Graduate Student Representatives
Over the years, more and more graduate students have started attending the annual Western Literature Association Conference. Now every fifth member of the Western Literature Association is a graduate student. Therefore, since 2001, the association’s Executive Council has included a Graduate Student Representative who is elected by the membership at large. Beginning in 2011, two grad student representatives serve on the council. Each graduate student representative serves a two-year term, and a new representative is elected each year.
Each Grad Rep’s responsibilities include:
- being a voting member of the association’s governing body, the Executive Council, which makes decisions about the conferences and the running of the association’s scholarly journal
- attending the pre-conference Executive Council meeting to act on behalf of the graduate student membership
- being an active participant in the yearly conferences and most of their related events
- organizing and moderating a panel at the yearly conference on some aspect of career and professionalization issues (he or she is usually assisted in this by a regular member of the association).
- During the second year, the grad rep will be a committee member for selection of the Owens Awards.
If you are interested in submitting your name for nomination as Grad Student Representative, please contact the current WLA president. Note: The Graduate Student Reps are appointed for two years, and the Western Literature Association expects that appointment to be carried out. So please don’t nominate yourself or accept a nomination for Graduate Student Rep if you expect to finish your degree before the end of spring semester of your second year.
Know your current graduate student representatives:
Elizabeth Martinez, rep. 2022–2024
University of Texas at Austin, [email protected]
Elizabeth Martinez grew up in central Texas and graduated from Rice University with a BA in Sexuality, Women, and Gender Studies and English Literature. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin. She studies Mexican American women’s literature with a focus on hospitality and hosting practices and foodways. Her dissertation takes a transhistorical approach, reading the texts of Mexican American women across time to analyze the lack of coherence inherent in the history of this identity.
Maria Kane, rep. 2023–2025
Washington University, St. Louis, [email protected]
Maria Kane is a doctoral student in English Literature at Washington University in St. Louis, where she studies American novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a focus on popular fiction and bestsellers. Her research examines women’s writing, histories of reading, and the construction of aesthetic categories. Her interests also extend to the digital humanities and the intersections between literature and film. As a writer of short fiction, Maria embraces imaginative approaches to literary scholarship and archival exploration. She has been a member of WLA since 2023, when she presented her research on Willa Cather’s fan mail during the conference in Fort Hall, Idaho. She is originally from Rochester, New York, and earned her B.A. from the University of Rochester, majoring in both English Literature and Classical Civilization. In her free time, Maria enjoys befriending local wildlife.
Past Graduate Student Reps:
Sarah Jane Kerwin, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2021-2023
Surabhi Balachander, University of Michigan, 2019-2022
Jillian Moore Bennion, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, 2018-2021
Jes Lopez, Michigan State University, 2017-2019
Rachel Heise Bolten, Stanford University, 2016-2018
Landon Lutrick, University of Nevada, Reno, 2015-2017
Sylvan Goldberg, Stanford University, 2014-2016
Jaquelin Pelzer, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2013-2015
William V. Lombardi, University of Nevada, Reno, 2012-2014
Ashley Reis, University of North Texas, 2011-2013
Matt Lavin, University of Iowa, 2010-2012
Kerry Fine, Texas Tech University, 2008-2011
Angela Waldie, University of Calgary, 2006-2008
Drucilla Wall, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2005-2006
Matthew R. Burkhart, University of Arizona, 2003-2005
Anne L. Kaufman, University of Maryland, 2001-2003