PhD Student Profiles

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Position: Graduate Assistant
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BA English, BA Asian Studies Japanese Language, and Minor in Philosophy from William Paterson University (2015), MA English Literature from Clemson University (2019). 

Julie is interested in the differences between Eastern and Western ideologies in regard to how memory relates to personal identity. Her current research focuses on the works of Henry David Thoreau, particularly the Journal, and Thoreau’s work on translating Eastern texts for The Dial. She is interested in the philosophical concepts of non-action, non-being, and nothingness, and how these concepts have been constructed in Western and Eastern ideologies and languages. Julie’s Master’s Thesis focused on Thoreau’s definition of self-improvement, arguing that it centers on potentiality and a surrender to being in a constant state of flux rather than the achievement of a fully refined self. 

Position: PhD Candidate, Lecturer in English
HUM 339
Email: [email protected]

Elaina Frulla specializes in early American literature and culture. Her dissertation examines American literary representations of foreign and accented speech in the 18th Century and early 19th Century. Recently, Elaina has both published and publicly lectured on James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking novels. 

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Position: PhD Student/ GTA/ Secretary - EGSO (2020-2021)
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• PhD – English (Literature), University at Albany, SUNY. (In progress)
• MPhil – English Literature, Kinnaird College for Women, Pakistan. (2013)
• BA Hons – English Literature, Kinnaird College for Women, Pakistan. (2011)

Zahra Hamdani is a first-year doctoral student in the Department of English at University at Albany, SUNY. Her research interests include contemporary Global Anglophone Literature, particularly South Asian Diasporic fiction. She is interested in the application of the concept of Biopolitics to contemporary South Asian diasporic literature in order to understand the woes of the first and the second-generation immigrants. Hamdani has previously worked on Orientalism, Neo-Orientalism, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, and Postcolonial Biopolitics. 

Research Interests:
African American Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Biopolitics, Diaspora Literature, Feminist Theory and Literature, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Conference Presentations:
• “Symbiosis vs Hybridity: Symbiotic relationships in Octavia Butler’s Kindred and US Internal Colonialism”
PAMLA 2015
Teaching Profile:
Lecturer of English language and Literature 
Kinnaird College for Women, Pakistan. (2013 – 2020)

Courses taught:

• Introduction to African Literature
• Literature of the Americas
• Subcontinent Novel
• South Asian Short Stories 
• Introduction to American Poetry
• Introduction to Classical and Romantic Poetry
• English Core I, II, III

Visiting Research Scholar
Arizona State University, USA. (Jan – May 2015)
    Description:

• Faculty Exchange Program between Kinnaird College for Women and Arizona State University. Funded by the US Department of State. 
• The theme of the program was: Contemporary US Literature and Theory.

Visiting Lecturer
Lahore School of Economics, Pakistan. (Jan – June 2020)
    Course(s) taught:

• Academic Writing

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Position:  Graduate Teaching Assistant, Vice-President EGSO
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As a young scholar and researcher, Farhana is interested in studying material objects, and their socio-political representation in Postcolonial and 20th Century American Literature. Subscribing to philosophies of Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory(ANT) and Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), she advocates for a radical democratic view of the world where objects are recognized as social actants and granted with rightful political agency. She is also a keen observer of human-object interactions and the impacts of objects on human emotion, memory, and identity. Her research area is ultimately interdisciplinary and regularly crosses between literary studies and social science. 

Currently, at UAlbany, she teaches a course titled: “American Experiences Through Objects and Bodies” which encourages students to critically approach American history and experiences of different ethnic, racial, and religious groups in America through analyzing a series of cultural objects and portrayals of human bodies found in literary texts, artworks, photographs, and other media contents. Her teaching goal remains to help students recognize the latent power of objects and human bodies to symbolize personal and communal freedom in societies through inquiring into contemporary socio-political events.

Before coming to the United States., she worked as a Lecturer and taught courses such as Introduction to College Composition, 19th-Century Poetry, and Early American Literature at East-West University, Bangladesh. She also made four academic paper presentations at national and international conferences. 
 

Originally from Cali, Colombia, Verónica Jordán-Sardi immigrated to the United States with her immediate family as a young teen fleeing sociopolitical unrest. She holds a BA in English Literature and French from the University of Florida, an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Iowa, and an MFA in Creative Writing from California College of the Arts. Her work can be found in Columbia Journal, Litro Mag (UK), Cleaver Magazine and Comparative Literature Commons. 

