The English Department Welcomes New Faculty in 2023
Amaris Brown, John Holmes Assistant Professor in the Humanities, comes to Tufts from the Department of Africana Studies at Cornell University with a concentration in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research and teaching foci include 20th and 21st century African diasporic literature and visual culture, gender and sexuality studies, and critical disability studies. Her dissertation, “Desirous Disposability: Circuits of Race, Sex, and Refusal” examines forms of ritual violence and disposal that mark black life in modernity. Grounded in black feminist diagrammatic drawing, critical disability studies, psychoanalysis, and studies in affect and aesthetics, “Desirous Disposability” reads the ruptures created by African diasporic literature and art to colonial, imperial, neoliberal circuits of desire that dominate ideologies of black subject formation in the aftermath of slavery.
New Lecturers in First-Year Writing & Creative Writing
Mackenzie Berry received her MFA in Poetry from Cornell U, where she taught expository writing and creative writing workshops. Her poems have appeared in Vinyl, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Hobart, Blood Orange Review, among others; her first poetry collection, Slack Tongue City, was published by Sundress Publications (2022).
Megan Crotty received a PhD in English from Boston C. She has taught literature and writing courses at area institutions such as BC, Emmanuel C, and Middlesex CC. Megan’s research interests include Irish literature and culture, contemporary Anglophone literature, postcolonial literature and theory, and intersectional feminist theory.
Rebecca Forney received a PhD in Comparative Literature from Binghamton U. She has taught courses on Literature and Psychology, The Graphic Novel, and Lyric Poetry/Rock Lyrics. Her article on Assia Djebar’s ‘Le Corps de Félicie’ was published in The Many Voices of Europe.
Gayathri Goel received a PhD in English from Tufts U. She has been a fellow at the Center for the Humanities at Tufts and was nominated for the Faculty of Significant Impact award. Gayathri’s research interests include postcolonial literature and theory, Anglophone and world literature, and environmental literature and social justice.
EmmaJean Holley received an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from U of Iowa. She joins us from UMB where she taught Expository Writing. EmmaJean has experience as a manuscript editor, book reviewer, and features reporter; her essays and articles have appeared in River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction, Columbia Journal, and Valley News.
John Howard received an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana U. He joins us from Babson C where he taught Writing Across Contexts and Research Writing. John’s work has appeared in Notre Dame Review, Witness Magazine, Wisconsin Review, The Open Page, among others; his short story “El pan de cada día” was nominated for inclusion in Best American Short Stories (2023).
Neshat Khan received an MFA from Boston University and is a fiction writer whose stories from her thesis short story collection have appeared or are forthcoming in Indiana Review, Mississippi Review, Boston Review, and Missouri Review. She has taught creative writing in South Korea and Boston.
Joshua Nguyen received an MFA from the U of Mississippi and is a poet whose recent book, Come Clean (U of Wisconsin Press, 2021) won the Felix Pollak Prize, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award, and a Discovery Poetry Prize; he is also the author of a chapbook from Bull City Press. His poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, American Poetry Review, Grub Street, Green Mountain Review, and elsewhere.
Noa Saunders received an MFA in Poetry from the U of Maryland, College Park and a PhD in English from Boston U. Her poems have appeared in Ghost City Review, Leavings, The Shore, among others, and her scholarly articles and reviews have appeared in Comics & Modernism, Against the Current, and Modernism/modernity: Visualities forum.