Baylor’s English Graduate Student Association serves as an advocate for the English graduate student body by functioning as a recognized liaison between graduate students and both English department faculty and University administration. EGSA also works to advance the professional interests of both MA and PhD students and seeks to promote camaraderie among graduate students. Membership in EGSA is open to all Baylor University graduate students in English.
EGSA Officers for the 2023-2024 School Year
We love being your officers and are happy to help in any way we can. Check below to see who can best help you, then contact us via our emails, listed on the home page!
- President: Grace Perry McCright. Our fearless leader. If there’s an issue that affects us all and you think it should go to Dr. Russell, talk to Grace, our official liaison. If you have a question relating to your own unusual case and you’ve already run it by Harrison Otis (Peer Advisor), take it to Dr. Russell.
- Vice President: Reilly Fitzpatrick. Our fearless leader in training.
- Secretary: Sarah Kaderbek. Editor-in-Chief, Religion Editor, Fashion Editor, Drama Desk Editor, Chief Data Officer, Asst. History Editor, Society & Etiquette Editor, and Copy Editor of the EGSA Digest. Send her your entertainment for us all!
- Treasurer and Fundraising Chair: Madelyn Dyk. The keeper of the purse. Pay her your dues!
- Peer Advisor: Harrison Otis. The wisest of us all. For questions about paperwork, inside tips, grad school survival, and proof that it can be done, contact Harrison.
- Professional Development Coordinator: Anna Beaudry. Provider of practical wisdom, she organizes information and meetings that help us get jobs!
- GSA Representative: Kristyn Drew Woytkewicz. Our official representative to the larger Graduate Student Association; let her know if EGSA is too small a pond for you!
- Public Relations and Media Chair: Savannah Chorn. Keeper of Digital Keys and Virtual Grounds at EGSA and Assistant Editor of the Digest. Send her your announcements! For questions, suggestions, and complaints about this website, email me!
- Social Chairs: Andrew Hicks and Theresa Boyd. Arrangers and facilitators of fun and festivities!
- Orientation Chairs: Harrison Otis and Zsanna Bodor. Welcomers of all our newest members! They organize the prospective student weekend and help new students get settled in when they arrive in the fall.
The Graduate Student Association:
The GSA meetings are open to all graduate students on campus. Though we have official liaisons between EGSA and GSA, leadership in the GSA is open to all graduate students as well. Ask Grace or Kristyn if you’d like more information on getting involved!
EGSA Members
List of all current Baylor English MA and PhD students
Membership in EGSA is open to all graduate students in the Baylor English department and is presumed to include all English graduate students. Voting and holding office are restricted to dues-paying members; however, all English graduate students (and their significant others and families) are welcome to attend meetings and social functions.
| Name | Year of Entry | Focus/Concentration | About |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zsanna Bodor | 2023 | Early 17th-century British metaphysical poetry | Zsanna Bodor is a Master's candidate and a graduate consultant at the University Writing Center. She completed her B.A. at Hillsdale College in Michigan, where she studied German Literature and Music. Zsanna’s academic interests include early 17th-century British metaphysical poetry (especially Donne and Herbert), and the relationship between personalist philosophy and literature. Her other passions include singing, playing string quartets with her three brothers, traveling, and going on Socratic walks. Zsanna was born in Budapest, Hungary. |
| Harrison Glaze | 2023 | 20th Century Poetry & Poetics; Transatlantic Modernism | Harrison Glaze is a Ph.D. student in English at Baylor University. His research interests center on twentieth-century Anglophone poetry and poetics, transatlantic and transnational modernisms, and the history of literary criticism. A native of Atlanta, Georgia, he earned his B.A. in English at Rhodes College (roll, Lynx, roll!) in Memphis, Tennessee. |
| Ariadne Lewis | 2023 | Nineteenth-century British literature | Ariadne Lewis is a Ph.D. student at Baylor University. She completed her B.A. in English Education at Geneva College, near Pittsburgh, and spent three years teaching IBDP English in Indonesia before returning to the U.S. for graduate school. Her research interests include nineteenth-century British literature, narrative silence, Bakhtin, and religion. In her free time, she enjoys music, singing, baking, and talking on the phone with friends and family. |
