Graduate Students in Irish Studies
Christopher Flavin
Christopher Flavin in
a Ph.D. candidate specializing
in Medieval literature and culture. His dissertation focuses on the
construction of identity for medieval women, particularly
religious women,
through biography and autobiographical writings. His article on Brigit
O’Donnel
and the limits of poetic language for Early Modern Irish women appears
in the
Spring/Summer 2009 issue of Working
Papers through Sheffield-Hallam University. His most recent
article, “The
Demarcations of Trauma and Language: Form, Fiction, and Identity in
Edna
O’Brien’s
Down by the River,” is under review. The
article analyzes the use of ritual language
and
cultural trauma in O’Brien’s novel through the lens of trauma theory
and
imposed history. Mr. Flavin is currently the research assistant for
Irish and
Irish Immigration Studies at SIUC.
Marshall
Johnson
Marshall
Johnson is a first year Master’s student in
English Literature at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. He
is from Denver, CO, and received his BA in
English from Saint Louis University with a minor in Philosophy and a
certificate in Creative and Professional Writing. His main areas
of interest are Irish Studies,
Modern American Poetry, and Literary Journalism. He is involved
in Irish Studies Forum, as
well as SIUC’s Association of English Graduate Instructors and Students
(AEGIS). He is currently beginning work on his
Master’s thesis which aims to explore the works of Hunter S. Thompson
and Oscar
Wilde and how both utilize differing geographies to create reactions to
established orders, in America as well as Ireland.
Jason
M. Kirker
Jason M Kirker is a doctoral candidate specializing in modern
Irish and Northern Irish fiction as well as the study of incarceration,
torture, contemporary American fiction and postcolonial politics. His dissertation will focus on the
construction of identities and communities in Ireland, through its
fiction,
over the last century in the context of the island’s contemporary
political
history, with a focus on “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. He is a member of SIUC’s Irish Studies Forum. Jason received a BA in English and Irish
Studies from the University of Notre Dame, and he earned an MA in
English
Literature and Creative Writing (Fiction) from Binghamton University.
Amy Nejezchleb
Amy Nejezchleb is a doctoral
candidate who specializes in Modernism and Irish Studies.
Her dissertation focuses on
twentieth-century, Irish author and journalist, Flann O’Brien, and his
work in
new media, most of which is unpublished and located in Morris Library’s
Special
Collections. Nejezchleb has published
two book reviews in New Hibernia Review
and is currently working on an article for an edition forthcoming from
Four
Courts Press about the works of Flann O’Brien. The
article analyzes O’Brien’s scriptwriting for
Radio Telefís Eireann
and BBC during the 1960’s. She was
awarded a Research Assistantship by Irish and Immigration Studies in
conjunction with the National University of Ireland Galway in Spring
2009, and
for the Fall 2009-Spring 2010 academic year, she has been awarded the
Dissertation Research Assistantship by the Graduate School.
