Overview
Ryan is a fifth-year Ph.D. Candidate at Cornell University in the Medieval Studies Program with a Graduate Minor in Media Studies. Her dissertation titled, Special Effects, Special Affects: Medieval & Modern Practices of Horror, explores the intersection between special effects and affects associated with the Horror genre in late medieval performance culture and postmodern horror cinema. She has presented at academic conferences on topics ranging from gender-bending rhetorical devices in Chaucer's House of Fame to the entanglement of independent filmmaking, the adult film industry, and the automation of meat-packing plants in horror films of the late 1970s. She is currently one of the Medieval Section Editors at The Sundial, an open-access publication facilitated through the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS) dedicated to connecting premodern pasts with inclusive futures.
Research Focus
- Medieval Drama & Performance Culture
- Middle English Poetry
- Popular Culture Studies
- Media Theory
- Theories of Horror
Courses Taught:
MEDVL 1101: FWS: Aspects of Medieval Culture: “The Medea Myth from Ancient Greece to the Middle Ages.”
MEDVL 1101: FWS: Aspects of Medieval Culture: “Conjuring Horror in Medieval Literature.”
Publications
“Medieval Arthuriana Was Always Scary, But Not in the Way That You Would Think,” Bright Lights Film Journal, March 2022.