MFS Modern Fiction Studies TAships

The Purdue English Department and the journal MFS Modern Fiction Studies are proud to announce that beginning in 2017, one exceptional incoming student will receive our named MFS TA-line in recognition of scholarly potential.

The Modern Fiction Studies Teaching Assistantship is a one-year appointment awarded to an incoming graduate student who demonstrates outstanding potential in 20^th- and/or 21^st-century literary studies.

Assuming acceptable progress to degree, the recipient of the MFS Teaching Assistantship will receive funding in his/her second through fifth years from the English TA allotment supplied by the College of Liberal Arts.

The MFS TAship will be selected by the Director of Graduate Studies and the Graduate Admissions Committee with the approval of the Editors of MFS. Members of the Purdue Advisory Board of MFS may also be consulted in the selection process.

We are very pleased to announce the recipients of the MFS Teaching Assistantship:

Matt Morgenstern

morgenstern Matt has a bachelor’s degree in English from Miami University and a master’s degree in Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Cincinnati, where he also served as a teaching assistant and writing tutor. Primarily researching Modernist and contemporary fiction, Matt also studies affect theory and its intersections with the environmental humanities. His recent research projects address the everyday emergence of climate change in American fiction and nonfiction across texts such as Teju Cole’s novel Open City, Louise Erdrich’s novel Future Home of the Living God, and Joan Didion’s essays on wildfires. Matt’s first scholarly publication (on depression, affect, and To the Lighthouse) is forthcoming from the Virginia Woolf Miscellany.

Tom Daniel

Tom is a Purdue University alumnus holding a bachelor's degree in English and Philosophy. His academic interests are varied, ranging between 19^th and 20^th century continental philosophy, American modernist and post-modernist literature, and post-World War II Japanese literature. While an undergrad, he studied abroad in Japan and worked as an intern for Modern Fiction Studies. An avid reader of Murakami Haruki's fiction, Tom's current research investigates how Murakami's works grapple with the existentialist dilemmas of late capitalism and the problematics of cultural identity under Western hegemony.

Erika Gotfredson

Erika Gotfredson Erika received her master's degree in English from Wake Forest University and her bachelor's degree in English from Presbyterian College. While at Wake Forest, she worked as a teaching assistant and as an intern in the English department office. Her primary research interests include 20th- and 21st-century literature with specific emphases on women's and African-American literature. Her master's thesis examined motherhood in novels by Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, and Jesmyn Ward, while her recent conference presentations have included topics such as spatiality in Morrison's novels and female characters in Herman Melville's corpus.

Alejandra Ortega

Alejandra Ortega has a master’s degree in literature from Wake Forest University, as well as two bachelor’s degrees, one in English literature and one in history, from Michigan State University. Ms. Ortega has taught literature, composition, developmental writing, and creative writing at both the college level and middle-school level. Her primary area of research is 20^th/21^st century literature, with a special interest in experimental literature. To date, her research and conference presentations have been focused on the negotiation of the aesthetics of high and popular culture, the architecture of the novel, the relationship between the reader and the text, reading games as literature, and the use of feminism in science fiction.