Lara Nicole Pur

Lara Nicole Pur is a PhD candidate in English Literature in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is pursuing her doctorate from 2022 to 2027 (expected). She earned a B.A. in English Honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2020, with a minor in psychology, following earlier studies in English at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 2016 to 2017. Prior to her graduate work, Pur held various academic support roles, including Writer’s Workshop Tutor and Writing Center Intern at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Colorado Boulder, respectively. She also served as an Intern for The Odyssey Project through the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, co-facilitating classes in philosophy, art history, and writing for low-income adults from 2019 to 2020.

At UNC Chapel Hill, Pur has taken on significant teaching and administrative roles. Since August 2023, she has served as a Teaching Fellow, developing policies and syllabi, teaching rhetoric across natural science, social science, and humanities, and providing office hours support. She is currently the Administrative and Research Assistant for the Jane Austen’s Desk Project (January 2024-present), transcribing data, tracking reviews, and compiling marketing lists. Previously, she was DLC Lab Media Manager (August 2022-August 2023), leading a department headshot project, managing undergraduate workers, and organizing media resources. Pur has proctored exams for students with accommodations and teaches courses such as ENGL 105 English Composition and Rhetoric. Her research specializes in woman-written sensation novels of 19th-century Britain, feminist commentary and resistance within sensation novels, the 'girl of the period,' women’s joy and pleasure, and bodily autonomy. Broader interests encompass British Literature from 1789 to 1900, Comparative Literature, Feminist Historiography, The Novel, and Women Writers. She has received the Dahl Family Fellowship (2022-2027), recognition for exceptional performance in Introductory Ancient Greek from the University of Illinois Classics Department (2020), was a finalist for the University of Illinois Undergraduate Creative Writing Awards (2019), appeared on the Dean’s List (2017-2020), and was a University of Colorado Honors Scholar (2016-2017). Pur possesses reading proficiency in Spanish, Ancient Greek, and French.

Professional Email: larapur@unc.edu