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Alexandra Appino-Tabone Alexandra Appino-Tabone holds a BA in English Literature from McGill University, an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School, and an MA in English Literature from New York University. Her interests include Translation Studies, early modern theater, early modern women’s writing, and Postcolonial Studies. Her current research focuses on the translation of 17th-century theatrical texts, as well as questions of gender and identity in Italian Baroque theater. |
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Eylül Belden Eylül Belden recently completed an MA in Comparative Literature at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey and also holds a BA in Translation and Interpreting Studies from Boğaziçi University, where she wrote a BA thesis on an intermedial, interlingual “translation” of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s 1982 experimental novel Dictee by German artist Heide Hinrichs’. Eylül is interested in Mediterranean and Caribbean studies and the relationship between the two. At Koç, she completed an MA thesis entitled “Unity in Diversity: Towards A Mediterranean Feminist Criticism,” which draws upon key concepts in Mediterranean studies. At UCSB she is planning a PhD project on “Mediterranean feminist criticism,” which offers women across the Mediterranean a ground for solidarity inspiring transborder and transcultural dialogue across and beyond the region |
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Annalisa Ciano Annalisa Ciano studied at University of Rome La Sapienza, where she graduated in Modern Literatures (BA) and Modern Philology (MA). She further specialized in Italian Studies at Paris-Sorbonne Université (MA) and in Comparative, Postcolonial Literatures and Translation Studies at University of Bologna (MA). Her interests range from Translation Studies, to Postcolonial Studies, Mythocriticism, and Theatre Studies. She has recently worked on D’Annunzio’s translation and reception in France and presented a paper on the translator André Doderet at the MLA Conference (2022). Her most recent work researches the relationship between foreign theatre and Fascism through the case study of the Italian translation of Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O’Neill. |
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Emilie Denaud A Franco-Haitian scholar, Emilie completed her MA degree in the prestigious doctoral program of France's Museum of Natural History (affiliated with the Sorbonne), where she studied philosophy, history, and the environment. At UC Santa Barbara she plans to study literature and the environment, animal studies, Vegan studies, Black Studies, and Film and Media Studies. She is also interested in Postcolonial Studies as well as Gender, Queer/Transgender, and Feminist Studies. Picture Credit: Marion Letessier. |
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Rachel Feldman A scholar of transnational Jewish Studies and Children's Literature, Rachel Feldman received her MA in Comparative Literature from UC Santa Barbara, with a specialization in Holocaust Studies. She completed her undergraduate studies abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her languages of inquiry include both modern and biblical Hebrew, French, and recently German and Yiddish. Rachel's dissertation explores the literary portrayals of language loss, acquisition, and development in works of intergenerational modern Hebrew “crossover literature”, a characteristic feature of children’s classics that reflects the phenomenon of cross-addressing the same texts to young and old alike. Her dissertation dynamically reconsiders the ways that a foundational generation of modern Hebrew writers and artists produced cross-audience writing across genres in order to bear witness to the shared experience of acquiring modern Hebrew as a new “mother tongue” during childhood. Her current research interests include children's literature, literary multilingualism, artistic portrayals of heritage language (HL) development and acquisition, minority discourse, and Hebrew and Yiddish modernism. |
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Bowie Hagan Bowie Hagan holds a BS in Environmental Science from Colorado College, an MA in Literary Studies from Georgia State University, and an MA in Poetics from New College of California. In the spring of 2021, he published an article, “The Bounds of Narrative in Don DeLillo’s Underworld: Action and the Ecology of Mimêsis,” in the journal Humanities. He teaches French and previously taught English at Georgia State. His research questions how poetry and drama contribute to an environmental imaginary at once sensory and narrative, considering these arts’ practical capacities to give meaning to sensory experience within the domains of subjectivity, spirituality, community, and history. His research draws on sources from the fields of environmental history, philosophical anthropology, hermeneutic phenomenology, poetics, and neuroscience. |
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Han Hao Han Hao holds an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Purdue University and a B.A. in Chinese from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou. His interests in Classics started growing during his junior year abroad. Since then, he has continued studying Greek and Latin in different institutions. Han is currently interested in approaching the impact of the ekphrastic tradition upon English Renaissance literature within the context of iconoclasm. He is especially intrigued by how the English authors with an aversion to idolatrous images accept the vividness of visual imagery in Classical literature. His M.A. thesis explores John Milton's iconoclasm and his debt to Homer in the visual representation of deities in Paradise Lost. At UCSB, Han will pursue his interests in Classical receptions, the relation of word and image, and translation theory. |
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Shanna Killeen Shanna Killeen earned their MA in English from Oregon State University in 2017. They specialize in disability studies and queer studies with a particular focus on neurodivergence, crip Latinx art and literature, and aromanticism. Their dissertation, entitled "Affect Aliens: On Neurodivergent and Aromantic Epistemologies," explores affective norms and the ways in which certain kinds of bodyminds come to be pathologized as lacking in affect. Their work turns to the contemporary aesthetic and discursive practices of neurodivergent and aromantic people to ask what this can tell us about affect, interrelationality, and care. Their work also dialogues with Black feminist scholarship, Latinx studies, sociocultural linguistics, and fandom studies.
