Alumni

Nick Allen, MA

Program Manager at NC A&T Transportation Institute

MA in English with concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture from UNC (2019)

Former HHIVE Lab Coordinator & Website Designer and Communicator  

Nick came to Carolina from Virginia Tech where he graduated with dual degrees in Professional & Technical Writing and Literature & Culture. Faculty members there sparked his interest in Health Humanities and lead him towards an honors thesis which considered three of Hemingway’s works as illness narratives, both to confront Hemingway through an alternative lens and to consider the value and applicability of his work to modern patients of chronic suffering, terminal illness, and aging. At UNC, Nick explored other aspects of the aging experience and how we might confront these inevitable challenges with grace and sagacity. Read Kate Capitano’s alumni spotlight blog post about Nick on our website.

Mary Carol Barks, MA

Clinical Research Coordinator at Duke University School of Medicine

MA in English with concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture from UNC (2019)

Mary Carol Barks holds a B.A. from Auburn University where she studied English Literature with an interest in the medical humanities and multidisciplinary research. Mary Carol is an Associate in Research at Duke University’s Margolis Center for Health Policy where she studies doctor-patient communication and shared decision-making, particularly when patients experience life-threatening illness. Mary Carol hopes to continue this line of research, helping clinicians guide their patients through challenging treatment decisions that effectively coincide with each patient’s values, goals, and life as a whole.

Jesse Bossingham, MD, MA

Resident Physician in Internal Medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance

MA in English with concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture from UNC (2022)
MD from UNC School of Medicine (2023)

Jesse Bossingham completed the MA program while enrolled in the MD program at UNC School of Medicine. His capstone project explored representations of dementia and he plans to practice geriatric medicine.

Savannah Bateman, MA

Quality Assurance Associate, PSI CRO AG

MA in English with concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture from UNC (2021)

Savannah graduated from the MA program in 2021. She is from the small town of Kitty Hawk, located on the Outer Banks, NC. She earned her B.A. in English Literature with two minors in biology and chemistry from Western Carolina University. As an undergraduate, she was primarily interested in interdisciplinary research and medicine. She has a work history in emergency medical Services and medical transportation services, which primarily drives her research interests in the health humanities, focusing on bibliotherapeutic techniques in chaotic work environments, trauma theory, and rhetorical analysis of the metaphorical language in EMS provider personal narratives.

Laura Crook, MA
MA in English with concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture from UNC (2023)

BA in English & Comparative Literature and BS in Biology from UNC (2022)

Laura Crook is particularly interested in research pertaining to pregnancy and childbirth. During her senior year, she completed an honors thesis studying false pregnancy in early modern England. As a graduate student, she is expanding her pregnancy research into the contemporary setting, aiming to understand how birthing people speak about their labor and parenting experiences in the COVID-19 era.

Read more about Laura and her experiences in the BA/MA program in this Student Spotlight.

Anne Y. Feng, MD

Resident Physician in Head & Neck Surgery at Rutgers Health

BS in Biology and BA in Social Medicine from UNC (2018)

Anne Feng fondly remembers reading illness narratives as a student in LMC classes because they helped her realize the type of care she wants to provide as a physician. Anne recently graduated from Harvard Medical School and is working towards becoming an ENT surgeon. Learn more about Anne in this alumni profile.

Jenna Gordon
MA in English with concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture from UNC (2023)

Austin Hopkins, MD, MA

Resident Physician in Psychiatry at Northwestern Medicine

MA in English with concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture from UNC (2021)
MD from UNC School of Medicine (2021)

Austin earned his M.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and M.A. in English, concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture. He earned his B.A. in Mathematical Statistics with minors in Biology and Chemistry from Wake Forest University. He plans to practice medicine as a psychiatrist, and is particularly interested in trauma, LGBTQ+ health, narrative medicine, eating disorders, and incarcerated health. He is a writer, having published numerous essays in platforms including Doximity Op-Med and The International Journal of Prisoner Health as well as an autobiographical creative non-fiction book entitled The Loose Ends Became Knots: An Illness Narrative. As a master’s student, he studied how the health humanities can provide an integrated approach to the conceptualization, understanding, and treatment of trauma as well as engaging in archival research in the field of asylum studies.

Katie Huber, MPH

Senior Policy Analyst at Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy

MPH from UNC Gillings School of Public Health (2020)
BA in Anthropology with minors in Medical Humanities and Biology from UNC (2018)

Former HHIVE Lab URA

Katie first heard about the HHIVE Lab during her sophomore year at UNC and was involved with the lab since. She assisted with the Falls Study, where she transcribed interviews, compiled and annotated bibliography, and designed graphics. After she completed her honors thesis and her undergraduate studies, Katie graduated from the MPH program at the UNC Gillings School of Public Health.