| Lydia Martin | 2023 | Gerard Manley Hopkins & phonemic prosody, and Jane Austen and the development of novel genres, especially the self-aware novel (not just self referential) | Lydia Martin is a Ph.D. candidate. She received her B.A. in English at the University of Dallas in 2022. Her primary academic interests are the phonemic prosody of Gerard Manley Hopkins ("Taste Rhyme"), and the development of genre in Jane Austen. |
| David Willey | 2023 | 19th Century Literature | David Willey is a Masters student at Baylor and a graduate consultant at the University Writing Center. David received his undergraduate degree from the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, where he studied literature and the liberal arts. His academic interests include 19th-century literature, particularly Oscar Wilde, as well as aesthetic and critical theory. David's non-academic interests include bad attempts at cooking, playing tennis, and watching mystery shows. |
| Madelyn Dyk | 2022 | 18th and 19th century British novel | Madelyn is an MA student with a variety of literary interests, with particular interest in late 18th/early 19th century British novelists such as Frances Burney, Elizabeth Gaskell, the Brontes, and Dickens. Originally from Wisconsin, she got her BA in English at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, GA. In her free time, she likes to play piano, read Brandon Mull (among other things), and spend time with her family and friends. |
| Matt Hawk | 2022 | Modern & Contemporary American Literature | Matt Hawk is a PhD student in English at Baylor University, specializing in modern and contemporary American Literature, with special emphasis on poetry & poetics. His scholarly work has appeared in The Southern Quarterly, Arkansas Review, and Mississippi Quarterly. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Memphis, and both a B.A. and M.Ed. from the University of Notre Dame. His own poetry has been published by Appalachian Review, Rio Grande Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review. His chapbook of original poems, entitled Poems from the Heart, was published by Desert Willow Press in 2018. Originally from Ohio, he now lives with his wife and baby daughter in Georgetown, Texas, just north of Austin. |
| Meredith Kelly | 2022 | 20th Century Southern Gothic | Meredith is in the MA program at Baylor. She also completed her undergraduate degree at Baylor, where she earned a BA in University Scholars with concentrations in Great Texts, Philosophy, and Professional Writing and Rhetoric. She graduated in Spring 2022 and began her MA in fall of that year. In her graduate studies, she focuses on 20th Catholic writers in the American South. Authors of interest include Flannery O Connor, Walker Percy, and Caroline Gordon. Specifically, she wants to look at the grotesque ways these authors portray grace and redemption against the background of the 20th century south. In her free time, Meredith enjoys studying theology, listening to rock and folk music, playing guitar and piano, and convincing her roommate that she does not drink too much coffee and too little water. |
| Michael Riggins | 2022 | Literature and Theology; 16-17th Century British Poetry | Michael Riggins is a PhD student. He is a native of Indiana, but a naturalized citizen of Texas, having grown up both places. His interests lie primarily in the relationship between literature and theology in Early Modern England, particularly in the works of John Donne. His long term project focuses on both Donne’s devotional poems and sermons as spiritual exercises. Michael holds a BA in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College in Annapolis. |
| Laurel Samuelson | 2022 | Long 19th-Century British Literature | Laurel Samuelson is a PhD student studying British 19th-century literature in general and obsessing over George MacDonald's fairy tales in particular. In addition to her official research ventures, she also harbors a fascination with global comics and cartoons. To procrastinate, she knits very poorly, harasses her pudgy cyclops cat, and pretends to herself that she will one day fix the treadle sewing machine in the middle of her apartment. |
| Veronia Toth | 2022 | Victorian Literature | Veronica Toth is a PhD student at Baylor University. She received her M.A. in Literature and Cultural Theory from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where her master’s thesis examined the role of polygamy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Veronica’s research interests include relational structures and gender theory, religion and literature, and contemporary writing of faith. Additionally, her creative nonfiction and poetry have been published in journals such as Windhover, Relief, and The Other Journal. |
| Theresa Boyd | 2021 | ||
