Kristen Gragg

Kristen Gragg (she/her) is a Ronald E. McNair Scholar and Ph.D. student in the University of Pittsburgh’s English Literature Program. She earned her B.A. in English, with highest distinction, from the University of Georgia and her M.A. in English from West Virginia University. Her primary research interests include Medieval and Early Modern medical and scientific texts; interdisciplinary pedagogies; Renaissance drama; magic, witchcraft, the occult, and horror; Medieval romance; and the health humanities.

Kristen currently has one publication, “‘To kill a Wife with Kindness’: Contextualizing Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew,” in which she offers historical context for the Shrew Taming tradition in European art and, in doing so, argues that Petruchio’s treatment of Katherine is not as cruel as it may cursorily appear. In her future work, she intends to examine how the ways in which we depict illness and the body are imprinted by a genealogy of exploitative scientific and medical practices and ideologies.