People

• Angela Yin
• Graduate Student

• 
• Rudrani Varanasi Sarma
• Doctoral Candidate
• Instructor
• At Rutgers Since: 2019
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• Primary Areas of Specialization: African-American & Diaspora Literature, Long 19th Century, Postcolonial Literature
• Field of Interest: African-American & Diaspora, Caribbean, Critical Race Studies, Drama & Performance Studies, Early American, Global Anglophone, Nineteenth-Century American, Postcolonial, Victorian
• About:

  Rudrani Sarma is a doctoral candidate from Fort Collins, Colorado specializing in long nineteenth century Black literature from around the world. She is particularly interested in representations of race and racialized bodies in plays, slave narratives, scientific discourse, children's books, and other popular culture materials. 

• Undergraduate Courses Taught:
  • 358:375 Nineteenth Century Black Literature
  • 359:201 Principles of Literary Study
  • 355:101 Expository Writing
• Awards:
  • Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar award, Children’s Literature Association, 2024
  • Article award (honorable mention), Children’s Literature Association, 2024
  • Chakra essay award, South Asian Studies Program, 2024
  • Pre-Doctoral Leadership Academy (PLDA) fellow, 2024
  • Cheryl A. Wall essay award, inaugural winner, 2021
  • Emerging Scholars essay award, Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC), 2020
• Other Publications:

  Sarma, Rudrani. "Catching Tigers: White Childhood Nostalgia and Constructions of Blackness in Little Black Sambo." Children's Literature, vol. 50, 2022, p. 121-162. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/chl.2022.0009.

  (article link)

• Membership Affiliations:
  • Modern Language Association, 2019
  • The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, 2021
  • Children's Literature Association, 2022
  • College Language Association, 2023
  • British Women Writers Association, 2024

   

• Other Dept University Postions:
  • Committee on Bias Awareness and Prevention, 2020-2022 
  • Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, 2022-2024
• Education: A.B. in English Literature, Bryn Mawr College, 2016; M.A. in English Literature, Rutgers University, 2022

• 
• Emily Anderson
• Graduate Student
• At Rutgers Since: 2020
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• Primary Areas of Specialization: Long 19th-Century British, the Novel, Children's Literature, Spatial Theory, Book History & Print Culture
• Field of Interest: Book and Media History, Theory, Victorian
• About:

  Emily Anderson is a fourth-year PhD student specializing in long 19^th-century British literature, children's fiction, & the fin-de-siecle novel. She co-directs the Rutgers Nineteenth-Century Group. In October 2022, she co-organized NAVSA "Just Victorians" at Lehigh University. 

• Education: MA, Rutgers University, Department of Literatures in English (2023) BA, College of Charleston Honors College, English and Psychology (2019)

• 
• Yaacov Bronstein
• PhD Candidate
• At Rutgers Since: 2020
• Bronstein_CV.pdf
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• Primary Areas of Specialization: Early Modern, Drama, Tragedy, Religion, Bible.
• Field of Interest: Early Modern

My research is located at the intersection of tragic form and Reformation scriptural hermeneutics. I am interested in how Reformed readers drew upon dramatic form and theory to help interpret the Bible, and how these hermeneutics impacted English and continental drama that adapted and explored scriptural subjects using the specific formal properties of tragedy. My dissertation conducts readings of The Tragedy of Abraham's Sacrifice (Arthur Golding's 1577 translation of Theodore Beze's Abraham Sacrifiant), Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and John Milton's Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes.

Publications:

(Forthcoming) “Abraham Agonistes: The Binding of Isaac, Luther’s Tragic Exegesis, and Arthur Golding’s Translation of Beza’s Abraham Sacrifiant.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 57.2, Spring 2027.

“The Common Gloss’: Multilingual Biblical Reading and the Name of the Tree in Paradise Lost.” English Literary Renaissance 56.2, Spring 2026.