Department of English

Matt Bayne Wins Outstanding Dissertation Award

Congratulations to Matt Bayne, whose dissertation, "Tarrying with Useless Things: Reparative Readings of Victorian Social Inequality," has been selected to receive the University's 2017 Outstanding Dissertation Award in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences. In the dissertation, which Bayne defended in the spring of 2016, he argues that Victorian authors employed images of garbage to symbolize marginalized members of society -- single women, queer men, colonized peoples, the poor -- but that, perhaps unexpectedly, the metaphor works "reparatively," helping, ultimately, to endow these populations with positive value. Bayne completed the dissertation under the supervision of Professor Bette London and Professor Supritha Rajan. He is currently working at the college's Writing, Speaking, and Argument Program in the role of Writing Placement Coordinator.