Recent Graduate Student and Alumni Recognitions, Publications, and Presentations

We are honored to share that several graduate students and alumni have recently received recognitions, published research, and/or presented their work at conferences. Congratulations! Below we highlight their work and awards.

Dr. Lidong Xiang, graduate of 2023, received the Children’s Literature in Education Emerging Scholar Award 2025 for her article, “True Love or Best Friend? Queer Girlhood in Chinese Young Adult Literature.”

Moloud Soleimani, a third-year Ph.D. student, received the Association of Middle East Children and Youth Studies 2025 Graduate Student Paper Prize for her article “Growing sideways in the Jina (Woman, Life, Freedom) Movement.”

Courtney Cook, a second-year Ph.D. student, presented “Aesthetics of Resonance in the ‘Afterlife of Slavery’: Filmic Representations of Black Girl/hood(s)” at the Critical Approaches to Black Media Culture: Representation and Resonance Conference at Tulane University.

Liz Gartley, a second-year Ph.D. student, presented at the inaugural Under Shared Blue Skies: Mongolia and the North American West Conference. Gartley presented “Under Cretaceous Skies: Children, Nature, & Dinosaurs” as part of a session on Science Education through Community and the Arts. They developed this project in Theories of Childhood Studies, a spring 2025 course taught by Dr. Sarada Balagopalan.

Marcus Kissoon, a second-year Ph.D. student, received the 2025 Student Leadership Award from the Rutgers-Camden Graduate School.

Nick Markellos, second-year Ph.D. student, was recently published in Quidditas, an online journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, for his article “One Thing Leads to Another: A New Approach to Teaching Medieval Literature in the Twenty-First Century.” Last November, Markellos presented his research on Children’s Literature and Problematizing the Concept of Classic at the Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA)’s annual conference.