Notes on Contributors
Yousef AWAD is a professor of contemporary Arab diasporic literature at the University of Jordan. His first monograph, The Arab Atlantic: Resistance, Diaspora, and Trans-cultural Dialogue in the Works of Arab British and Arab American Women Writers, is based on his PhD thesis which he completed in 2011 at the University of Manchester. Since then, Prof. Awad has published a number of articles that explore a wide range of themes and aspects in the works of Arab writers in diaspora such as cultural translation, identity and multiculturalism. He is currently the dean of the School of Foreign Languages at the University of Jordan.
Email: y.awad@ju.edu.jo
Diana BENEA is Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Bucharest, Romania, where she teaches courses in 20th and 21st century American literature, contemporary American drama, and cultural studies methodologies. She was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at The City University of New York – The Graduate Center (2017-2018). Her publications include a monograph entitled The Political Imagination of Thomas Pynchon’s Later Novels (Ars Docendi – University of Bucharest Press, 2017). Her current research focuses on the relationship between politics and performance, particularly the ethical and political stakes of documentary and community-based theater. Forthcoming chapters in The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Race (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), American Dramaturgies for the 21st Century (Sorbonne UP, 2021), and The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 1980-2020 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2021).
Email: diana.benea@lls.unibuc.ro
Alexandra CHEIRA is a researcher at ULICES (University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies, Portugal). A PhD candidate in English and American Studies at the University of Lisbon, she is presently finishing her dissertation on A.S. Byatt’s fiction. Alexandra Cheira’s current areas of research include contemporary women’s writing, women’s studies and, particularly, gender issues and wonder tales in A.S. Byatt’s fiction. She has published articles and book chapters on A.S. Byatt’s fiction, The One Thousand and One Nights, the conteuses, Victorian women writers and contemporary gendered sexual politics. She is the editor of (Re)Presenting Magic, (Un)Doing Evil: Of Human Inner Light and Darkness (Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2012). She translated A.S. Byatt’s wonder tale “Cold” into Portuguese and wrote an introduction to the tale for the anthology Contar um Conto/ Storytelling (eds. Ana Raquel Fernandes and Mário Semião, Textos Chimaera, 2014), as part of a project in her research centre which consisted of a study of the reception of British and Irish contemporary short fiction within Portuguese culture and of Portuguese contemporary short fiction within British and Irish culture.
Email: alexandra.cheira@gmail.com
Ashley E. CHRISTENSEN is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Florida State University where she recently defended her dissertation, ‘It’s Still Women’s Work’: The Gendered Great Divide and Feminist Subversion in Women’s Contemporary Fiction. She previously obtained her BA and MA with Distinction at Northern Arizona University. Her research and teaching interests target interdisciplinary intersections of contemporary Anglophone literatures, gender and feminist studies, popular culture and media studies, and adaptation theory. She has a forthcoming chapter in the anthology Not Your Mother’s Bodice Rippers: Romance in the 21st Century (McFarland Press) and has presented at several conferences, including the International Immortal Austen Conference in Adelaide, South Australia.
Email: achristensen@fsu.edu
Matthew CORMIER is currently a scholar and lecturer in the University of Alberta’s Department of English and Film Studies, where he received his PhD in English and was a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholar, Killam Laureate, and finalist for the Governor General’s Gold Medal. He holds the position of Communications and Research Officer at the University of Alberta’s world-renowned Canadian Literature Centre, where he is also a Research Affiliate, in addition to serving on the Research Board of the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory (CWRC). Dr. Cormier’s research chiefly concerns postmodernist, Acadian, Québécois, and English-Canadian fiction and poetry – particularly through the scope of the digital humanities, memory studies, and affect theory – as well as contemporary apocalyptic writing in Canada. The author of Sieve Reading the Minor (forthcoming), Dr. Cormier’s work also appears as book chapters in All the Feels / Tous les sens: Affect and Writing in Canada / Affect et écriture au Canada and Our Fears Made Manifest: Essays on Terror, Trauma and Loss in Film, 1998-2019 as well as in journals including Studies in Canadian Literature, English Studies in Canada, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Canadian Poetry, and Canadian Review of American Studies, among others.
Email: mcormier@ualberta.ca
Ana Raquel FERNANDES is a Lecturer in English at the Universidade Europeia, Lisbon, and a full researcher at ULICES – University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies. Her research interests include the novel and the short story in contemporary British and Portuguese women’s writing. She is the author of What about the Rogue? Survival and Metamorphosis in Contemporary British Literature and Culture (Peter Lang, 2011; Honourable Mention ESSE Book Award 2012), she has edited Narrative Strategies in the Reconstruction of History (2018) and co-edited The Power of Form: Recycling Myths (2015), two critical anthologies on translated short fiction: Contar um Conto (2014) and Storytelling: Memory, Love and Loss in Portuguese Short Fiction (2016), as well as Beyond Binaries: Sex, Sexualities and Gender in the Lusophone World (2019). Dr Fernandes has also published a range of journal articles and book chapters on aspects of British and Portuguese contemporary fiction.
