ABOUT

JOCELYN SEARS

I am a third-year doctoral student in the Department of English at Harvard University and the recipient

of an AM degree from the department, where I am co-coordinator of the Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Literature Colloquium. I am also a 2020-2021 Canada Dissertation Research Fellow

at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, receiving support for my work on Margaret Atwood.

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My dissertation research focuses on narrative voice and literary form in 20th- and 21st-century dystopian novels. My wider academic interests include narratology, book history, feminist studies, queer studies, trauma studies, literary modernism, contemporary poetry, and speculative  fiction.

Before coming to Harvard, I received my BA from Stanford University, graduating with honors in English and a minor in Feminist and Queer Studies, and I completed an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of Virginia, where I held a Poe-Faulkner Fellowship. I spent two years as a staff researcher for the magazine mental_floss, and have worked as a copywriter for online-shopping platforms and as

a podcast researcher for How Stuff Works and iHeartMedia.

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I have published cultural and historical articles in venues including mental_floss, JSTOR Daily, 

Atlas Obscura, and Racked, and my poetry has appeared in PANK, Apogee, BOAAT,

Southern Indiana Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, and other journals.