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Anna Lechintan Anna Lechintan holds an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto and a BA in World Literature from Simon Fraser University. Her research interests include German and English modernism, post-secular studies, World Literature, and translation. At UCSB, Anna hopes to explore the question of modernity’s so-called “disenchantment” through the persistence of epiphany in modernist texts. Her languages include Romanian, English, French and German (reading). Anna was awarded a Max Kade fellowship in Fall 2023. |
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Ekaterina Lopatko Katya Lopatko is a PhD student researching French, English and Russian 20th-century literature and film, with a focus on urban and spatial studies and feminist and queer theories. Her MA thesis, "Bust the Roof off Everything: Private Space and Social Life in Modernist Literature," traces depictions of unruly, uncanny, unsettling and revolutionary space and materiality in European Modernist literature, including the work of Virginia Woolf, André Breton, Walter Benjamin and Djuna Barnes. She has written for a variety of art and culture publications, and she is teaching in the Writing Program at UCSB in the 2022-23 academic year. |
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Martina Mattei Martina Mattei completed her MA degree in literature at the University of Cagliari, Italy, with a specialization in modern European literature and philology. Her research interests include modern and contemporary European literature, film and media studies and adaptation studies. She is particularly interested in exploring intertextuality across media in contemporary Italian culture, especially the role cinema has exerted on the narrating style of contemporary writers. She was awarded a Regents Fellowship in 2021. |
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Richard Nedjat-Haiem Richard Nedjat-Haiem is a PhD student in the Comparative Literature Program at UCSB. Richard works on the intersectionalities of socio-lingustics, performance, gender, ethnomusicological, and anthropological studies of Middle Eastern popular culture. His three fields include Mizrahi Studies (the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa), Persian Performance Studies with a focus on the ‘ Tehrangeles' diaspora and Arabian Peninsula Studies with a focus on the socio-linguistics in Pop music and Gulf soap operas. His prospective dissertation is titled “The Dubai Effect: The Transnational Diva, The White Dialect and the Multi-Dialectical song.” He has an MA in Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic from the University of Chicago and a BA from UCLA. He is fluent in English, Persian, Arabic, specializing in various dialects and French. |
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James Nate Nichols James Nate completed his MA degree in literature at UC Santa Cruz, writing on the thematics of exile and return in the films of Raúl Ruiz. Previously, he completed his bachelor’s degree in literature with a minor in education from UC Santa Cruz, as well as two AA degrees, in Spanish and liberal arts, from Cabrillo College. At UCSB his research explores the vast ecologies of the exilic, including literature, art, theater, protest music, and film. His broad interests include critical theory, translation theory, la vanguardia chilena, Psychoanalysis, and film and media studies. |
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Anna Schewelew Anna Schewelew’s research draws on translation theory, media theory and the history of science in order to examine assumptions about language, meaning, multilingualism and the act of reading that are implicit in machine translation systems. Her other interests include mathematical and non-mathematical notions of probability in literature and art, fictions of translation, performance studies and the Soviet Cosmopolis. Anna is a 2021 Chancellor’s fellow and was awarded a Max Kade fellowship in 2022. She holds an MA in Comparative Literature and Philosophy from Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen (Germany). |
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Vernon Shaw A scholar operating at the transnational intersection of Hemispheric and Mediterranean studies, anti/decolonial Marxist theory, and the history of science and speculative fiction, Vernon holds a BA in Intensive Literature from The University of California, Santa Cruz. His currently proposed research project turns a critical eye towards Italian authors such as Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, and Primo Levi with aims of tracing the literary development of the Italian speculative imaginary and placing it into context alongside the Western world’s continued history of fascism and colonialism. He works with texts in English, Italian, and Spanish; and his broader research interests span the environmental humanities, Indigenous thought and philosophy, Black studies, science and technology studies, translation theory as well as film, popular media, and comic book studies. |
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Nicole Smirnoff Nicole Smirnoff is a PhD student in Comparative Literature at UC Santa Barbara, specializing in the Child Flaneur and Flaneur in Children's Literature. In 2023, she served as an Intern at the IRSCL Congress, where she deepened her engagement with scholars in the field. Her research focuses on exploring childhood experiences in urban spaces and promoting inclusivity in children's literature.