Find a sample of Katie’s HHIVE work on “Active Minds at Carolina Presents: At the Intersection of Race and Mental Health” and read more about her in this alumni profile.

Rabab Husain, MA

Assistant Project Manager of ACUR4Moms at UNC School of Medicine

MA in English with concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture from UNC (2020)

Rabab holds a B.S in Psychology from UNC Chapel Hill, where she also studied English Literature and completed pre-med courses. While writing papers on the impact of literature on empathy and Theory of Mind for her psychology courses, she found herself interested in the application of the humanities towards the medical field. As an M.A student, Rabab researched the intersection of religion, culture, and medicine via the narratives of Muslims and South Asians involved in medical humanitarianism. She hopes this research and the skills from the program will support her in becoming a more knowledgeable and effective physician in the future.

Emily Long, MA

Medical Student at UNC School of Medicine

MA in English with concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture from UNC (2020)
BA in English & Comparative Literature and BS in Biology from UNC (2019)

Former HHIVE Grand Rounds Coordinator
Former Editor-in-Chief of The Health Humanities Journal of UNC-Chapel Hill

Emily holds a B.S. in Biology with a second major in English with Highest Honors and a minor in Medicine, Literature, and Culture from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As an undergraduate, Emily conducted research within the medical humanities by spending a summer studying access to health care in rural communities using both qualitative and quantitative methods. She also composed a senior English honors thesis under the direction of Dr. Eliza Richards in which she used a psychosocial framework to consider how works of gothic fiction portrayed women’s mental health. Her MA research focused on pre-trauma theory in nineteenth-century American literature.

Maebelle Matthew

Medical Student at UNC School of Medicine

BS in Biochemistry with minor in Medicine, Literature, and Culture from UNC (2019)

Former HHIVE Lab URA

I have always had a passion for the humanities, but I never knew how I could incorporate it into my dream career in medicine and the sciences. I have always been looking for ways to connect the humanities and the sciences during my undergraduate career and beyond. When I found out about the HHIVE lab, I knew this was one way that I could form the connection I desired. Working at the HHIVE lab helps me look at medicine and diseases in a new perspective, which is very valuable when trying to fully understand a problem. I want to be able to view and understand the medical field in as many ways as possible, and the HHIVE lab helps me achieve this goal.

See some of Maebelle’s work with the HHIVE Lab, including the Dance & Diabetes study, on Reflections on Ellen Perry’s ‘My Life and My Work in Disability Advocacy’ Talk.

Lorena Millo, MD

Resident Physician at Duke University

MD from UNC School of Medicine (2023)
BA in English & Comparative Literature and Business Administration with a minor in chemistry from UNC (2017)

As an undergraduate, Lorena was a dual English and Business Administration major and student researcher for the Falls Narrative Study. Her Honors Thesis about representations of organ transplantation was awarded the James L. Whitfield Jr. Memorial Prize by the Department of English. After graduating in 2017, she went on to complete a post-baccalaureate premed program at Goucher College and then worked as a Research Associate in the Margolis Center for Health Policy at Duke University before completing her MD at UNC.

Lorena returned to the Department of English & Comparative Literature in October 2021 for a panel discussion of recent alumni to celebrate the Department’s 225th anniversary. You can see more about the panel on the event page. You can also read more about her in this alumni profile.

Manisha Mishra, MA

Medical Student at Campbell University School of Osteopathic Medicine

MA in Medicine, Health and Society from Vanderbilt University (2019)
BA in Medical Humanities and BS in Biology from UNC (2018)

Manisha Mishra is a 2018 UNC graduate from Mooresville, North Carolina who majored in Biology (B.S.) and Interdisciplinary Studies: Medical Humanities (B.A.) and minored in Chemistry. Frustrated with the monotonous pre-medical experience she was receiving, she decided to branch out and take a literature and medicine course which ultimately was the gateway for her love for Medical Humanities. Since then, Manisha has become a huge advocate for this interdisciplinary field as it has helped bring in a new refreshing perspective to her education. She is particularly interested in the variation of rhetoric in narratives that result from one’s experience with illness. She was awarded the 2017 Burch Fellowship, allowing her to conduct research in London with the program Performing Medicine regarding the role of arts-based pedagogy in medical training for clinical empathy development. This set the foundation for her Honors Thesis which focused on theory and practices of clinical empathy. She was also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Health Humanities Journal of UNC-CH and was a student researcher in the Falls Narrative Study. 

