Graduate Student Spotlight: Emily Sferra
By Sarah Lofstrom, Graduate Communications Editor
Meet Emily Sferra! Emily is a fourth year PhD student and teaching fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. As part of the new Graduate Student Spotlight series, we asked Sferra a few questions about her research and intellectual interests.
Can you tell me a bit about your research?
Throughout nineteenth-century British novels, readers encounter friendships and sisterhoods between characters on the cusp of womanhood. My research considers adolescent women who fail to follow the expected trajectory of domestication and their relationships with other young women. I ask: Does the aberrant woman’s relationship, or lack thereof, with other young women influence her ability to thrive as wife and/or mother?
Graduate Student Spotlight: Marcy Pedzwater
Meet Marcy Pedzwater! Pedzwater is a third-year PhD student and teaching fellow in the Department of English & Comparative Literature. As a part of the new Graduate Student Spotlight series, we asked Pedzwater a few questions about her research and intellectual interests.
Can you tell me a bit about your research? How have your intellectual interests within Latinx studies evolved?
My research focuses on depictions of dictatorship in works by contemporary (~1990-present) Latin American and LatinX writers. I’m especially interested in how these writers represent archives (including written documents, media, and journalism) and interrogate
the patriarchal violence that is carried through archives’ content, subtexts, and silences. I examine how these writers use the lens of dictatorship to not only interrogate the violence of the past but to challenge structures of imperialism, racism, and sexism in the Americas. When I started at UNC,