Samantha Carrick

Samantha Carrick is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Southern California, where she has also received the Visual Studies Graduate Certificate. Her dissertation focuses on sleepwalkers in twentieth-century American literature and visual culture, and she is fascinated with bodies stuck between sleeping and waking. Carrick works both on the avant-garde and on popular culture, but her archive typically consists of the weird, the strange, and the disconcerting. She also has an interest in modernist depictions of death and dying. In addition to her academic work, Carrick teaches a literature-based writing course in the Thematic Option (Honors) Program at USC, where she has encouraged rousing student discussions on theory and psychoanalysis disguised as conversations about werewolves, female monsters, and cartoon mice. She also helps at-risk girls find their creative voices through the WriteGirl program.