Department of English
Kimpel Hall 333,
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, AR 72701
P 479-575-4301
F 479-575-5919
E-mail: engl@uark.edu
Alumni Data
Welcome to our graduate English alumni page!
This page provides:
- a link to our Alumni Profile Blog
- key statistics and placement data for our graduate programs
- a list of alumni who have graduated from the M.A. and Ph.D. Programs in English since 2013
We encourage you to review our list of alumni to get a sense of the wide range of careers, both academic and alt-ac, that our graduate students have chosen to pursue. If you would like to contact one or more of our alumni, please send an e-mail request to lxp04@uark.edu.
Alumni Profile Blog
![td[@class='image']/img/@alt](/departments/english/_resources/graduate/ma-phd-english/josh-megan.png)
M.A. ('15) Alum
Josh Jackson and Ph.D. ('17) Alum Dr. Megan Vallowe
Key Statistics and Placement Data for Our M.A. and Ph.D. Programs
Updated Fall 2018
M.A. Statistics
- 75 – Graduates since Fall 2011
- 3 years, 1 semester – Average Time to Degree Completion since 2011
Select Placement Information Over the Last 11 Years:
- 42 – Ph.D. Program Enrollment
- 15 – K-12 Teaching Positions
- 15 - Corporate and Non-Profit Positions (e.g., with ArcBest, Tyson, J.B. Hunt, Walton Arts Center, and the Northwest Arkansas Gazette)
- 16 – College English Instructor and University Administrative Positions
- 6 – Library Science Graduate Programs or Library Administrative Positions
Ph.D. Statistics
- 54 – Graduates since Fall 2011
- 6 years – Average Time to Degree Completion since 2011
Select Placement Information Over the Last 11 Years:
- 33 – Assistant or Associate Professor Positions
- 14 – Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Positions
- 6 – K-12 Teaching Positions
- 4 – Academic Administrative Positions
- 5 – Alternative-Academic Positions
- Acquisitions Editor (Harper Collins)
- Educ. Program Spec. (U.S. Dept. of Ed.)
- Founder of Interrobang (brand storytelling co.)
- Real Estate Broker (New Orleans)
- Writing Center Course Mentor (Western Governors Univ.)
List of Alumni Who Have Graduated Since 2013
M.A. Graduates
Name | Thesis or Portfolio |
Position | Employer |
Justin Barfield |
Portfolio | No Information Currently Available | |
Luke Carothers | Portfolio | No Information Currently Available | |
Robert Ellis | Portfolio | Administrative Records Analyst | Records and Data Services, Office of University Development |
Sait Ibiši | “Middle Eastern Themes in Contemporary American Fantasy: The Political and Socio-Religious Implications” | No Information Currently Available | |
Michel LaCrue | “Establishing Influence and Authority in Ancient Civilizations and Modern Politics: The Rhetoric of Oracles and the Oracular Maneuvers of Political Action Committees” | Adjunct Instructor of English | University of Arkansas at Fort Smith |
Kimberly Marquez |
Portfolio | Advertorial/Content Writer | Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette |
David Morledge | Portfolio | No Information Currently Available | |
Allison Treese | “A Flourynge Aege: Tracing the Sacred and Secular in the Book of St. Albans” | No Information Currently Available |
|
Mitchell Simpson | Portfolio | No Information Currently Available | |
John Stout | “Pynchon and Place: A Geocritical Reading of Thomas Pynchon” | Lecturer | Department of English, University of Arkansas |
Mary (“Katie”) Voss | Portfolio | No Information Currently Available | |
Amanda White | Portfolio | Content Marketing Specialist | J.B. Hunt (Lowell, AR) |
Ph.D. Graduates
Name | Area of Specialization | Dissertation | Position | Employer |
Uyen Dang |
Rhetoric and Composition |
“Activating Schemata in ESL Writing” | Instructor of English | Hung Vuong Specialized High School, Binh Duong province, Vietnam |
Jonathan Green | Composition Pedagogy | “Best Practice: Bringing the Elements of Effective Practice to the College Writing Classroom” | Full-Time Lecturer | Department of English, Texas Christian University (Fort Worth, TX) |
Garrett Jeter | 19th-Century Gothic Literature | “Gothic Voids: Nineteenth-Century Reader Experience and Participation” | Assistant Professor | East Georgia State College (Statesboro, GA) |
Yendountien (“Noellie”) Lare-Assogba | Southern Literature | “Presumed Innocent: The Child Figure in U.S. Southern Literature, 1945 – 2004” | No Information Currently Available | |
Sara West |