| Robert Brown | 2021 | 19th and 20th Century American Literature | Before enrolling in the PhD program at Baylor, Robert lived in Southern California, where he earned a BA in English from Biola University and an MA in English from Cal State Fullerton then worked as an adjunct composition instructor. His MA thesis was titled "Narrating the University: Teaching Academic and Civic Virtues in First-Year Composition," but his PhD studies are focused on American literature, particularly in the century spanning from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement. He is interested in how writers of the period engage with ideas of place, community, civic engagement, education, and moral and political formation. In his spare time, he watches and writes about films and makes music. |
| Savannah Chorn | 2021 | Victorian Poetry | Savannah Chorn is a PhD student at Baylor, where she also earned her Master's degree. Before coming to Waco, she graduated from Lee University with a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature. She is primarily interested in nineteenth-century British literature, religion, Victorian medievalism, and postsecularism, with an emphasis on Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In her free time, she enjoys watching movies with her roommates, letter writing, and learning to cook. |
| Reilly Fitzpatrick | 2021 | 19th-century British Women Writers; Feminist & Gender Theory | Reilly Fitzpatrick is a Ph.D. student originally from southern California whose research interests include British women writers of the long nineteenth-century, feminist and gender theory, and psychologies of education and metacognition, with a particular focus on conduct manuals, social reform, and the feminisms of Mary Wollstonecraft. She graduated with double BAs in English and Honors Humanities as well as a concurrent MA in English from Azusa Pacific University in 2020, and completed an MLitt in Romantic and Victorian Literature with a concentration in Women, Writing, and Gender from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in 2021. She also serves as the graduate assistant to the department of Women and Gender Studies here at Baylor. When not collecting book-related degrees, Reilly collects antique books, travels with her fiancée, and keeps her cat, Brontë, away from her jungle of houseplants. |
| Becky Presnall | 2021 | Long Middle Ages, Arthurian Literature, Classical Reception Studies, and Children's Literature | Becky Presnall is an MA candidate and Teacher of Record at Baylor University. Before coming to Baylor University, she graduated from Regent University with a Bachelor of Arts in English, concentrating in medieval Languages. Her research interests include Middle English Arthurian romances of the Northwest Midlands, Classical reception studies, and children’s literature. When not devoting her time to her corgi, Bertilak de Hautdesert, she may be found working on her latest crochet project, trying a new baking recipe, or watching Studio Ghibli movies. |
| Myles Roberts | 2021 | Religion & Literature; Shakespeare's *Measure for Measure* | Myles is a PhD student in English. He majored in English at Louisiana College where he was a terrible student. He has master's degrees in Liberal Arts (LSUS), Ethics and Social Justice (Howard Divinity), and Theology and the Arts (Duke Divinity). He likes to play music with his bandmates and throw a baseball with whomever is willing. He lives in Shreveport, Louisiana with his wife, Allie. |
| Jonathan Diaz | 2020 | American Literature | Jonathan Diaz is a Ph.D. student at Baylor University, where he studies race and religion in American literature, particularly Latina/o/e literature. He has taught rhetoric, composition, and great books courses at Biola University, the University of Southern California, and Baylor University. Diaz is also a poet, and was a finalist for the Ninth Letter 2023 Literary Award in Poetry. His poems appear in or are forthcoming from Sh? Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, and EcoTheo Review. He lives in Texas with his wife Abigail. |
| Kristyn Drew Woytkewicz | 2020 | 19th Century British Women Writers; Reform Novels; Feminist & Ecofeminist Theory | Kristyn Drew Woytkewicz is a PhD student studying 19th century British women writers and social reform. She is particularly interested in Elizabeth Gaskell, sympathy, and ecofeminism in industrial novels. Originally from San Antonio, TX, Kristyn received her BA from Mississippi College where she studied English writing, literature, and history. She currently serves as a graduate student committee member for the Nineteenth-Century Research Seminar at Baylor and can frequently be found working in Dichotomy (the best coffee shop in Waco). In her free time, Kristyn enjoys spending time with her husband Connor and cat Kyoshi, listening to Taylor Swift, and playing the Legend of Zelda. |
