Marissa Herzig

PhD Candidate
marissa.herzig@mail.utoronto.ca

Campus

  • Downtown Toronto (St. George)

Fields of Study

  • American Literature
  • Critical Race Studies
  • Disability Studies
  • Gender and Sexuality Studies
  • Jewish Studies
  • Literary and Critical Theory
  • Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Literature

Areas of Interest

  • Jewish folklore
  • Posthumanism
  • Speculative Fiction 
  • Genre Studies

Biography

Marissa Herzig (she/her) is a fourth-year English PhD candidate at the University of Toronto whose SSHRC-funded dissertation focuses on the female golem in contemporary retellings of Jewish folklore from the lens of disability studies. Marissa is a Junior Fellow at Massey College, chair of the Junior Fellows Lecture Series and Accessibility Committee at Massey, and a consultant at the Writing Centre. In her spare time, Marissa enjoys listening to audiobooks and making three cups of tea a day.

List of Publications

  • “Vampires and Jews: Blood, Race, and Monstrosity.” Oxford Bibliographies in Jewish Studies. Forthcoming November 2025.
  • “Disturbed Depths: The Ecological Aquatic Otherness of the Leviathan in From Dust, A Flame” Experiencing the Hebrew Bible, Baron Lectures, Vol, 2, March 2025.
  • “On the Shoulders of Giants: Helene Wecker’s Subversion of the Female Golem” The Macksey Journal, Vol. 2, September 2021.
  • “Fairies and Fairness: The Aesthetic of White Femininity in Jane Eyre” Pittsburgh Undergraduate Review, Vol. 1, July 2021.

Cohort

  • 2022-2023