Technical Communication | “The Challenge of Anonymous and Ephemeral Social Media: Reflective Research Methodologies & Student-User Composing Practices” | Assistant Professor of Professional and Technical Writing | San Jose State University |
M.A. Graduates
Name | Thesis or Comprehensive Exam | Position | Employer |
Eric Bontempo | “‘A Magic Deeper Still’: Sacramental Poetics in William Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti, and C. S. Lewis” | Doctoral Student in English | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC) |
Chris Borntrager | “Mechanisms and Implications of Identity Hybridization in Online Advertorials” | Doctoral Student in English | University of Arkansas |
Karly Eaton | “Race, Place and Young Adulting in Southern and Adolecscent Literature” | English Teacher | Haas Hall Academy (Bentonville, AR) |
Amanda Elmore | Comprehensive Exam | No Information Currently Available | |
Benjamin Enyart | Comprehensive Exam | No Information Currently Available | |
Logan Hilliard | Comprehensive | Director of First Year Programs and Career Services | Rockford University (Rockford, IL) |
Myles Melancon | Comprehensive Exam | 6th Grade Language Arts Teacher | St. Mark's Episcopal School (Houston, TX) |
Morgan Scholz | “Curricular Analysis of the University of Arkansas Composition I Pilot Course: ENGL 1013, Community Ethnography” | Communications Director | B-Unlimited (Fayetteville, AR) |
Shavawn Smith | "We Can Come Back From This: Navigating the Perils of the Anthropocene in The Walking Dead" | Travel Analyst | Business Services, University of Arkansas |
Tessa Swehla | “The Two-Sided Coin: Madness and Laughter as Subversion in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Sandman” | Doctoral Student in English | University of Arkansas |
Stephanie Tangman | “Wayward Women, Macho Men: Linguistic Construction of Gender Binaries in Yxta Maya Murray's Locas and Denise Chavéz's Loving Pedro Infante” | AP Teacher | Science & Engineering Magnet High School (Dallas, TX) |
Taylor Weeks | “Understanding Discourse Transition” | Doctoral Student in English | University of Arkansas |
Evan Wordlaw | Comprehensive Exam | No Information Currently Available |
Ph.D. Graduates
Name | Area of Specialization | Dissertation | Position | Employer |
Farzana Akhter | Contemporary Ethnic and Immigrant Literature | “The Net of Nostalgia: Class, Culture, and Political Alienation and Nostalgia in Contemporary Latino and South Asian American Literature” | Assistant Professor | East West University (Dhaka, Bangladesh) |
Christy Davis | Southern Studies | “The Caribbean Imaginary in Southern Women's Literature” | English Professor | San Jacinto College (Houston, TX) |
Sinan Gul | Modern and Contemporary Drama, Drama from the Renaissance and Reformation Ages | “Persistence of Memory: Revision, Nostalgia, and Resistance in Contemporary American Drama” | No Information Currently Available | |
Whitney Martin | African American Literature | “The Hollow Class: African-American Class—Passing and the Popular” | Assistant Teaching Professor in African American Literature | University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Park (Long Beach, MS) |
Linda Shaffer | Southern Studies and Indigenous Women's Studies | “Cultural Reimagining and Literary Voice: Southeastern Tribal Women Negotiate Cultural, Social, and Political Identity through Literature” | Part-Time Faculty, Department of Languages and Literature | Northeastern State University (Tahlequah, OK) |
Megan Vallowe | Indigenous Studies | “Indigenous Resistance: Settler-Colonialism, Nation Building, and Colonial Patriarchy” | Assistant Professor of English | Dalton University in GA |
Paula White | African American Literature | “The Black Maternal and Cultural Healing in Twentieth Century Black Women's Fiction” | Instructor | Department of English, University of Mississippi (Oxford, MS) |
M.A. Graduates
Name | Thesis or Comprehensive Exam | Position | Employer |
Judith Bell | “‘Deliberate Voluptuousness’: The Monstrous Women of Dracula and Carmilla” | No Information Currently Available | |
Alex Blomstedt | “Divining the Southwest: Liminality, Pragmatism, and Regionalism in Death Comes for the Archbishop” | No Information Currently Available | |
Sally Ferguson | “[Re]Visiting the Rime: A Case Study of Adaptation as Process and Product with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” | Full-Time English Faculty | University of Arkansas Community College at Hope-Texarkana |
