Sarah Malone, Department of English

May 30, 2025

On Monday, May 26, the Department of English, family, and friends came in to McCosh 50 from a sunny early afternoon to celebrate English's Class of 2025, and honor seniors and other recipients of annual department prizes.

Ella Barry
"Origins Unknown: Making Sense of Mary Shelly’s World of Creation"
Thesis Adviser: Rhodri Lewis

Annie Cao
"Queen of Foxgloves: Poems for Teresa Teng"
Thesis Adviser: Patricia Smith (Creative Writing)

Malia Chung
"Keeper of Histories"
Thesis Adviser: Patricia Smith (Creative Writing)

Isabelle Clayton
"In Search of (A) room of Our Own: Late Twentieth Century Negotiations of Privacy's Walls in Literature and Law"
Thesis Adviser: Anne A. Cheng

Nicole Dankinova
"From Legal Thriller to Legal therapy: How John Grisham's Novels Made the System Speak — And a Future Lawyer Listen"
Thesis Adviser: Robert Spoo

Oliver De Bono
"'Swamped' A Humanistic Inquiry into the UK's Small Boat Migrant Crisis"
Thesis Adviser: Rob Nixon

Rosemary Dietz
"CloseClose"
Thesis Adviser: Lynn Melnick (Creative Writing)

Eric Fenno
"The Threat of Death by Water: Gender Exploration in ‘The Waste Land’"
Thesis Adviser: Andrew Cole

Jiaying Fu
"Paper People: A Novel"
Thesis Adviser: Maria DiBattista

Vincent Gerardi
"Convention: A Modernist Play for Postmodern Times"
Thesis Adviser: Sophie Gee

Will Hartman
"Blue Asters"
Thesis Adviser: Ed Park (Creative Writing)

Hudson Hightower
"Copyright and the Legal Tradition of Property in Common Law"
Thesis Adviser: Rhodri Lewis

Eleanor Hunt
"Virginia Woolf's Poetic Vision"
Thesis Adviser: Sarah M. Anderson

Andrew Huo
"Masculine Anxiety in the Teen Film and the Emergence of the ‘Nice Guy’ Character Trope: An Introduction"
Thesis Adviser: Diana Fuss

Isabel Jacobson
"Suburbs on Fire: The Outside in Contemporary American Fiction and Film"
Thesis Adviser: Jeff Nunokawa

Emer Kilgallon
"To Mold Her Woman: Female Agency in Epic Poetry from Homer to Milton"
Thesis Adviser: Nigel Smith

Grace Kim
"Building Another Woolf: Kinship, Translation, and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and To The Lighthouse"
Thesis Adviser: Anne A. Cheng

Alejna Kolenovic
"'Life, Life, What Art Thou?': A Tripartite Analysis of Virginia Woolf's Creation of Intimate Biography in Orlando"
Thesis Adviser: Bradin Cormack

Will Koloc
"Resisting the Medical Gaze: A Capillary Anatomy of Physician Poets"
Thesis Adviser: Eduardo Cadava

Benjamin Licciardi
"Abstracting Horror: Uncovering the Hidden Dread in Three Films"
Thesis Adviser: Zahid Chaudary

Skye Margiotta
"Narrative as Needle and Thread: How Frederick Douglas Integrates Memory Through Autobiographical Revision"
Thesis Adviser: Diana Fuss

Isabel Max
"The Night Wears a Dress of Smoke"
Thesis Adviser: Kirstin Valdez Quade (Creative Writing)

Clarissa McWeeny
"Novel Absorption; Attention, Ekphrasis, and the Crisis of Aesthetic Encounters in Bronte, Eliot, and James"
Thesis Adviser: Jeff Dolven

Daniel Morgante
"You Won't Break My Soul: Imagining Black Liberation With House Music Modalities on Beyonce's Renaissance"
Thesis Adviser: Zahid Chaudary

Zoey Nell
"Vampire Girlhoods"
Thesis Adviser: Claudia L. Johnson

Violet Prete
"Damned to Marriage"
Thesis Adviser: Russ Leo

August Roberts
"A Body of Work: On the Relationship Between Librarians and Their Labor"
Thesis Adviser: D. Vance Smith

Nelson Rogers
"Steinback's Vagabonds in Wartime and Post-Colonial Francophone Literature"
Thesis Adviser: Lee Clark Mitchell

