CLA: Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature

Stephen Macek (Ph.D., Comparative Literature 2001) is Associate Professor of Speech Communication, and Coordinator of Urban and Suburban Studies at North Central College, Naperville, Illinois. He teaches courses in media studies, urban studies, persuasion and gender/women studies. His intellectual interests include: news and journalism, film, TV, media policy and reform, philosophy and social theory, urban history and contemporary American politics. Stephen's book, Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right and the Moral Panic over the City was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2006 and won the Urban Communication Foundation Publication Award in 2007.

His professional page can be found here.

Posted by Cultural Studies and Comparative Lit at 11:12 AM | Permalink

Thomas O. Haakenson (Ph.D., CSDS 2006) is the Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs and Professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). Prior to this appointment, he served as the Chair of the Liberal Arts Department at MCAD. He has published in the journals Cabinet, New German Critique, The Rutgers Art Review, and Quodlibetica, as well as in the anthologies Legacies of Modernism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and Memorialization in Germany Since 1945 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), among others. He has received awards and fellowships from the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Social Science Research Council, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies among others.

Taken from his Minnesota College of Art and Design profile here.

Posted by Cultural Studies and Comparative Lit at 11:07 AM | Permalink

R. A. Judy (Ph.D., Comparative Literature 1990) teaches literary and cultural theory at the University of Pittsburgh. His current work involves exploring the ways in which popular cultural movements engage problems of authenticity and sovereignty in relation to an emerging global economy. His work focuses specifically on Islamist projects of communal identity in North America, Europe, and Africa, as well as the globalization of Hip Hop science.

His publications include the book (Dis)forming the American Canon: The Vernacular of African Arabic American Slave Narrative. A co-editor of boundary 2, Judy's own articles have appeared in Surfaces, Cultural Studies, and Noesis. His areas of special interests include Immanuel Kant, ibn Khaldun, post-structuralist theory, and post-colonial theory.

His University of Pittsburgh faculty page can be found here.

Posted by Cultural Studies and Comparative Lit at 11:04 AM | Permalink

Andrew Kincaid (Ph.D., CSDS 2002) is Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His research interests include urbanism, modernism, postcolonial theory, and Irish studies. He has taught courses on literary and critical theory, modern literature, global/postcolonial literature, and Irish studies. He is currently on the Advisory Boards of both the Center For Celtic Studies, and the Modern Studies Program. His recent book, Postcolonial Dublin: Imperial Legacies and the Built Environment, was published through the University of Minnesota Press in 2006. His essays have been published in College Literature, Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, and rea 3: religion, education and the arts. He has also contributed articles to Everything Irish: The History, Literature, Art, Music, People, and Places of Ireland from A-Z.

Andrew's faculty profile at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee can be found here.

Posted by Cultural Studies and Comparative Lit at 11:01 AM | Permalink

Thomas Roach (Ph.D., CSDS 2006) is Assistant Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Bryant University. His research focuses on philosophical questions of subjectivity and community, as well as identity and difference. His dissertation, "Shared Estrangement: Foucault, Friendship, and AIDS Activism," develops the ontological and ethical implications of Michel Foucault's spare but suggestive writings on friendship to produce a new and politically viable concept-friendship as impersonal intimacy. He analyzes the value of this model for political movements such as ACT UP and the "AIDS Buddy" volunteer network as well as in cultural texts, including Hervé Guibert's fictionalized memoirs, the multimedia work of David Wojnarowicz, the sound collages of Bob Ostertag, and the video activist documentaries of Tom Joslin and Gregg Bordowitz.

He has published articles and essays on Foucault, Guibert, and Didier Eribon's Insult and the Making of the Gay Self in new formations and Theory & Event. He teaches Introduction to Philosophy, Studies in Film and Video, a senior seminar in Critical Theory, and soon to come, Sexuality and Culture.

Taken from his Bryant University faculty page here.