Sharon Fox | “Dandy as Disease: Gender Hygiene and British Nineteenth-century Literature” | Doctoral Student in English | University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR) |
Luis Marin | “The Stories of Junot Díaz: Genre and Narrative in Drown and This is How You Lose Her” | Doctoral Student in English | University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR) |
Kristi Pierse | “‘Everyone Has Thought about Killing Someone - One Way or Another′: Cannibalism and the Question of Morality in Bryan Fuller's Hannibal” | Office Manager of New Student & Family Programs | University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR) |
Jessica Schnebelen | “Literature as Virtual Reality: An Exploration of Subjectivity Formation in the Digital Era” | Tutor Coordinator for the Business Communication Lab | Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR) |
Alicia Troby | “Revision and Re-Writing as Adaptation: Using Adaptation Theory to Encourage Student Recognition of Rhetorical Situations” | Social Studies Teacher | Heritage High School (Rogers, AR) |
Ph.D. Graduates
Name | Area of Specialization | Dissertation | Position | Employer |
Edward Ardeneaux, IV | 20th- and 21st-Century American Literature (with a focus on representations of technology and digital subjectivities) | “Mapping the System, Completing the Circuit: The Hacker Figure as Techno-Interface in Contemporary Novels of Speculation and in Popular Films” | Assistant Professor | Department of English, University of the Ozarks (Clarksville, AR) |
Angela Cox | Rhetoric, Composition, and New Media | “The Power Fantastic: How Genre Expectations Mediate Authority” | Assistant Teaching Professor | Department of English, Ball State University (Muncie, Indiana) |
Paige Hermansen | Rhetoric and Composition/Rhetoric of Education Policy | “Selling College: Student Recruitment and Education Reform Rhetoric in the Age of Privatization” | Assistant Professor of English | Westfield State University (Westfield, MA) |
Sarah (Nikki) Holland | Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy | “Designing Place-sensitive Professional Development: A Critical Ethnography of Teaching and Learning Argumentative Writing” | Writing Center Course Mentor | Western Governors University |
Eric Larson | British Literature | “Telling New Tales: Modernizations of Chaucer in the Eighteenth Century” | Writer/Editor |
Headquarters Office for the Transportation Security Administration (Arlington, VA)
Note: Eric is also an
Adjunct Professor for George Mason University and an Online Instructor for Central
Michigan University.
|
Rebecca Quoss-Moore | Renaissance Literature | “The Threat at Court: Subversive Uses of Translation, Transcription, and Tradition in the Henrician Court” | Assistant Professor in Early Modern British Literature | Department of English, University of Central Oklahoma (Edmond, OK) |
Amy Oatis | American Literature and Literary Theory | “‘The Best Soil of Their Hearts’: Protestant Explorations of Catholic Spirituality in Cooper, Longfellow, and Hawthorne” | Associate Professor of English | University of the Ozarks (Clarksville, AR) |
Lindsey Zachary Panxhi | Medieval Literature | “Hoc Est Corpus Meum: The Eucharist in Twelfth-Century Literature” | Assistant Professor of English, Oklahoma Baptist University (Shawnee, OK) | Oklahoma Baptist University (Shawnee, OK) |
Jennifer Pastoor | Medieval Literature | “‘Good to Think With’: Women and Exempla in Four Medieval English Texts” | No Information Currently Available | |
Rachael Price | Modern and Contemporary American Literature | “Beyond Main Street : Small Towns in Post-‘Revolt’ American Literature” | Assistant Professor of English | Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College (Tifton, GA) |
Ashley Robinson | 19th-Century American and British Literature | “Cowboys and Victorians: The American West in English Victorian Literature” | Founder and Lead Storyteller | Interrobang (a brand storytelling company) |
Amanda Schafer | 19th-Century British Literature | “‘A Band of Sisters’: Female Detectives, Authority, and Fiction from 1865 to the 1930s" | Adjunct English Faculty | University of Arkansas at Fort Smith |
Justin Tinsley | 20th-Century American Literature, Modernism, and Postmodernism | "Ecological Approaches to Modernism, the U.S. South, and 20th Century American Literature" | 11th-Grade English Teacher | Arkansas High School (Texarkana, AR) |
M.A. Graduates
Name | Thesis or Comprehensive Exam | Position | Employer |
