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 .