Positions for Recent Graduate Students

Please join us in congratulating the following UMD graduates and their advisors on their recent and impressive placements:

Rob Wakeman has just taken up a position as Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Southern Florida. Rob defended his dissertation, “The Ethics of Eating Animals on the Tudor and Stuart Theaters” this past July. The dissertation was co-chaired by Theresa Coletti and Ted Leinwand, with a committee that included Scott Trudell, Kellie Robertson and Phil Soergel.  

PhD graduate Chris Brown (2012) has accepted an appointment as a tenure-track assistant professor at Wake Forest University. Chris goes to Wake Forest after a post-doct at Princeton.  Chris’s dissertation, “And There See Justice Done:  The Problem of Law in the African American Literary Tradition,”  was completed under the directorship of Mary Helen Washington, with a committee consisting of Robert Levine, Zita Nunes, Edlie Wong, and Elsa Barkley Brown (History).

PhD graduate Isis Semaj-Hall (2013) recently began a tenure-track assistant professorship of Caribbean Literature and Popular Culture in the Department of Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica. Isis’s dissertation, “On the B-Side: A Dub Approach to Defining a Caribbean Literary Identity in the Contemporary Diaspora,” was directed by Merle Collins. Other members of the committee included Michelle Rowley, Nita Nunes, Barry Pearson, and Cordell Black.

PhD graduate Christin Taylor (2013) has accepted a position as a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Shenandoah University. She was previously a lecturer in the Humanities program at the University of Virginia. Christin completed her dissertation, “The Reaper’s Return: Environmental Justice, Feeling and Desire in African American and American Literature, 1920-1980,” under the direction of David Wyatt. Her committee also consisted of Carla Peterson, Zita Nunes, Mary Helen Washington, and Ira Berlin.