| Justice Flint | 2020 | Theology and Literature; Nineteenth Century Literature | Justice is a PhD student and also earned an MA in English at Baylor in 2022. Originally from Wichita, KS, she earned a BA in English from Bethel College in 2020. Her her main period of interest is 19th century Victorian literature, and her thematic interests include Christian theology, friendship (especially cross-gender friendship), and singleness. Among her many hobbies are sewing, drawing, photography, bookbinding, scrapbooking, playing violin, and ballroom dancing. Her favorite music includes movie soundtracks, Celtic/Irish folk, classical, 60s-80s rock and pop, and the work of Rich Mullins. She likes to read nonfiction books on topics relating to theology, history, friendship, and gender. She is an obsessive journaler, firmly believes in the value of wax-sealed cards and letters, and is an aficionado of historical clothing. |
| Sarah Kaderbek | 2020 | Late Victorian, Early Modernist British Literature | Sarah Kaderbek is a Ph.D. student and graduated with a B.A. in British and American Literature from Franciscan University of Steubenville in December 2019. Sarah's research interests include late Victorian and early Modernist authors, such as Oscar Wilde or G.K. Chesterton, with a special focus on the works of J.M. Barrie; the Inklings, most especially J.R.R. Tolkien; and Aristotelian philosophy of rocket science and space exploration, of all things. Outside of class, she can be found watching "old" movies with friends, collecting vintage hats and plush sheep, and praying that her black thumb doesn't kill the houseplants. |
| Grace Perry McCright | 2020 | 20th and 21st Century American Literature; Women Writers | Grace Perry McCright is a PhD student focusing on modern and contemporary American women writers. She completed her Master's degree at Baylor in May 2022 with a thesis titled: "'To Liberate Ourselves and Each Other': Reading the Female Community in the Fiction of Sylvia Plath, Mary McCarthy, and Toni Morrison." Her research centers American women writers and explores themes of community, race, and religion. Originally from the Dallas area, she came to Waco from Marshall, Texas, where she earned her BA in English with a minor in Religion from East Texas Baptist University. Outside of class, Grace enjoys drinking (and brewing) coffee and spending time with the EGSA community and her husband, Niall. |
| Yifan Zhang | 2020 | ||
| Zeyi Zhang | 2020 | 17th Century Literature; Milton; Classical Reception; Science in Literature | Zeyi Zhang is a PhD student interested in Early Modern literature and John Milton in particular. She graduated from the English Department of Peking University, where she wrote her undergraduate thesis on Milton and Ovid, and her MA thesis on Milton and the utopian works of Francis Bacon and Margaret Cavendish. She is interested in the relationship of science and religion in Early Modern literature. In her free time, she enjoys watching sport games very much, though she is not a good player at all. Her favorite sports are tennis, snooker, and gymnastics. She also likes going to the theater and the opera. |
| Kelly Chittenden | 2019 | Modern and Contemporary British Literature | Kelly Chittenden is a PhD student from Pleasant Hill, CA. Her research focuses on the intersection of literature, medicine, and theology in modern and contemporary British literature. Before coming to Baylor, Kelly earned her BA in English from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA, where she majored in English and minored in Philosophy. In her free time, Kelly loves spending time with her husband Jacob and cat Penelope, running, and drinking large quantities of cold brew coffee. |
| Andrew Hicks | 2019 | Modern and Contemporary American Literature; Literature and Religion | A native of the mountains of northeast Tennessee, Andrew entered Baylor’s English graduate program after several years of teaching English at the high school and college levels. His research focuses on the intersection of ecology and theology in contemporary American literature, with a particular focus on the representation of landscapes and the boundaries between human and nonhuman life in the work of Cormac McCarthy. |
| Samantha Kiser | 2019 | ||
| Allison Scheidegger Reising | 2019 | Victorian literature | Alli is a PhD student writing her dissertation on the Brownings’ classical scholarship, focusing on their work with Homer and Euripides. Before coming to Waco, she earned her BA in Literature with a Classics minor from Patrick Henry College in Northern Virginia, then spent two years teaching Latin and English to elementary and high school students. She enjoys baking and eating desserts and talking to her dog. |