Alex Abrams | “Decoding Literary AIDS: A Study on Issues of the Body, Masculinity, and Self Identity in U.S. AIDS Literature from 1984-2011” | Communications Coordinator | Office of the Dean of the College, Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem, NC) |
Kimberly Allen | “Past Traumas, Present Griefs: Exploring the Effects of Colonialism, Microaggressions, and Stereotyping from Wild West Shows to Indigenous Literature” | Doctoral Student in English | Oklahoma State University (Stillwater, OK) |
Rebecca Chatham | “The Many Faces of Cleopatra: How Performance and Characterization Change Cleopatra in Geoffrey Chaucer's ‘The Legend of Cleopatra,’ William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, and John Dryden's All for Love; or, The World Well Lost” | Doctoral Student in English Education | Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ) |
Jason Curlin | Comprehensive Exam | English Teacher, Arkansas Teacher Corps | Lee County High School (Marianna, AR) |
Allison Carter Fanney | Comprehensive Exam | Communications Manager - Tax | AICPA (Durham, NC) |
Marisa Grippo | Comprehensive Exam | Registrar’s Assistant/Software Support Technician | Office of the Registrar, Southern Arkansas University (Magnolia, AR) |
Joshua Jackson | “Architectures for a Future South: Posthumanism and Ruin in the Novels of Cormac McCarthy” | Doctoral Student in English | Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA) |
Laurel Loh | “Intersectionality in Jane Eyre and Its Adaptations” | Teacher's Aide | Northport-East Northport School District (Northport, NY) |
Shirley Rash | “Maybe It Was You: The Implications of Southern Gothic Elements of Criminality, Sexuality, and Race in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood” | Assistant Editor, Library Associate | New Leaf Publishing Group (Green Forest, Arkansas); Berryville Public Library (Berryville, AR) |
Phillip Stephens | “The Technological Singularity: An Ideological Critique” | No Information Currently Available | |
Alexis Stephenson | “What the Fuck Is This?: Aesthetic Nature of Being or Ontology in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins” | No Information Currently Available | |
Ian Whitlow | “‘Keep Funding or Else . . . It's Mustaches’: Building a Community of Literacy at Owl Creek School” | Video Production Manager | Tyson Foods, Inc. (Springdale, AR) |
Ph.D. Graduates
Name | Area of Specialization | Dissertation | Position | Employer |
Huseyin Altindis | Southern Literature | "Immigrant Labor in Southern Literature, 1980-2010" | Assistant Professor | Department of English, Alanya University (Turkey) |
Jennifer Mallette | Rhetoric and Composition | “Engineer as Writer and Woman: Gender, Identity, and Professional Discourse” | Assistant Professor of English (Technical Communication Program) | Boise State University (Boise, ID) |
Mindy Trenary | Modern and Contemporary American Literature | “Jewish-American Immigrant Narratives and Modernist Cosmopolitan Aesthetics” | Assistant Professor | Department of English & Literature, Butler Community College (El Dorado, KS) |
Andy Trevathan | 20th-Century Literature (Secondary Emphasis in Rhetoric and Composition) | “At Home In Exile: Ezra Pound and the Poetics of Banishment” | Full-Time Instructor | Department of English, Louisiana State University--Baton Rouge (Baton Rouge, LA) |
Megan Troutman | American Popular Culture | “(Re)Animating the Horror Genre: Explorations in Children's Animated Horror Film” | English Instructor | King's HIgh School (Seattle, WA) |
Afrin Zeenat | American Literature and Culture before 1900 | “The Spectacle of Orphanhood: Reimagining Orphans in Postbellum Fiction” | English Faculty Member | School of World Languages, Cultures & Communications, Richland College (Dallas, TX) |
Malek Zuraikat | Medieval Literature | “The Anti-Crusade Voice of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales” | No Information Currently Available |
M.A. Graduates
Name | Thesis or Comprehensive Exam | Position | Employer |
Laura Leighann Dicks | “The Influence of Literacy on the Lives of Twentieth Century Southern Female Minority Figures” | Doctoral Student in English | University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS) |
Natalie Hotary | Comprehensive Exam | No Information Currently Available | |
Jacqueline Lawrence | “Queer Tastes: An Exploration of Food and Sexuality in Southern Lesbian Literature” | Associate Business Partner in Human Resources | J.B. Hunt Transport, Inc. (Lowell, AR) |