Email: [email protected]

Anastasios is working on extinction, oceans, and Michael Jackson. Recent writing appears online at jubilat, Adjacent Pineapple, Recliner, BOMB, and the Iowa Review.

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HU 388

Position: Graduate Assistant
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MFA in Poetry, MA in English Literature - Rutgers University-Newark

Kevin Kilroy is a doctoral student studying the relationship between literature, composition, and academic writing practices. He is the current co-editor of Barzakh Magazine, and he has previously served as the EGSO President, on the EGSO Conference Committee, and as a member of the GSA Judicial Board. Prior to joining UAlbany, he earned MA and MFA degrees from Rutgers University-Newark and spent the better part of a decade teaching literature and English composition. Kevin has presented papers at the CCHA, ACLA, and IAFOR national and international conferences, and he will be presenting work at the upcoming 2021 MLA conference. 

Email: [email protected]

Degrees:
PhD in progress, University at Albany, SUNY
MA, English, Texas A&M University
BA, English, Hanbat National University 

Research Interests:
19th- and 20st-century literature and culture, Modernism, Film studies, Visual Culture, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Biography:
Gunok Kim is a PhD student in the Department of English at the University at Albany, SUNY. Her research, broadly stated, explores the late nineteenth and the twentieth century literature, Modernism, media and film studies, particularly modernism and its historical, sociological, and philosophical contexts in Great Britain, and the relationship between literature and visual culture. She is currently teaching the first-year writing course, ENG110Z: Writing and Critical Inquiry. 

Teaching Experience:
ENG110Z: Writing and Critical Inquiry, University at Albany, SUNY (2020 Fall)
 

Email: [email protected]

Tim Laberge is a doctoral student interested in modernisms/postmodernisms and the way they intersect with, are informed by, and are shaped by postcolonial traditions. Additional interests include the Novel, questions of genre (particularly science fiction), film history, and the way cinema re-focuses and challenges literary ideals. Prior to joining the University at Albany English Department, Tim was part of the adjunct faculty at SUNY Schenectady where he taught College Composition; he was also a community development planner and grant writer for a civil engineering firm. 

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Writing Center (HU 140)

Degree(s) earned and location:
BA English, Seoul National University
MA English Language Education, Seoul National University

MA Thesis: “Logic of Puritan Community and Family in Hawthorne’s Short Fictions” (2015)

Research Interests:
Early American Literature; 19th-century American Literature; Ecocriticism; Comparative/Intercultural Studies (Writings of American Missionaries in North-East Asia)

HU 353

Position: Graduate Teaching Assistant
Email: [email protected]

MA in English, University of Maine (2018)
BA in English, Kent State University (2016)

Interests

Courses Taught

AENG 243: Literature and Film
AENG 272: Media, Technology and Culture

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BA Philosophy (magna cum laude), Stony Brook University

Research Interests

Twentieth/Twenty-first Century World Anglophone Literature; Literature and Empire; Global Modernisms; Cultural and Critical Theory; Postcolonial Literature and Theory. Secondary areas include: Feminist Theory and Women’s Literature; Creative Writing (non-fiction prose and poetry)

Publications

2017 - “Characters of Finance” GUTS Canadian Feminist Magazine
2016 - “How to Ask a Feminist to Do the Dishes” Blindfield: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry.
2015 - “The Losses” (poem). Barzakh.
2011 - “Base/Superstructure” in The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory (Wiley-Blackwell Publishers) Eds. Michael Ryan and Gregory Castle. 
2007 - “High Ceilings, Seductive Shrines: Inside Starbucks.” Techknowledgies: New Imaginaries in the Humanities, Arts, & TechnoSciences. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Conference Presentations

2018 - “Capital and the Caves: Accumulation and Violence in Forster’s A Passage to India.” Northeast Modern Language Association. Pittsburgh, PA.
2016 - “The Booker Prize and Violence.” World Literature and Dissent, English Colloquium. University of St. Andrews, Scotland.
2013 - “Complicity, Colonialism and the Failure of Bourgeois Ethics in Orwell’s Burmese Days.”American Comparative Literature Association. Toronto, Canada.

Fellowships and Awards

John Woods Scholarship, Prague Summer Program, 2010
Philip Hurd List Poetry Prize, 2010 Honorable Mention
School of Criticism and Theory, Cornell University, Tuition Scholarship, 2007

Select Teaching Experience

ENG 368: Global Women Writers of the 20th and 21st Centuries
ENG 240: Rewriting America: Literature and Culture after 9/11

ENG 205: Introduction to Writing in English Studies 
 


HU 353

Position: PhD Student & Teaching Assistant
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Annika is a Creative Writing PhD student and a Teaching Assistant. Her interests include memory studies, literary trauma theory, German poetry of the early 20th century, (de)construction of national identity, ecopoetics and children’s literature. 

