Ali Sperling

Undergraduate institution: University of Miami, FL (English & Philosophy)

Graduated from SF State: MA in English Literature, 2010

Other related SF State certificates: Certification in Reading Composition

Current institution and position: PhD Candidate in Literature and Cultural Theory at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (expected May 2017); Deputy Director of the Center for 21st Century Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

I am a Ph.D. candidate in literature and cultural theory at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where I will defend my dissertation, “Weird Modernism,” in Spring 2017. My dissertation interrogates embodied modes of temporality within literary modernism by theorizing “the weird” across the period. My research looks to wide-ranging theoretical frames and methodologies to think about the body, including queer theory and disability studies, feminist science studies, eco-criticism, and critical animal and plant studies. My articles appear in Girlhood Studies, Rhizomes, and Paradoxa, as well as in the edited collection LOVECRAFT ANNUAL.

I am so grateful for my time as an MA student at SF State. It was an intellectually challenging program while at the same time fostering a real sense of community. The professors were supportive and available, and my graduate student colleagues were some of the most diverse and thoughtful I have ever had. SF State gave me an excellent breadth of knowledge about the study of literature and culture, while my professors also helped me to narrow my own focus. More importantly, for me, SF State taught me that academic and intellectual life is about community, care, and collaboration, not only in your research and writing, but in your pedagogy as well as in other forms of civic engagement.