Marissa Nicosia
Dissertation Advisor(s): Melissa E. Sanchez, Zachary Lesser
"Historical Futures in Seventeenth-Century Literature"
Assistant Professor, Penn State Abington
http://marissanicosia.wordpress.com/about/
B.A. Barnard College, Columbia University 2007, M.A. University of Pennsylvania 2009, Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2014
Marissa Nicosia is an alumna of the Department of English. Her work engages with the fields of early modern English literature, material texts studies, and political theory. Archival oddities, and modern responses to them, continue to fuel her investment in book history and manuscript studies. She has documented some of these materials on the blog Unique@Penn and tweets about them @Nicosia_Marissa. Marissa's research has been supported by the Alumnae Association of Barnard College and a UPenn SAS Penfield Dissertation Research Fellowship. She was recently profiled in Frontiers, a publication that showcases research in the School of Arts and Sciences. Marissa holds an Andrew W. Mellon- Rare Book School Fellowship in Critical Bibliography (2013-2015).
While at Penn Marissa taught an introductory course on utopian and dystopian literatures, "Utopia and Dystopia" , an advanced seminar on Shakespeare, book history, and digital media, "Social Networks from Shakespeare to Facebook," a Shakespeare survey, and other courses on early modern English Literature and media history. In Fall 2012 Marissa taught an introductory humanities course through the Liberal Arts program at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. During the 2010-2011 academic year she taught two semesters of first year writing for the Critical Writing Program. Her course, "London Calling," studied the city of London and its literature from Chaucer through The Clash.
In addition to her research and teaching, Marissa is a contributing editor for The Appendix: a quarterly journal of experimental and narrative history. She coordinated the 2012-2013 Medieval and Renaissance Seminar with Marie Turner, held the office of President of the Graduate English Association (GEA) for the 2011-2012 academic year, and organized the Paleography Workshop with Alex Devine from 2010-2012. Beyond the halls of Penn, Marissa has worked a Production Assistant on WHYY-FM Philadelphia's nationally-syndicated You Bet Your Garden and contributed to the WHYY's Newsworks local Entertainment Guide.