Email: ana.fernandes@universidadeeuropeia.pt
Jenni G. HALPIN is an Associate Professor of English at Savannah State University (USA), teaching composition, British literature, and drama. Her recent book is about Contemporary Physics Plays, focussing on ethical considerations related to representations of temporality. Other scholarly interests include science fiction, epistemology, science and theology, and nuclear drama. She serves as an Overseas Representative (North America) for the British Society for Literature and Science.
Email: jennihalpin@gmail.com
Rathinasamy NAGALAKSHMI is a research scholar, working under Dr K.T. Tamilmani, Dean of Academic Affairs and Head & Associate Professor of English, Nehru Memorial College, Puthanampatti, Tiruchirappalli. She passed the UGC-SET examination in April 2017 and UGC-NET examination in December 2018. She worked as an Assistant Professor of English (2017-2018) in Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College, Tiruchirappalli. She got registered as a full-time candidate to pursue her doctoral degree in February 2019. Her area of research interest is postmodern American Fiction.
Email: shilpz1393@gmail.com
Raluca-Nicoleta ROGOVEANU, PhD, is Associate Professor with the Department of Modern Languages and Communication Science, Ovidius University, Constanța, Romania. Her long-term academic engagement with American culture started during her graduate years at the University of Bucharest. She has authored four books and a considerable number of essays, published as book chapters or articles in scientific journals and conference proceedings volumes. Dr Rogoveanu participated in postdoctoral training programs in Germany, Poland, Ukraine and the United States. She also attended and contributed to many national and international workshops and conferences. She was a U.S. Department of State International Exchange Alumna (2011), a Senior Fulbright Fellow at University of California, Los Angeles (2013-2014) and a Balch Fellow of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (2017). She is an active member of Romanian and European associations of American Studies.
Email: ralucarogoveanu@gmail.com
Corina SELEJAN has recently completed her doctoral dissertation entitled Metafictional Academic Novels and Films: The Anglo-American Tradition and Beyond at the University of Bucharest, Romania. She is currently teaching and conducting research as part of the project Romanian literary heritage conservation and intelligent digital solutions for knowledge extraction and systematization – INTELLIT with Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Her background is in Anglo-American and German literature, as well as British Cultural Studies. She has published articles on the academic novel, metafiction, film studies, comparative literature, Zadie Smith, David Lodge, Christine Brooke-Rose, Nicole Krauss, Jane Austen and has co-edited a special issue of American, British and Canadian Studies entitled Fictions of Academia.
Email: corina.selejan@ulbsibiu.ro
Kulamangalam Thiagarajan TAMILMANI has been working at Nehru Memorial College in Tiruchirappalli, for the past 26 years. He was appointed Head of the Department of English in 2007 and has been vested with the Dean for Academic Affairs responsibility since February 2018. He received a grant from UGC for a Minor Research Project entitled Developing Effective Strategies for Enriching the Word Power of the First Generation Rural Learners which was carried out between 2014 and 2016. His research interests include American Literature and English Language Teaching (ELT). He has published on these topics in reputed national and international journals. He has been a board member of the text book committee of Nehru Memorial College since 2015. He is also serving as the Member Secretary of the Academic Council and a Member of the Governing Body of Nehru Memorial College. He has also been invited as a resource person to address young teachers and students at various seminars, conferences, workshops, orientation programmes and refresher courses. Apart from academics, he has held responsibilities as Associate NCC Officer (Lieutenant Rank), Co-ordinator of the Youth Red Cross, Programme Officer of National Service Scheme and the Staff-in-charge of the Fine Arts Association.
Email: tamil_080570@rediffmail.com
Zuzanna ZAREBSKA (PhD) is a researcher at CEAUL/ULICES – University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies. She was a visiting scholar at NUI Maynooth, Ireland, and at University College Dublin under the supervision of Professor Margaret Kelleher, working on contemporary Irish women’s writing. Her research interests include Irish and British literature and culture, diaspora studies, feminisms, gender and identity studies, ageing studies. She is a member of the RHOME and the Medical Humanities projects at ULICES. She teaches in the Department of English Studies at the University of Lisbon and is currently developing a project on women and ageing, Women and Ageing: Towards Equality, Dignity and Improvement of Life and Well-being.
Email: zuzanna.sanches@campus.ul.pt