Danielle Bray

Dr. Bray's specialty area is children's and young adult literature, media and culture. She completed her doctorate in English with a major specialization in Children's Literature at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her dissertation, Those Who Nurture: Food, Gender, and the Performance of Family in Fantasy for Young Readers, applies gender studies and performance studies theory to a broad sample of late-twentieth and twenty-first-century juvenile and young adult fantasy novels, arguing that in the novels, the performative act of food-sharing establishes the role of "nurturer," an ungendered alternative to the traditional role "mother," which transcends age and biologically-assigned sex. She also holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Children's Literature from Hollins University and is currently querying her thesis project, a young adult speculative novel manuscript entitled Half Moon completed under the direction of Ellen Kushner and advisement of Dr. Brian Attebery. Dr. Bray also has minor specialities in Rhetoric and Composition, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature, and Early American Literature. She earned her BA and MA in English at the State University of New York College at New Paltz.