After Manisha graduated from the Medicine, Health, and Society M.A. program at Vanderbilt University, she was a Research Coordinator in Emergency Medicine at NYU Langone Health. In her free time, she can be found practicing yoga, rereading her favorite novels The Goldfinch and The Namesake, and going on random adventures. 

Manisha returned to HHIVE in November 2021 for an alumni career panel. You can view the event on YouTube.

Calvin Olsen, PhD, MFA

Senior Lecturer of English at the Ohio State University and freelance Digital Content Specialist

PhD in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (CRDM) from NCSU (2023)

MA in English with concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture from UNC (2018)

Calvin Olsen holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University, where he received a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship. His poetry and translations have appeared in The Missouri Review Online, Tar River Poetry, Poetry Daily, Columbia, Salamander, and many other journals and anthologies. Recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Best New Poets anthology, Calvin is currently co-poetry editor of The Carolina Quarterly and is completing translations of Portuguese poet João Luís Barreto Guimarães’s newest book, Mediterrâneo, and the collected works of the late Alberto de Lacerda.

Kaylyn Pogson, MD, MA

Resident Physician in Surgery at Duke University

MD from UNC School of Medicine (2023)
MA in English with concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture from UNC (2018)
BA in English & Comparative Literature and BS in Biology with a minor in Medicine, Literature, and Culture form UNC (2017)

Kaylyn moved to the Triangle from South Africa, completing her undergraduate career at UNC with Biology and English majors. While at UNC, she focused heavily on the medical humanities, with her study culminating in a lengthy honors thesis on breast cancer narratives at different points in time and through various genres. She used her thesis to examine why women afflicted by breast cancer seem to possess an unusual drive to write about their experiences, as well as their perceptions of the unique threats on femininity that breast cancer imposes with an emphasis on the effects of different timepoints and genres on the illness experience and its narrative, respectively.

As an M.A. student, Kaylyn continued to study breast cancer illness narratives with a greater emphasis on their theoretical frameworks, and was particularly interested in the question of how different and developing genres are used to address the question of how to most effectively convey the illness experience. Kaylyn took advantage of the interdisciplinary nature of the program with classes in English, biology, medicine, and public health. She plans to use her medical humanities training as a physician focused on humanism in patient-centered care. Kaylyn is now enrolled at the UNC Medical School.

Brandon Rogers, PhD

Health Communications Expert at Google

PhD in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (CRDM) from NCSU (2023)

MA in English with concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture from UNC (2017)

As a student who graduated from the University of Central Arkansas with a B.S. in Biological Physics and a double minor in Interdisciplinary Studies and Creative Writing, Brandon has always taken a “left-brain/right-brain” approach to his studies. However, it wasn’t until he enrolled in a literature and medicine course that he realized how the humanities could shape his research interests in science, virtual reality, and medicine. At UNC, Brandon was part of the first cohort of the Literature, Medicine and Culture master’s program.

Additionally, Brandon was Community Resources Manager for HHIVE and organized volunteers, coordinated outreach events, and connected with scholars in neighboring programs at Duke University and North Carolina State University. His research includes critical making processes (how the act of making can also function as a critique of the object in itself, such as a technological piece that also critiques the society for which it is developed for) and game studies. When he is not playing games you can find him running half marathons and practicing studio art. Currently, he’s looking at master’s programs in neuroengineering and electrical engineering, as well as PhD programs in communication and Science and Technology Studies (STS). He aspires to go into either academia or industry, but ideally both.

Brandon returned to HHIVE in November 2021 for an alumni career panel. You can view the event on YouTube.

Nakisa Sadeghi, MD, MPH

Resident Physician in Internal Medicine-Dermatology at Brigham & Women’s Hospital

MD from UNC School of Medicine (2023)

MPH from Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health (2022)

BA in French and Francophone Studies with minors in Business Administration and Chemistry from UNC (2017)

Former HHIVE Lab URA

Nakisa Sadeghi is currently a physician, but she has not forgotten the lessons taught to her by the health humanities. While at UNC, Nakisa was a part of Professor Thrailkill & Professor Jack’s inaugural ENGL 690 (now ENGL 695) class, which gave students hands-on experience developing research projects in health humanities. Along with Izzy Pinheiro and Sam Weeks, Nakisa designed and implemented the Music Study to measure the impact of live music in waiting rooms. The class had a lasting impact on how Nakisa understands physician-patient relationships and patient communication.

