Kirsten Noelle Mendoza

  

• Graduate Student
• Vanderbilt University

Kirsten received her B.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she graduated with English Honors distinction. She later received her Masters from Loyola University in Chicago and is presently a second year Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt University. Her ongoing research in sixteenth and early-seventeenth century drama and literature focuses on the destabilization that occurs through volitional acts of subjection by marginalized individuals. In particular, she interrogates the construction of consent along the co-constitutive lines of gender, race, and desire. Her presentation, “From Libertine to Femme Fatale: The Fallen Woman in Thomas Southerne’s Sir Anthony Love” is published in the 2013 Newberry Library Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference Proceedings. She has been awarded the 2013 Rocky Mountain MLA Women’s Caucus Award for Best Feminist Convention Presentation and the 2014 Vanderbilt Susan Ford Wiltshire Essay Prize for Best Graduate Student Essay.