Timothy Nelson | “Welsh Manipulations of the Matter of Britain” | Doctoral Student in English | University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR) |
Aaron Nugent | Comprehensive Exam | English Teacher | Fayetteville High School (Fayetteville, AR) |
Sara Putman | Comprehensive Exam | Co-Owner | Bookish, an independent bookstore (Fort Smith, AR) |
Benjamin Ring | Comprehensive Exam | English Teacher | Bentonville High School (Bentonville, AR) |
Rachael Schaffner | “Facing the Wreck: Death, Optimism, and the Fragmented Form” | Implementation & Innovation Coordinator | The Sustainability Consortium (Fayetteville, AR) |
Katie Smith | “Transitioning to Writing about Writing: A Consideration of the Metawriting Teaching Approach at the University of Arkansas” | Associate Communications and Engagement Manager | Kroger (Nashville, TN) |
Elizabeth Vammen | “A Melting Pot of Voices: Public Discourse and the Latino Immigrant Experience in the United States” | No Information Currently Available | |
Mia Wendel | Comprehensive Exam | Product Development Specialist | Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (Bentonville, AR) |
Ph.D. Graduates
Name | Area of Specialization | Dissertation | Position | Employer |
Aya Akkawi | Postmodern Literature | “Salman Rushdie in the Postmodern Current: New Venues, New Values” | Assistant Professor of English Literature | Yarmouk University, (Irbid, Jordan) |
James Anderson | Rhetoric and Composition | “‘We can’t reclaim what we don’t understand’: Teachers’ Perceptions of Advocacy and Voice in a Rural Institute of the National Writing Project” | Assistant Professor of English and English Education | Lander University (Greenwood, SC) |
Jeremy Burns | American Popular Culture after 1945 | “Monsters in Common: Identity and Community in Post-apocalyptic Science Fiction After 9/11” | Director of Communications | Enrollment Management Support, University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR) |
Mary Leigh | 19th-Century British Literature | “The Cultural Crime of Femininity: Advocating for Viable and Successful Womanhood in Charles Dickens and George Eliot” | Humanities Instructor | Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts (Hot Springs, AR) |
April (Thompson) Young | Southern Literature | “Trashed Whites: The Myth of the Southern Poor White” | Assistant Professor of English | Volunteer State Community College (Gallatin, TN) |
M.A. Graduates
Name | Thesis or Comprehensive Exam | Position | Employer |
Rachel Hancock | “Humor and Howells: From Sit Down to Stand-Up” | Academic Adviser and Scholarship Coordinator, Current Doctoral Student | Walton Honors Program, Walton College of Business, Doctoral Program in English, University of Arkansas |
Drew Walker | Comprehensive Exam | Compliance Specialist | International Students & Scholars, University of Arkansas |
Elizabeth Walker | Comprehensive Exam | Manager of Executive Communications | Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (Bentonville, AR) |
Ph.D. Graduates
Name | Area of Specialization | Dissertation | Position | Employer |
Jack Ayres | Modern British Literature | “After Orwell: Totalitarian Fears and the English Political Novel, 1950-2010” | Assistant Professor of English | Texas A&M University--San Antonio (San Antonio, TX) |
Eve Baldwin | Rhetoric and Composition | “Reading and Religion: Reconciling Diverse Reading Patterns and the First-Year Composition Classroom” | Lecturer of Writing and Critical Inquiry in Undergraduate Education | University at Albany (Albany, NY) |
Jake Edwards | Rhetoric and Composition | “E-Readers, Reading Practices, and Adolescent Readers: Observations on the Intersection of Technology, Literacy, and Identity” | Assistant Professor of English | Georgia Gwinnett College (Lawrenceville, GA) |
Karon Reese | Modern and Contemporary American Literature | “Occupying the Pedestal: Gender Issues in Ellen Gilchrist” | Broker | Inhab Real Estate (New Orleans, LA) |
Nancy Romig | Modern and Contemporary American Literature | “‘A Man Is Hard Enough to Be’: History and Masculinity in the Texts of E. L. Doctorow” | Assistant Professor of English | Howard Payne University (Brownwood, TX) |
Carol Westcamp | Modern and Contemporary American Literature | “A Place Where You Can Reckon with Yourself: Loss of Place in Sam Shepard’s Plays” | Associate Professor of English | University of Arkansas—Fort Smith (Fort Smith, AR) |