through his writing, he was introduced to the genre of sensation fiction. For his senior Independent Study, he analyzed the novel Lady Audley’s Secret. Utilizing a queer lens and the work and theory of Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick, he posited that erotic triangles and performative heterosexuality were integral to the characters’ motivations in the novel. In the future, he plans to focus on queer and gender theory and their relationship to Victorian Literature, and more specifically, the genre of sensation fiction. Due to his background in Physical Anthropology, he is also interested in the ways...

Caitlyn Dittmeier graduated in 2018 from Villanova with a BA in English. Minoring in Writing and Rhetoric, Irish Studies, and Biology, while remaining committed to her passion for the performing arts, she brings an enthusiasm for embracing an interdisciplinary approach to her literary studies. After graduation, Caitlyn had the opportunity to conduct original archival research in Ireland, where she cemented her desire to pursue graduate school. Looking through Abbey Theatre programs from the years immediately following the 1916 Easter Rising, Caitlyn was fascinated to learn about W.B. Yeats’s project to restage his poetic dramas with ballet and noh drama techniques on the Irish national stage. Through her research, Caitlyn explored the relationships between dance, literature, and culture. She also took a closer look at topics surrounding memory and language, which she has done in other essays and projects like her senior seminar docupoetry project that investigated her grandmother’s im...

Olivia Stowell graduated from Westmont College, double majoring in English and Theater. At Westmont, her classes on race and gender, alongside her involvement in the Racial Equality and Justice organization, spurred her to focus her academic study on the construction and reproduction of embodied identities in 20th/21st century literature and cultures. Her senior thesis explored how the narrative and visual frameworks of Disney’s Aladdin and Pocahontas represent the cultural project of the reproduction of whiteness, and the ways Western power co-opts and/or dismantles other cultural identities for its own benefit. During her undergrad, Olivia worked in Westmont’s archives and wrote for the Arts & Entertainment section of the student newspaper. She performed in Westmont’s theater productions, her favorite role being Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. She also directed multiple theatre pieces based on 20th century poetry, including an adaptation of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land an...

Anne graduated in 2008 with a Master’s in English from Jyoti Nivas College in Bangalore, India, but upon coming to America in 2016 realized that she yearned to study literature again. She is from India but was raised in Indonesia and is now in America, so naturally, her interest is in exploring literatures of the Indian diaspora. Having lived in three countries also explains her attraction to literatures that examine the complexities of the notions of place and displacement, home and national identity. Anne used to run a couture cake business that kept her on her feet (the cake she made for Thanksgiving to look exactly like a roast turkey—stuffing and all—was one of her favorites). When she isn’t covered in butter and sugar, she is writing to reign in and make sense of her scattered thoughts, discussing the finer points of JK Rowling’s writing with her three elementary school children, listening to 80’s rock music with her husband, or staring at the world map hanging on their livin...

Lauren graduated cum laude from Florida Gulf Coast University with a BA in English. She is a Florida native swamp-romper and probably the most ill-prepared for Pennsylvania winters. She currently holds a position for a marketing and design company at which she wears many hats: copywriting, editing, social media management, and design. She hopes to further pursue a creative writing career in the marketing field. She believes that language is our most powerful tool, and was inspired to study literary theory after reading Ted Chiang. She also took classes that focused on these theories and circular thinking, such as Modern British Literature and a Consciousness in Nature course. Theories such as deconstruction will be her primary focus during her Master’s program. She enjoys reading, art (across all media), video games, and paddle-board yoga. On her days off she volunteers at Shy Wolf Sanctuary.