Posted by Cultural Studies and Comparative Lit at 10:59 AM | Permalink

Scott Sherer (Ph.D., CSDS 2002) is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Texas, San Antonio, and Gallery Director of the University of Texas-San Antonio Art Gallery and Satellite Space. His interests include modern and postmodern visual art, performance, literature and intellectual history, curatorial practices, histories of sexuality and gender, theoretical and lived constructions of space, and the social and cultural roles of institutions.

Taken from his University of Texas-San Antonio faculty profile here.

Posted by Cultural Studies and Comparative Lit at 10:55 AM | Permalink

Daryl Lee (Ph.D., CSDS 2001) is an Assistant Professor in the department of General Studies at the State University of New York Institute of Technology. His research interests include cultural and critical theory, cultural formations of modernity, discourses of suicide. He has been published in Intellectual History Review, and led a presentation on Monsters, Culture, and Society.

His SUNYIT directory page can be found here.

Posted by Cultural Studies and Comparative Lit at 10:53 AM | Permalink

Silvia Lopez (Ph.D., CSCL 1999) is the chair of the Spanish program at Carleton College where she teaches 19th century Latin American literature as well as Introduction to Latin American Studies and Latin American Literature. Her main areas of interest are literary and social modernity in Latin America, cultural and critical theory, and the Frankfurt School. Her research focuses on cultural theory and criticism and she has published articles on Adorno, Lukács, Benjamin, Garcia Canclini, Schwarz, Dalton, and Argueta. Together with Christopher Chiappari, she translated Néstor Garcia Canclini's Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. She edited a special issue of Cultural Critique (Fall 2001) titled "Critical Theory in Latin America". Currently she is finishing a book of essays entitled Frankfurt Minima: Essays in Aesthetics and Culture.

Her faculty profile at Carleton College can be found here.

Posted by Cultural Studies and Comparative Lit at 10:49 AM | Permalink

Dr. Bryant-Bertail is an Associate Professor of theory and criticism at the University of Washington's Drama Department. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Scandinavian Studies. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Literature with an emphasis on modern European theater and critical theory. She also studied theatre at the Sorbonne in Paris and the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. Her essays on European and American theater performance, semiotics, feminism, and intercultural theater appear in Theatre Journal, Theatre Research International, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Assaph, Theatre Studies, and in Journal of Kafka Studies and in the anthologies Brecht Yearbook, Strindberg's Dramaturgy, In Collaboration: le Theatre du Soleil: A Sourcebook, The Performance of Power, The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English, Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, Essays on 20th-Century German Drama, and Perspectives on Teaching Theatre. Besides the University of Washington, she has also taught at the University of South Carolina and Trinity College Dublin.

Her University of Washington Faculty page can be found here.

Her book Space and Time in Epic Theatre: The Brechtian Legacy was published in 2000. Follow this link to the publisher's description.

Posted by Cultural Studies and Comparative Lit at 11:48 AM | Permalink

Neil Larsen is Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at the Neil Larsen (Ph.D., Comparative Literature 1986) is Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California, Davis, and he works and writes extensively in the areas of Latin American literature, postcolonial studies, and general literary and critical theory. He is the author of Modernism and Hegemony (1990), Reading North by South (1995), and Determinations: Essays on Theory, Narrative and Nation in the Americas (2001). His current projects include a book of essays on changes in the written form of dialectical thought in Hegel, Marx, Lukács and Adorno.

Neil Larsen's broader research and teaching interests include critical theory and its philosophical sources, marxism, comparative literature, and post-colonial and Latin-American literary studies (including Brazil).

His University of California-Davis faculty page can be found here.

University of Minnesota Press publications:

Reading North by South: On Latin American Literature, Culture and Politics (1995)
Modernism and Hegemony: a Materialist Critique of Aesthetic Agencies (1990)