| Olivia Taylor | 2019 | Shakespeare reception/modern British | I am a PhD student originally from Fernandina Beach, Florida. My research interests include Shakespeare reception, interwar detective fiction, and mermaids. I did my MA at Baylor, and went to Palm Beach Atlantic University for undergrad. I do creative writing on the side--currently I'm working on getting the novel I wrote as a creative thesis published. I love watercolor painting and crochet, hosting events, and exploring antique stores. |
| Anna E. Beaudry | 2018 | 19th Century Women Writers and New England Regionalism | Anna is a doctoral candidate studying 19th-century American literature. Her dissertation compares five female writers from the New England regionalist movement, examining the treatment of geographic and psychological landscapes in their fiction. Anna earned her Master's at Baylor University in May 2020. She is the Assistant Director of Major Fellowships and Awards in Office of Engaged Learning and also serves as a member of Baylor’s Strategic Planning Group. Before coming to Baylor, Anna taught high school literature and rhetoric. When she is not on campus, you can find her in her vegetable garden warding off invading squirrels and feral cats . |
| Harrison Otis | 2018 | 20th Century British fiction | Harrison Otis is an English PhD candidate at Baylor University. His dissertation investigates the way that novels by Muriel Spark, George Mackay Brown, and Kazuo Ishiguro portray the cooperation between individual and community agency in shaping personal identity. He has presented his work both nationally and internationally, and has been published in the Mark Twain Journal and Evelyn Waugh Studies.When not studying, Harrison enjoys reading; walking and hiking; making music; watching superhero cartoons; and spending time with his wife, Abby. |
| Ray Stockstad | 2018 | British Romantic and Gothic Prose | A Marine Corps and Navy veteran of the first and second Gulf Wars, I enjoy playing games, brewing beer (and sun tea), watching movies, and studying how we create our sense of Self, using the Other as a mirror. My wife, Kelly, and I love our Baylor community and the fast friends we have made. |
| Hannah Wells | 2018 | 19th Century American Literature | Hannah is a PhD candidate and an Iowa transplant to Texas. She came to Baylor after receiving a BA in English and a philosophy minor from Central College in Pella, Iowa. Her dissertation approaches nineteenth-century American fiction by examining the influence of Francis Bacon's scientific project and utopian political goals, covering works by Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Twain, and the era's most dedicated (and most controversial) Baconian scholar, Delia Bacon. Serving via her assistantship as the Assistant Editor of the Mark Twain Journal, Hannah currently lives in Irving, TX, where her husband teaches at University of Dallas, and works from home while caring for their first baby, Isaac. |
| Stewart Riley | 2017 | Victorian Poetry | Stewart Riley is a current PhD student at Baylor University. He received his Master's degree from Baylor in the Summer of 2019, and began his doctoral work the following semester. He is currently writing on the intersection between public forms of worship and theological poetics in Victorian England, focusing on Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christina Rossetti, and the Brownings. He has also developed a passion for the baking of bread, roasting of coffee, and brewing of tea, which he especially loves when shared with friends on front porches and living room parlors. |
| Matt Turnbull | 2017 | 17th Century England | Matt Turnbull is a Ph.D. student intensely interested in Milton and the English writers in his era. He is particularly interested in observing connections between the realism/nominalism conversation of the 17th century and the views of the nature of language which prevailed in the late 20th century. He has been married to his wife, Christie, for almost 30 years. They have eight children, many of whom are grown. Before coming to Baylor he spent two decades as a pastor and as a literature and language teacher of high school and junior high students. Augustine’s Confessions is his favorite book, and War and Peace is his favorite novel. |
| Jordan Sillars | 2016 | Jordan Sillars entered the Ph.D. program in the fall of 2016. His literary interests include 19th C. American literature, eco-criticism, and science fiction. Jordan's most recent degree came from the University of Toronto, where he earned his MA in English. He's a Canadian citizen, but grew up in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and now lives with his wife, Hannah, in Waco. They enjoy exploring Cameron Park with their dogs, visiting the farmer's market, and chasing down the Pokey-O's ice cream truck. | |
| Daniel Smith | 2016 | ||
| Ryan Pederson | 2014 |