
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.
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.
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.