Alan Oak is a graduate student in English at the University of Texas at Brownsville, where he has completed 18 hours towards his MA with a 4.0 GPA. He serves as founding president of the English Graduate Advancement and Development Society (EGADS!). In addition, he has been accepted into the Creative Writing MFA program at the University of Texas Pan American, where he recently attended the Summer Writing Institute in San Juan Miguel de Allende, Mexico in July 2009. His scholarly interests include feminist criticism, speculative fiction and the integration of science and criticism. The working title of his masters thesis is: "'All Which Yields is Not Weak': The Feminine Path to Power in Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy series."

During the 2008-2009 school year, Alan served as a graduate research assistant to Dr. Javier Martinez and aided him with Extrapolation, an academic journal of speculative fiction. Alan's contribution included copy editing, index creation, Wikipedia entry updates, and website updates and search engine optimization (SEO). He also aided Dr. Martinez with pedagogical duties, including grading papers and teaching classes.

Conference Presentations:

• “Culture Shock in Typee and La Relacion,” American Studies Association of Texas (ASAT) (2008)
• “Poems of Middle Earth,” Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association (SWTXPCA/ACA) (2009)
• “The Wheel at the Fair: Buddhist Psychology Applied as Literary Criticism to Vanity Fair,” 11th Annual UTB/TSC Research Symposium (2009)
• "’Fight the Power’: Robert Burns and Public Enemy, Bothers in Arms,” 2009 UTSA English Graduate Student Symposium (2009)

Publications:

• “Women’s Hero Journey: An Interview With Lois McMaster Bujold on Paladin of Souls,” Women Writers (June 2009) 
• Review of Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, “Intro to Fan Fiction and Slash,” co-authored with Jenny Ashley, under review for publication in the summer issue of Extrapolation.

Awards:

• Scholastic Excellence Award, University of Texas at Brownsville (2009)
• Student Housing Scholarship, University of Texas at Brownsville (spring 2009)
• Departmental Scholarship, University of Texas at Brownsville (fall 2008)
  

Alan graduated cum laude from Ellis College of the New York Institute of Technology in spring 2008 with a BA in English–Professional Writing. He completed all his coursework at Ellis with a 4.0 GPA.