Graduate Student Directory
- Title
- PhD Student, Teaching Assistant
- Division Humanities Division
- Department
- Literature Department
- Affiliations Graduate Studies Division
- Office Location
- Humanities Building 1, Zoom
- Office Hours Appointment
- Mail Stop Literature Department
Summary of Expertise
Literature of the Early Modern Period
Medieval Literature
Poetry
American 19th Century Poetry
Research Interests
Chivalric Fairy Tales
Emily Dickinson
Monstrosity and Otherness
Italian Renaissance Literature
Paradise Lost
Shakespeare
Biography, Education and Training
Born in Garden Grove and raised in Riverside, Lena, whose first language was Vietnamese, was determined to fluently read and understand Shakespeare after years of shying away from it in high school. In university, she studied Shakespeare with Dr. Heidi Brayman and Dr. John Briggs while discovering a love for American literature and poetry with Dr. Steven Axelrod. After earning a B.A. a year early in 2021, she completed a M.Ed and taught a class of 12th graders in 2022 (she misses them so much). Today, Lena aims to become a community college professor, a profession and position she feels will help her increase accessibility to Shakespeare and other initially intimidating texts.
B.A. English, summa cum laude, UCR, 2021
M.Ed. Single Subject English, UCR, 2022
Teaching Interests
Emily Dickinson
Paradise Lost
Poetry
