Nicholas A. Brush is a PhD student in English--Renaissance Literature. In his master's thesis, titled "Meat Makes the Man: Hierarchies of Masculinity and Meat Eating in Shakespearean Drama," he argues that Shakespeare's use of meat, both literal and metaphorical, reveals that the consumptions of certain kinds of meats and other foods produced different styles of masculinity. The central argument is that Shakespeare uses meat as a symbol for masculinity and meat consumption as a requirement to participate in masculine performativity. Nicholas's dissertation project, tentatively titled Dietary Deviants: Transgressive Consumption in Early Modern Drama, aims to produce a richly documented historical account of the intersection of food, gender, and sexuality in early modern drama. The hypothesis is that by mapping transgressive modes of consumption, ones that violate gender, sexuality, and class norms, we can track early moderns' cultural approaches to food and the constructions of early modern foodways. Nicholas has participated in many prestigious workshops and conferences, most recently the "Eating through the Archives" Graduate Student Workshop at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Newberry Library Multidisciplinary Graduate Conference.