Cassadie Royalty
"23 Years Here"
Thesis Adviser: Zoe K. Heller (Creative Writing)

Anna Simon
"'Doors Would Be Taken Off Their Hinges': Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf Address the ‘Common Sentence’"
Thesis Adviser: Sarah Rivett

Emanualle Sippy
"From Textile to Text: Ethel Carnie Holdsworth Across Genre"
Thesis Adviser: Jeff Dolven

Sophie Steidle
"Pop Culture or Policy?: Funding Disparities in Abbott Elementary and Philadelphia Public Schools"
Thesis Adviser: Meredith Martin

Yejin Suh
"Cyberpunk, Techno-Orientalism, and the Cyborg Woman & Ghost Circuit: A Short Story"
Thesis Adviser: Sophie Gee

Jonathan Tenenbaum
"The Poetics of Care: Reimagining Humanism Along the Medical Journey"
Thesis Adviser: Esther “Starry” Schor

Faith Wangermann
"'Exposed, as on a stage': Adapting Murial Spark's The Girls of Slender Means"
Thesis Adviser: Meredith Martin

Levi Watkins
"The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James the Autobiographical Prophet"
Thesis Adviser: Robbie Richardson

Tess Weinreich
"Narratives of Mental Health Treatment in 20th Century American Fiction: Interpreting the Dream of the Therapy Novel"
Thesis Adviser: D. Vance Smith

Theo Wells-Spackman
"'The Robin's My Criterion for Tune': Reading Sound in the writing of Emily Dickinson"
Thesis Adviser: Bradin Cormack

Le'Naya Wilkerson
"A Thread of Golden Ashes"
Thesis Adviser: Monica Huerta

Savannah Woellert
"Censorship Practices & Contemporary Women's Literature in Ireland"
Thesis Adviser: Robert Spoo

Isabel Yip
"Possessing the American Landscape: Bardic Wanderers on the Open Road"
Thesis Adviser: Maria DiBattista

Sophia Zelizer
"The Wolf Inside: Reading Flannery O'Connor Through Disease"
Thesis Adviser: Jeff Nunokawa

Fizzah Arshad
James Ding
Penelope Effron
Laney Gold-Rappe
Elaine Huang
Jack Jennings
Anlin Kopf
Charlie McWeeny
Ellie Naider
Emily Nguyen
Elizabeth Polubinski
Hiba Siddiki
Collin Taylor
Charlotte Walsh
Philip Wang
Mirabelle Weinbach

Highest Honors

Isabelle Clayton
Oliver De Bono
Jonathan Tenenbaum

High Honors

Rosemary Dietz
Nelson Rogers
Theo Wells-Spackman

Honors

Malia Chung
Will Hartman
Emer Kilgallon
Grace Kim
Anna Simon
Emanuelle Sippy
Sophia Zelizer

Alan S. Downer Prize
Vincent Gerardi

Charles William Kennedy Prize
Sophia Zelizer

Class of 1859 Prize 
Isabelle Clayton

Class of 1870 Old English Prize
Emer Kilgallon

Earl R. Miner Thesis Prize
Will Koloc

Edward H. Tumin Memorial Prize
Grace Kim

Isadore and Helen Sacks Memorial Prize
Nelson Rogers

Lee M. Elman Class of 1958 Hemingway Prize
Oliver De Bono

Senior Comprehensive Award
Theo Wells-Spackman

Thomas H. Maren Thesis Prize
Jonathan Tenenbaum

Thomas B. Wanamaker English Language Prize
Clarissa McWeeny

Walter C. Hughes Memorial Prize
Jiaying Fu

McCosh Teaching Award
Sylvia Onorato, Lina Ahmed Abushouk

Class of 1883 English Prize for Academic Freshmen
Ev Wellmon

Francis Biddle Sophomore Prize
Tanay Nambiar

Class of 1870 Sophomore Prize
Katherine Hwang

Class of 1870 Junior Prize
Raphaela Gold

Emily Ebert Junior Prize
Cristina Shu

Ward Mathis Prize
Ziyi Yan

The E.E. Cummings Academy of American Poets Prize
Claire Beeli
“L.A. River”

Bain-Swiggett Poetry Prize
Wyatt Browne
“Coast”

Morris W. Croll Poetry Prize
Annie Cao
“Pyromania”