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HU 365

Position: PhD Fellow/ Secretary - English Graduate Students Organization (2018-2019)
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• PhD – In progress, currently studying at the University at Albany, SUNY.
• MA – English Language and Literature (Concentration in Literature), Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea (2015).
• BA – English Language and Literature, German Language and Literature (double major), Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea (2013).

Research Interests

African American Literature, Multi-Ethnic Literature, Critical Race Theory, Black Ontology, The Black Atlantic, Postcolonial Studies, Memory Studies, Women of Color Feminism

Conference Presentations

• “Cinematic Gaze and Performative Subversion of Racial Embodiment in Django Unchained.” NeMLA, Boston. March 2020.
• “The Sovereign Power and Racialization of Bodies in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.” NeMLA, Boston. March 2020.
• “(Un)Seeing the Instructor’s Race: Challenges and Opportunities.” NWSA, San Francisco. November 2019.
• Panelist, “Working in The English-speaking Academia as a Postcolonial Experience: Exclusion and Linguicism Faced by Xenophone Scholars” Roundtable. NWSA, San Francisco. November 2019.
• “Women and Sexuality in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North.” NeMLA, Washington D.C. March 2019.
• “‘This is Not a Story to Pass On’: Unsettling Continuous Collectivity of Memory in Beloved.” NeMLA, Washington D.C. March 2019.
• “Race, Identity and Diaspora in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah.” ELLAK, Daejeon, South Korea. December 2016.
• “Inter/Intra-Racial Relations in Don Lee’s Yellow: Stories.” ELLAK, Busan, South Korea. December 2015.
• “L’s Function in Toni Morrison’s Love.” ELLAK, Seoul, South Korea. November 2014.

Publications

• “Sovereignty, Biopower, Immunity: Racialized Bodies in Robinson Crusoe.” English21 Vol. 33.1, March 2020.
• “‘You Couldn’t Overcome the Hatreds of Countries or Race’: Color Consciousness and Pan-Asian Solidarity in Don Lee’s Yellow: Stories.” Journal of English and American Studies Vol. 14, February 2016.
• “Between Narrator and Character: L’s Function in Toni Morrison’s Love.” Journal of English and American Studies Vol. 13, December 2014.

Teaching Experience

Instructor: University at Albany, SUNY (2018-)

• AENG 272 Media, Technology & Culture: Challenges in the 21st Century—Black Bodies on Screen and Page: Afro-Pessimism and Afro-Futurism (Fall 2020)
• AENG 261 American Literary Traditions: Narratives of Slavery and Freedom (Spring 2020)
• AENG 240z American Experiences: Black Lives Now (Fall 2019, Recipient of the StAR Grant)
• AENG 121 Reading Literature: Literary Representations of Slavery (Spring 2019)
• AENG 240z American Experiences: Marginalized Voices in American Literature (Fall 2018)

Lecturer: Far East University, South Korea (2016-2017)
• Introduction to English Composition
• Advanced English Composition

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Position: GA/Instructor

Sudarshan Ramani graduated from SFSU with an MA in English Literature in 2018. His MA Thesis was "MIMESIS, ROMANCE, NOVEL: REPRESENTATION OF MILIEU IN THE MONK AND NOSTROMO". He completed his BA in English Literature in India, at Jai Hind College, Mumbai, in 2007. He is currently the Instructor of AENG 121 - Reading Literature - "Criminals, Rogues, Outlaws in Fiction".  Between his BA in 2008 and his immigration to USA in 2016, he spent several years as a published film critic in India. He worked as a reviewer for The Asian Age between 2015 and 2016, and as a film editor for Projectorhead Magazine. His articles have been printed in publications such as "La Furia Umana" (a bilingual Italian-English publication), Economic and Political Weekly, while his biography of director William A. Wellman appeared in Routledge Publications' Fifty Hollywood Directors edited by Yvonne Tasker. 

He's interested in history, literature, cinema, with a special focus on literary topics that break the boundaries of periodization. He's especially interested in the dialogue between English Literature and Continental Literature, on the development of the genre fiction -- i.e. the historical novel, the gothic novel, and the influences literature has taken from other art forms. 

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