Posted by Cultural Studies and Comparative Lit at 11:42 AM | Permalink

Mark Axelrod is a graduate of both Indiana University (BA and MA) and the University of Minnesota (Ph.D., Comparative Literature 1988)). He is the Director of the John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, and has received numerous writing awards including two United Kingdom Leverhulme Fellowships for Creative Writing as well as awards from the Sundance Institute. He has published four novels, Capital Castles (Pacific Writers Press, 2000), Cloud Castles (Pacific Writers Press, 1998), Cardboard Castles (Pacific Writers Press, 1996), Bombay California (Pacific Writers Press, 1994), and has recently completed a novel in three books titled, The Posthumous Memoirs of Blase Kubash. He has also written several collections of short stories, including "Dante's Foil & Other Sporting Tales," "The Apotheosis of Aaron," and "Borges' Travel, Hemingway's Garage," the last recently published by the Fiction Collective 2 and a prequel to "Balzac Coffee, Leonardo's Suites." He has published two books on screenwriting, Aspects of the Screenplay (Heinemann) and Character & Conflict: Cornerstones of Screenwriting (Heinemann), and has recently completed a book on adaptation titled, I Read It At The Movies. He recently assumed the position of co-editor of the literary journal The New Novel Review, and is a regular reviewer for The Review of Contemporary Fiction. He has been published in numerous journals in the United States and Europe, including the Iowa Review and the New York Quarterly

His Chapman University Faculty Profile can be found here.

Follow this link to his personal page, which highlights his creative works.

Posted by Cultural Studies and Comparative Lit at 11:30 AM | Permalink

Lesley completed her Ph.D in Comparative Literature in 1996. She spent a year as an Ahmanson-Getty Fellow at UCLA and then went to Indiana University, South Bend in the fall of 1997. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Foreign Language department, teaching all levels of French language, literature, and culture. She has taught courses on the French Revolution, focusing on the history and literature of the period and its later representations in film, and a team-taught course, which included a study-trip to London and Paris. She also has a continuing interest in cinema and African literature, and has developed new courses at Indiana in these areas.

Lesley's research interests are in 18th century French studies, especially women's art and literature. Her book A Mother's Love: Crafting Feminine Virtue in Enlightenment France was published in 2008.

Her Faculty page can be found here.

Posted by Cultural Studies and Comparative Lit at 11:20 AM | Permalink

Hassan Melehy (Ph.D., Comparative Literature 1993) is Associate Professor of French and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He specializes in early modern French and comparative literature, contemporary critical theory, and film studies. He is the author of Writing Cogito: Montaigne, Descartes, and the Institution of the Modern Subject (SUNY Press, 1997), and The Poetics of Literary Transfer in Early Modern France and England, which is forthcoming in 2010 from Ashgate. He has also written numerous articles on early modern literature and philosophy, recent and contemporary critical theory, and film studies. Currently he is doing research on Jack Kerouac's Québécois cultural background and his role in recent Québécois literature. In addition to his critical writing, he also regularly publishes poetry.

His faculty profile with the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at UNC Chapel Hill can be found here.

Posted by Cultural Studies and Comparative Lit at 11:13 AM | Permalink

Gitahi Gititi (Ph.D., Comparative Literature 1991) is professor of English, Film and Media Studies, and African and
African American Studies at the University of Rhode Island. His scholarly and creative work has appeared in the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, Atlantic Literary Review, Paintbrush, Current Writing, Race in the College Classroom: Pedagogy and Politics, The Companion to African Literatures, ATQ:Ninteenth Century American Literature and Culture, Left Curve, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o: Texts and Contexts, Metamorphoses 2, Routledge Encyclopedia of African Literature, Mwihoko, Mutiiri, and Nyumba Ni Imwe.

Gitahi is a poet, short fiction writer, and multilingual translator. His works in non-European languages include two Gikuyu-language collections of poems called Mukunga-Mbura Gutari Matu (Rainbow in an Arid Sky) by Africa World Press and Mboomu Iratuthukire Nairobi (Bomb[in'] Nairobi) by Ngoro Njega Publications. Numerous essays, poems, and short stories have also appeared in the Gikuyu-language journal of art and culture, Mutiiri, of which he is a founding editor. His feature articles also appear in the Gikuyu-language newspaper, Mwihoko, published in Murang'a, Kenya

His University of Rhode Island faculty page can be found here.

Posted by Cultural Studies and Comparative Lit at 11:01 AM | Permalink