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Charlie Squire Charlotte “Charlie” Squire is a scholar and artist who holds a BA in History from Skidmore College and an MA in Cultural and Critical Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London. After completing their master’s degree with a dissertation on the cultural politics of Playboy, Squire relocated to Berlin, Germany where they lived for two years, working as an artist, writer, and research fellow at the Creative Impact Research Center Europe. This fellowship culminated in the self-publication of an art book and auto-ethnographic essay collection entitled Slouching: A Field Guide to Art and (Un)Belonging in Europe. In addition to academic writing, Squire runs a cultural critique blog and has written about arts and culture for publications including Jacobin, The Progressive, and i-D Magazine. Squire's academic interests include Frankfurt School approaches to culture and media; historiography; and the politics of desire. Their non-academic interests include film photography, fresh fruit, and one very mischievous, eleven-pound orange tuxedo cat. |
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Marcel Strobel Marcel Strobel is a fourth year PhD student in the program of Comparative Literature. He holds his M.A. from University of Mannheim where he studied Anglophone and Francophone literature and linguistics with a specialization in second-language teaching. He participated in the ERASMUS exchange program at Paris-Sorbonne IV. Marcel specializes in 19th and 20th century German media and cultural history. His research evolves around queer German studies, modernism, and mass media during the Weimar Republic. He draws from urban studies, queer studies, queer geographies and spatial literary studies to analyze the relationship between queer identities, space and place. Furthermore, he is interested in how literature acts as a producer of spatial sexual imaginaries and physical realities in urban and rural environments. As a teaching associate, Marcel has taught classes on queer German pop culture, German diversity and culture, sexuality and the Holocaust as well as the Paris underground in film and literature. Marcel is currently working on his dissertation prospectus, which will interweave archival work and cultural studies to investigate queer German identities during the Weimar Republic. |
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Reem Taha Reem holds an MA in English literature with a collaborative degree in Book History and Print Culture from the University of Toronto. In her doctoral work, she specializes in Mediterranean Studies, Andalusi Studies, Travel writing, and Memory Studies, and is completing doctoral emphases in Medieval Studies and Translation Studies. Her research focuses on the late medieval and early modern Ibero-African Mediterranean frontier, outlining a comparative and interdisciplinary study of the Moriscos (Muslims forcibly converted to Catholicism in early modern Iberia). She studies the role that Moriscos played in the translation and transmission of texts between Arabic and European languages, creating networks of literary connectivity between Europe and the Arabo-Islamic world. She also explores the resonance of the Moriscos in Spanish and English literatures.
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Mingyi Xiao Mingyi Xiao completed her BA in Philosophy and Chinese Literature from Peking University (2020) and an MA specializing in literary theory from Tsinghua University (2023). Her research interests include French 20th-century literature, postmodern theory, modern Chinese literature, and East-Asian philosophy (especially Buddhism). She is currently translating Jean Hyppolite’s two-volume Genèse et Structure de la Phénoménologie de l'Esprit de Hegel from French into Chinese.
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Maria Anna Zazzarino Maria Anna completed a Master of Arts in Anglophone literary and cultural studies with distinction at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. In 2017-18 she researched Caribbean Francophone and Anglophone literatures at the University of Louisana, Baton Rouge as a Fulbright awardee. Her fields of interest include Black Studies, English, Global Studies, Spanish and Portuguese, with such foci as the Global South, Caribbean Studies, Global/ Transnational Studies, and Postcolonial Studies. |
