EGSA Member Information
Julia McCrossin
Julia McCrossin graduated in May 2004 from the University
of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) with a BA, cum laude, in English.
She is currently a student in the MA English program at The George Washington
University, specializing in 20th Century American Literature. The Spring
2004 edition of the UMBC publication, 'Bartleby', published her creative
non-fiction piece, "Kinks", and she is currently working on
the paper "Gender F**k at Kennedy High", as part of a panel
on Camp Aesthetics for the 2005 American Studies Association National
Convention in November. Ms. McCrossin is a member of the English Graduate
Students Association (EGSA) Lecture Committee at George Washington, as
well as the National English Honors Society Sigma Tau Delta and the Modern
Language Association. Her particular area of interest is the intersection
of gender, sexuality, and fatness in culture, and she is in the embryonic
stages of structuring her thesis paper, "A Particular Sphere of Queer".
The thesis will trace, in part, discourses in queer theory, women's studies,
and disability studies that elucidate the specific function of the fat
queer subject in cultural practices. Ms. McCrossin can be reached at jmccross@gwu.edu.
Nirmala Menon
I am Nirmala Menon, a second year PhD student with research
interests in Postcolonial theory and Indian literature. I did my MA from
the University of Chennai in India, and University of Maryland, College
Park. I am specifically interested in the role of translations and its
ability to modify, transform or redefine the postcolonial field.
I enjoy classical music (Indian and Western) and if I
do not land a tenure track professorship will probably be a gourmet chef-
I enjoy cooking and apart from Indian, my favourite cuisines are Italian,
Mexican and Greek.
 Bill
Morris
I'm an MA candidate in my first year. I majored in Psychology
and English Literature at Duke University, without crystalizing a primary
focus within either realm of study. I've carried that general lack of
intradisciplinary focus forward to this program, though I am particularly
interested in the 20th century novel (American, generally), and postmodern
culture, literature, and music (specifically counterculture and so called
underground scenes). If anyone has a great thesis idea to be written at
the confluence of these interests...
 Shushan
Chang Morrison
My name is Shushan Chang Morrison, and a second-year MA student. I have
a BA in English from Providence University in Taiwan where I grew up and
spent 23 years of my life. I then came to the States for a one-year graduate
program in American Studies at Smith College in Massachusetts and graduated
in 2003. My concentration at GW (so far) is minority/ethnic literature,
primarily in twentieth-century African and Asian-American writings, and
I'm also very interested in the political culture and socio-historical
issues in postcolonial literature. As of now in 2005, having just started
the Teaching Writing course, I'm positive that composition and teaching
writing will probably dominate my attention for quite a while!
Above is a picture of me in my early days in America - just before signing
the Declaration of Independence!
Duc Nguyen
I am Duc; was born over 27 years ago in a place I no longer recognize;
lived for a time in Columbus, Georgia, and NYC; graduated from Cornell,
which forms some of my fondest memories, with a double-major in biochemistry
and English; and matriculated three years ago in the English PhD program.
My fields are critical theory, as I think about how I think; and Modernism,
or what I read when reading what I don't have to read; and postcoloniality,
one of those professionalizations; and poetics, treating the text as text;
and literary evaluation, should I love literature enough to save it. I
teach writing. My intellectual colleagues think that I tend to be an unswerving
canonist, philosophical skeptic, total contrarian and dirty capitalist;
and that unquestionably I am argumentative, serious, intemperate, irreverent,
and sometimes helpful. I cannot be contained: I dismantle all systems.
 
Timothy K. Nixon
I am a doctoral candidate who has finished my dissertation (a study of
four 20th-century authors I've entitled"The Homo-Exilic Experience:
Queerness, Alienation, and Contrapuntal Vision"), and just recently
I successfully passed my oral defense. So now I'm busily trying to find
a job. I'm a native of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, a town made famous
(sort of) when Jaws II and The Truman Show were filmed there. I completed
my undergraduate education (a B.A. in English with a minor in German)
at Belmont University in 1987. My enrollment in the graduate program in
English at The College of William and Mary was postponed when I was awarded
a Fulbright Scholarship to Germany for the 1988-89 academic year. In 1992
I was awarded an M.A. in English from William and Mary. I'm an old guy
who spent eleven and a half years wandering in the wasteland of corporate
America where I held positions in marketing support, database marketing,
and product management before deciding that I needed to follow more humanistic
pursuits and work on a Ph.D. My scholarly interests include American,
African-American, multi-ethnic, and comparative literatures, lesbian and
gay studies, and queer theory. An essay of mine, which employs Toni Morrison's
theories from Playing in the Dark to critique the deployment of African-American
heroines by two white authors, was published in 2003 in the journal Women's
Studies. Another of my essays was included in a collection on Walker Percy.
I have written encyclopedia entries on James Baldwin, Alice Dunbar-Nelson,
Randall Kenan, and Arturo Islas and presented quite a few papers on literature
and popular culture at regional and national conferences.
Almila Ozdek
I came to GW in 2003 for PhD with a BA and MA from Istanbul
University, Turkey. Love the cosmopolitan DC area, though I am still not
used to living in a city without sea. Nothing compares to Bhosporus! I
am interested in creative writing, postcolonial fiction and theory, national
identities and histories. We have two Irish wolfhound pups, and they are
interested in chewing my books.
Phillip Ross
I am interested in contemporary fiction, 19th century
Russian novels, and epic poetry of all eras. I am working on a dissertation
about the novels of Graham Swift, whom I regard as one of the most important
writers of the postmodern era. I have a BA in English from Virginia Wesleyan
College, an MA in English from George Mason University, and an MS in Library
and Information Science from Simmons College. Last year I wrote just 75
pages of my dissertation, but lived in three countries and visited 17
others.
Satarupa Sengupta
I have been a Ph.D student in the American Literature program of GWU's
English department since 1998. I am writing my dissertation on:-the equal
rights struggle, U.S. women's fiction since the nineteenth century and
expatriation problems. I want to get a job that is related to my area
of interest. My areas of interest are Feminism, U.S. women's fiction,
Asian American fiction, postcolonialism, cultural studies, environmental
studies.
Niles Tomlinson
2nd year Ph.D. I am currently rocking out with interests in American Gothic
Novel and Short Story. Oh yeah and Modern American Drama.
M.A. at Purdue University back in the day. Good times.
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