UK EGSO

shannon.branfield@uky.edu

Shannon Branfield is a 4th year Ph.D. candidate in Victorian literature. Her research interests include Victorian popular genres, transatlantic and colonial literature, and gender theory. Her dissertation focuses on men and marriage in British sensation fiction.

jvangilder@uky.edu

Jessica Van Gilder is a 2nd-year PhD student in the English department. Her scholarly interests include cognitive approaches to literary studies, cognitive cultural studies, and issues of truth and fictionality, in 18th-19th century America. In particular, she is interested in the rise of the novel in early America and the relationship between contextual concepts of truth and cultural manifestations of fictionality. 

ktel225@uky.edu

Kesla Elmore is a second-year master’s student of English and a graduate instructor in the Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Studies department at the University of Kentucky. Born and raised in Harford County Maryland, Elmore later moved to Baltimore City Maryland and received her Bachelor of Arts in English from Morgan State University in the Spring of 2018. Elmore has an interest in black girlhood through the lens of contemporary ethnic American Literature of the 20th and 21st Century. Her focuses are on black girlhood and ethnic American girlhood in the bildungsroman as it relates to media, performance and respectability politics placed on women of color over time, leading to present day.

kimaya.thakur@uky.edu

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tun223@uky.edu

​Tanner Underwood is a 3rd year PhD student in the English department, focusing on early-mid 20th century British and Irish Modernism. His research interests include (not surprisingly) Modernism, the avant-garde, critical theory, realism, primitivism, utopia/dystopia, and general questions about the importance/meaning (or lack thereof) behind the pursuit of artistic expression in written mediums.

jillian.winter@uky.edu

Jillian Q. Winter is a 3rd year PhD student in English at the University of Kentucky. She completed her BA in both English and History at Kent State University; she earned her MA at UK; and she hails from Monroeville, Pennsylvania. Her research interests include 18th-century British literature (and culture), fictional depictions of philanthropy, book history and reception, early American literature, and epistolary novels.

williamksewell@uky.edu

Kendall Sewell is an English PhD student focusing on twentieth and twenty-first century American literature and culture. His research interests include the study of apocalyptic narrative aesthetics, environmental writing, and film and television. 

kmko233@g.uky.edu

Kathryn Kohls is a second year PhD student. Her research interests include digital media, 19th century British Literature, and gender and women's studies. 

daria.goncharova@uky.edu

Daria (Dasha) Goncharova is a 2nd year PhD student in the English department, focusing on the post-45 American literature. She completed her BA in Linguistics at Southern Federal University in Russia; she earned her MA in English here at UK. Her research interests include Cold War film and literature, construction of masculinities in urban spaces, spatial theory, and gender and women's studies. 

b.westxc@gmail.com

Brandon West is EGSO's New Student Recruiter for the 2019-2020 academic year. He is in his second year in the PhD program, focusing on film and cognitive literary studies. His research revolves around the power of stories and the line between fiction and reality, primarily as represented in modern horror films. 

rw.halkyard@uky.edu

Rick Halkyard is a 2nd year Ph.D. candidate in 18th & 19th-Century American Literature. His interests include American war literature, affect and film theory, as well as religious studies. More precisely, he is interested in examining how mediums like fiction and film diagnose and/or inform us of national convictions and religious belief, particularly during wartime.

jmcconnellparsons@uky.edu

Jannell McConnell Parsons is a 3rd year PhD student, focusing on 19th and 20th century American and postcolonial/transnational literatures. Her research interests include Southern literature, Caribbean literature, Irish literature, and gender and women’s studies, specifically transnational feminisms.

nathan.petrie@uky.edu

Nathan is a 2nd year MA student working in 19th-century British literature. His research interests include secularization, nationalism, and consumer culture. 

jhoneyblue@uky.edu

Jordan Honeyblue is from Baltimore, Maryland. In 2018, she received her B.A. from Morgan State University. She is currently a first-year MFA Candidate in Poetry at the University of Kentucky.