Student Bios

Samantha Covais graduated from Chestnut Hill College summa cum laude with a degree in English Literature and minors in Philosophy and Religious Studies. She currently works as a secretary at her parish, Saint Rose of Lima. At Villanova, she hopes to strengthen her interdisciplinary approach to literature and analyze the ways in which philosophical and religious ideals speak to audiences through books. She is particularly interested in the concepts of eudaimonia and philia and how they reveal themselves in literature. She loves baseball, animals, yoga, hiking, and classic rock. In her free time, you can find Sam cheering on the Phillies, feeding the ducks at Peace Valley Park, or just reading a good book!

Franki Maria Rudnesky graduated summa cum laude from Saint Joseph’s University in 2018 with a BA in English and minors in Journalism and Italian. While at SJU, she was a cheerleader, an editor for The Hawk student newspaper, and a member of the Honors Program. She’s excited to use her experiences in the SJU Honors Program in her new role as a Graduate Assistant in Villanova’s Honors Program! After graduating from SJU, she worked as a Production Assistant at NBC10, an Instructional Aide in an elementary school, and most recently as a Staff Writer/Copy Editor/Fashion Vlog Host with The Hammonton Gazette , a local newspaper in South Jersey. Franki has always been interested in writing, reading, and education, and is really excited to be back in the classroom as a student of literature at Villanova. While at SJU, Franki enjoyed studying texts and contexts surrounding specific authors throughout history, as some of her favorite courses centered around one author, such as Shakespeare, Jane ...

Vicki Dearden graduated with a BA in English and a Minor in Psychology from Marist College. She then received her M.S. Ed. from the University of Pennsylvania and has since been teaching high school English in West Philadelphia. Her thesis involved using creative writing in the classroom as a way to analyze literature. Her teaching pedagogy focuses on examining culturally relevant texts and comparison across various types of media. Vicki will begin her Master's in English at Villanova this fall where she looks forward to expand her content knowledge and get involved in the community. In her free time, Vicki enjoys cooking, reading, and banjo music. Her favorite Shakespeare play is The Merchant of Venice .

Jess Derr is a recent graduate from Arcadia University, where she received her BA in English with a minor in Gender and Sexuality Studies. While at Arcadia, her primary research interests involved ecocriticism, postcolonialism, and gender theory mainly exploring conceptions of masculinity and what results when one fails to adhere to such. These theoretical frameworks served as the basis for her culminating thesis “Buggered, Beaten, Broken: Male as Colonized Body in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander.” The project considers how Gabaldon subverts the typical compression of the gender and colonial hierarchy, a schema that historically has linked sexual assault with colonial oppression, often paralleling aggression against the land and the female body. Jess was due to present a version of this project in Glasgow last Spring before COVID wreaked havoc upon the world. She is instead currently revising it for publication. Jess is also deeply invested in pedagogy. She worked for several years as ...

Em Friedman graduated summa cum laude from the CUNY Interdisciplinary BA program in 2016. They received their undergraduate degree in Queer Feminisms and bring lived experience as an artist and activist to their academic work. Em is excited to join the English department at Villanova and support VU's Gender & Women's Studies program (GWS) as the GWS’s new Graduate Assistant.

Jessie Findora is a high school English teacher. She earned her BA in English from Gettysburg College and her teaching certificates at West Chester University before starting her first job at Coatesville Area Senior High. While there, she worked with struggling readers, so she went back to school for her MEd and reading specialist certification. She eventually became a gifted case manager, so she earned her MA in Educational Psychology with a concentration in giftedness, creativity, and talent development from the University of Connecticut. After that, she began teaching at Unionville High School (where she currently works), had a son, and just recently finished her PhD in teaching, learning, and technology. Her dissertation examined the impact of interracial literary fiction on the ethnocultural empathy of White high school students. Working at Unionville made Jessie want to dive back into literary analysis, so she am excited to pursue that end by taking these classes at...

Amanda graduated from La Salle University with a BA in English and a minor in Communication. During her junior year, she decided to study the writings of esteemed literary minds and apply their theories on gender, time, morality, and nature to the graphic novel medium. The result was “‘Where is the Essence that was so Divine?’: The Nostalgia of Moore’s Minutemen,” a twenty-four-page piece using the ideas of John Stuart Mill, Judith Butler, Friedrich Schiller, and more to theorize the role of nostalgia within Alan Moore’s Watchmen . After completing her undergraduate program, she accepted a position as a Grants and Fellowships Consultant at Villanova’s Center for Research and Fellowships. When she isn’t assisting her peers with outlines and project proposals, she works as a Certified Barista Trainer at Starbucks, which fuels her coffee addiction. At Villanova, she hopes to expand her knowledge on Literary Theory as well as Comic Studies, specifically in terms of how the political and...