Bio

I received my Master’s in English from Boston College in 2020. I hold a BA in English from Wake Forest University (2013). I am currently a third year PhD student in Comparative Literature and third year Master’s student in German at UC-Davis. I focus primarily in the sociopolitics and aesthetics of Jewish Modernist works, with a particular emphasis on Surrealist and Surreal-adjacent works. I also work in Holocaust Literature; refugee and exile texts; space, the home, and urbanity; subversion; Hegelianism; existentialism; and punk rock. My thesis is entitled “Subversive Nonhumans: Aesthetic Rupture, Nation-States, and Rebellion in the Interwar Works of Franz Kafka, Marc Chagall, and Bruno Schulz.” My dissertation is tentatively entitled “Modernist Midrashic Mythmaking and the Political Reimaginings of Franz Kafka, Dovid Bergelsen, and Bruno Shulz.”

I currently teach a Comparative Literature class to undergrads entitled "Modern Places, Modernist Spaces," where we examine how Gaston Bachelard’s conceptions of space and home transform across nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. I have also taught English as a Foreign Language in the Czech Republic; instructed students in writing in a variety of settings including the classroom and individually; worked in marketing; and most recently I have worked as an editorial assistant. I am currently the secretary for the UC-Davis Graduate Students Association. I have established and facilitated a graduate student series within the Comparative Literature department at UC-Davis where graduate students present their research and writing. I am currently organizing a conference based out of the department called “Post/Modern Subversion,” which is a study of the different modes of subversion and rebellion across the twentieth century. This conference is open to all.

Presentations

“Beyond the Pale: The Jewishness of Punk Rock Literature,” NEMLA, Boston MA March 2020

Research Interests

Holocaust Literature; refugee and exile texts; space, the home, and urbanity; subversion; Hegelianism; the politics of love writing; Surrealism; biopolitics; post-structuralism; new historicism; dialecticism; existentialism; and punk rock.

Languages

German, Yiddish, Polish, Russian, Czech, French

Education and Certificates

• MA English (Boston College, 2020)
• TEFL certified (received TEFL Worldwide-Prague, 2016)
• BA English, minors Film Studies and Creative Writing (Wake Forest University, 2013)