Whalen, William: - Dr William Whalen is an independent researcher who received his doctoral degree from the University of Albany in 2014. His dissertation focuses on how a handful of contemporary American authors speak back to and reappropriate sacred formulations of human bodies that figure individual human beings as having both masculine and feminine aspects. Chapters are dedicated to the artists Octavia Butler, Cormac McCarthy, Chuck Palahniuk, and rapper Lil Wayne. While completing his dissertation, William Whalen taught as an adjunct at the University of Albany for seven years. His courses primarily focused on American literature, literary theory, and writing composition. Whalen has been a fan of Tupac Shakur since high school, but he first began closely studying and teaching Shakur when, as an undergraduate, he started a volunteer program to teach poetry and creative writing to inmates at Coxsackie Correctional Facility. His undergraduate honors dissertation was on Shakur, and he frequently included Shakur's works in the syllabi of the college courses he taught. Whalen is currently writing a book that uses Vajrayana Buddhism as a theoretical lens to analyze the lyrics, art, journals, and life of Kurt Cobain.