News

This fall we welcomed 15 graduate students into our 2025 Ph.D. cohort. We caught up with a few of these students to learn more about their decision to study at UCLA, current reading interests, and more. Some answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Laine Barriga
B.A., San Francisco State University

What inspired you to pursue a Ph.D. in English?

I fell in love with research and critical literary studies during undergrad. I’m very fortunate to have had two great mentors who encouraged me to think about graduate study and who advised me on this journey! I also strongly believe in the humanities and its ability to foster and inspire critical thinking.

What books are you currently reading? Any recommendations?

I’m currently reading Miranda July’s All Fours. I’m sure I will have a lot to think about afterwards! Two books I cannot recommend enough are Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven and Négar Djavadi’s Disoriental.

Makena Fernandez
B.A., UC Santa Barbara

Your research interests include medieval literature. What is your favorite thing to study or explore with medieval literature?

I’d have to say that my favorite element to study within medieval literature is the demonstration of gender roles within religious communities and their flexibility based on religious authority. I feel the Middle Ages offers a unique insight into the creation of gender expectations that often still persist even outside of a religious context.

What books are you currently reading? Any recommendations?

I personally just finished reading The Starving Saints by Catilin Starling and I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading medieval fiction. It feels like a race-to-the-clock and it’s hard to put down!

Trey Freund
B.A., Wichita State University
M.A., Wichita State University

What made you decide to pursue a Ph.D.?

I wanted to pursue a Ph.D. because of the love I found for teaching and my interest in composition. My work as a drag artist has led me to a deeper curiosity about queer methods of composing that I am eager to keep pursuing.

If this is your first time living in Los Angeles, what have you loved so far? Any favorites you’d recommend?

Well, I have just moved here from Kansas, so to say I have loved Los Angeles does not do it justice enough. It feels so shocking to see queer individuals like, out and about in their days. I have learned so much just being here for the last couple months, and I can’t wait to explore more during my time here! If I had to recommend anything I would recommend the Abbey in West Hollywood every Monday in November at 11 pm! I will be competing in their competition hahahaha.

Amber Hisatomi
B.A., UC Berkeley

What are you most looking forward to at UCLA?

I am most looking forward to making new friends and interacting with other people’s ideas, as well as expanding on my own.

What are your hobbies?

My hobbies include reading, playing Japanese RPGs, a type of video game that is very character and story-driven, and also trying new foods!

Benjamin Jackson
B.A., Southern Methodist University

Your research interests include restoration literature. What is restoration literature and what got you interested in it?

Restoration literature refers to the period in British literary history that followed the return of the monarchy in 1660. Though it only lasted roughly forty years, it is a remarkably rich era that is full of social, political, and cultural critique that still feels fresh today. I first discovered the restoration about a year ago in an undergraduate seminar. As I became acquainted with the poems, plays, and early novels of the period, I began to realize how much of our modern debates on politics, identity, and culture were already explicitly being explored. What fascinates me most about the period is the way that writers, especially poets and playwrights, paid very close attention to people’s behaviors in public spaces, and how those small observations revealed the real political tensions and moods of the era.

If this is your first time living in Los Angeles, what have you loved so far?

This is my first time living in Los Angeles. I have not been here very long, so I have not had the chance to explore much. The one thing I can say that I love is the weather. Because I am coming from Houston, Texas, anything under 90 degrees in the fall is appreciated!

Aaron Kowals
B.A., Trinity College Connecticut

What inspired you to pursue a Ph.D. in English?

Like everyone else in my field, I’ve had a long passion for reading and interpreting texts. I want to be a professor that helps foster a love for literature in my future students like so many of my mentors have done for me.

What books are you currently reading? Any recommendations?

Babel by R.F. Kuang was the book I just finished reading and urge everyone to read. Kuang examines how language translation can be an act of violence and a source of control for colonial powers. These types of fantasy books are immensely important to both academics and the general public.

Melany Santiago Rivas
B.A., Boston College

How has the transition been moving from east to west?

The transition of moving east to west has been a whirlwind and I find myself experiencing culture shock daily. I’m grateful the department put me up for a summer program on campus, I was able to settle in earlier and be introduced to some lovely people.

What are you most looking forward to while studying here at UCLA?

I’m most looking forward to getting involved with the Center for Medieval and Renaissance/ Early Global Studies and seeing what events they have planned!

Jasper Sattentau
M.A. (B.A. equivalent), University of Glasgow
M.A., McGill University

Your research interests include studying contemporary novels from the global south, such as Africa. Do you have a favorite novel you’ve recently read?

A great novel I read recently is Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal, which is actually set in L.A. It’s hilarious and shocking, especially for a book written in the 60s. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I arrived.

What’s been your favorite thing about LA thus far?

I’ve been amazed by the climate, the mountains and the plants here. So far, I miss pedestrian infrastructure.

Rosalind Shoopman
B.A., Washington State University
M.A., San Diego State University

What are you most looking forward to at UCLA?

The research project I’d like to pursue is pretty interdisciplinary in nature: I’m interested in how race shaped and mediated the aesthetic relationship between modernism and early newspaper comics. For that reason, I’m excited to enter a department with so many other scholars pursuing similarly interdisciplinary research, and to be at a university with such strong departments in the other fields I hope to engage with too.

Do you have a favorite writer or book from the modernist period?

Favorites are hard: if you were to ask me tomorrow, or even an hour from now, I would probably give you a different answer. But at the moment I would say that my favorite modernist writer is Virginia Woolf (my phone background is a picture of her—really!) and my favorite modernist novel is Jean Toomer’s Cane.

Photos courtesy of the subjects: Top row, left to right: Laine Barriga, Amber Hisatomi, Benjamin Jackson, Aaron Kowals, Jasper Sattentau, Rosalind Shoopman.