During the 2018-2019 academic year, Nakisa was presented with an exciting opportunity: she took a leave of absence from her medical program to pursue a fellowship in health policy. One of her former associates had recently become the president of Planned Parenthood and Nakisa was awarded a fellowship to work as their Special Assistant. Once there, she worked at the Planned Parenthood national office to advance a vision of reproductive healthcare as healthcare and led and contributed to various initiatives to help depoliticize reproductive healthcare. The fellowship also allowed Nakisa to work at the George Washington University’s School of Public Health as a Visiting Scholar, researching and writing on various issues in public health from maternal mortality and opioid addiction to the emergency response to coronavirus, and then as a Senior Fellow at the Seldin/Haring-Smith Foundation where she researched medical care for immigrant children and families.

Learn more about Nakisa’s work in medical school by reading this UNC SOM profile.

Irmak Saklayici, MA
MA in English with concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture from UNC (2023)

Former Health Humanities Grand Rounds Coordinator

Irmak Saklayici is pursuing her MA in Medicine, Literature, and Culture. Though born in Istanbul, Turkey, she moved around growing up and is terrified of the question “Where are you from?”. She received her BS in Biology (and minors in Chemistry and Spanish for the Health Professions) from UNC Chapel Hill in 2019. After reflecting on some of her favorite courses from undergraduate (“Health and Society” and “Medical Anthropology”), spending time as a medical scribe listening to patient stories, and hearing so many immigrant stories of frustrating medical encounters from family and friends, she decided to pivot from STEM and strengthen her humanities muscle to better understand and study illness narratives. Currently she is interested in the field of graphic medicine, and more specifically, the depiction of mental illness in comic memoirs.

Shatakshi Shekhar

MBA Candidate at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business

BA in Global Studies with minor in Hindi and Neuroscience from UNC (2018)

Former member of Dance & Diabetes Study team

“HHIVE Lab combines two of my passions, humanities and medicine. I had done an internship at a gynecologist’s private practice my junior year of high school. One thing she said to me has stuck with me till this day: “Many people believe medicine is just science. People forget the people aspect of medicine.” By the people aspect, she was referring to the patient’s culture, religion and socio-economic status and seeing the relationship between how those two can affect the patient’s health. Some religions such as Islam forbid Muslims to eat Pork. Is there are correlation between Muslims and obesity or Muslims in heart disease? Are there lower rates of heart disease in Muslims since they are not eating that red meat? A Hindu diet has a tendency to be on the no red meat side and a more vegetarian side. Is that why Hindu’s may be deficient in protein (a source for 10 of the 20 amino acids)? These questions come to my mind and I believe that HHIVE lab is the best place to start discovering the answers to these questions.”

Spencer Tackett

Master of Social Work student at North Carolina State University

BA in English & Comparative Literature with a minor in Medical Anthropology from UNC (2020)

Former HHIVE Lab URA

I am a lifelong lover of stories and a newfound lover of learning about health, healthcare, and medicine. HHIVE allows me to join my two passions and focus on reading and sharing stories of illness. My goal as a HHIVE volunteer is to learn more about the field of medicine, to view that knowledge through the lens of literature and storytelling, and share it with my peers. Language and storytelling are two of our superpowers as humans, and I want to use that superpower to help current and future physicians give their patients the best care possible.

Sam Weeks

Medical Student at Emory University SOM

BA in English & Comparative Literature and BS in Biology from UNC (2017)

A native of the mountains of Western North Carolina, Sam moved to Chapel Hill to start his undergraduate career in 2013. He has Bachelors degrees in Biology and English with a minor in Chemistry from UNC. He spent two years of his adolescence living with his family in Nairobi, Kenya, an experience that opened him to the realities of injustice and poverty and set him on a trajectory of pursuing a career of medicine. Sam’s love of literature and preference for people over science textbooks led him to the field of Health Humanities, and he directed some of his undergraduate studies in the Department of English and Comparative Literature towards that field. As a student in what is now ENGL 695, he and two other students conducted a study examining the effects of live musical performance in hospital waiting room environments. You can find out more about that project here (link to the Music Study page here).

Sam worked as the HHIVE’s volunteer coordinator. His interests include Early Modern literature (particularly John Milton and John Donne), the doctor-patient relationship, and conceptions of morality in illness. He hopes to pursue a career in medicine in the coming years.

A sample of Sam’s undergraduate work with the lab may be found on Reflections on the Interprofessional Education Training.