Comparative Literature News

Department News


  • In the Fall 2024, our PhD candidate Gülden Olgun will start her new position as Lecturer of German in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Florida, Gainsville. Many congratulations Gülden!
  • We are delighted that Kodai Abe (Ph.D. Spring 2023) has been appointed Assistant professor in Department of Modern Cultural Studies at University of Tsukuba (Japan). Congratulations!
  • Congratulations to Mushtaq Bilal on his appointment as a postdoctoral researcher at the Hans Christian Andersen Center, University of Southern Denmark. 
  • We are proud to announce that our Ph.D. candidate Chia-Hsu (Jessica) Chang's article,  "Resistant Un/translatability as a Gate-opener and a Gate-keeper: Contributions to the Development of a Decolonial Methodology for the Politics of Women of Color" has won the 2023 National Women's Studies Association's Women of Color Caucus - Frontiers Student Essay Award. Many congratulations Jessica!
  • Congratulations to Jason Parry and his co-translator Cintia Vezzani, on receiving an English Pen Translation award for their translation of The Bankruptcy by Julia Lopes de Almeida (Brazil, 1862-1934).
  • Congratulations to Rania Said on her new position as Assistant professor of Arabic at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at UMass Boston
  • Congratulations to Daimys Garcia (PhD 2023) on her appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of English at The College of Wooster.
  • Congratulations to Olga Blomgren (PhD 2020) on her appointment as Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University.
  • We are proud of our alumnus David M. Spitzer's impressive new publications:
    --a translation of the Song of Songs in Fates (Etruscan 2023)
    --Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy in Honor of Professor Anthony Preus (Routledge 2023)
    --Transfiction and Bordering Approaches to Theorizing Translation: Essays in Dialogue with the Work of Rosemary Arrojo (Routledge 2023; ed with Paulo Oliveira)
  • Double congratulations to Anastasiya Lyubas (PhD 2018), for the publication of Blooming Spaces: The Collected Poetry, Prose, Critical Writing, and Letters of Debora Vogel (Academic Studies Press, 2021) and for having the book receive an honorable mention in the MLA's Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary work in 2021. 
  • Congratulations to Amy C. Smith (PhD 2007) on the publication of her monograph, Virginia Woolf's Mythic Method (Ohio State UP, 2022).
  • Congratulations to Amrita De (PhD 2022) on receiving a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center of Humanities and Information at Penn State University.
  • Congratulations to Mushtaq Bilal (PhD. 2022) on his appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts at the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi.
  • Many congratulations to Prof. Giovanna Montenegro for having been

    selected as a Fulbright Scholar for 22/23. Her new research project, The Many Pasts and Futures of the Guianas: Between Colonial Fantasies and Environmental Resistance, was an integral part of the nomination process.

  • Congratulations to Dr. Mushtaq Bilal (PhD Spring 2022) whose invited article "“Yes, I am Joseph Bhatti Choohra:” Reading Joseph Bhatti as a Palimpsest" was recently published in a special issue of Angles: New Perspectives on the Anglophone World. (link)
  • In 2022-23, our graduate student Daimys Garcia will be Marilyn Yarbrough Dissertation/Teaching Fellow in the English department at Kenyon college. What a great award!
  • Comparative Literature major Rosa Sicks has been awarded the Binghamton University’s 2022 Summer Scholars and Artists Program. Rosa will receive a $3,500 stipend for costs associated with her research project, which will be supervised by Professor Tarek Shamma.   
  • Congratulations to our doctoral student Amrita De on the recent  publication of two articles:

    "Marking men, affect and care work: a study of middle-class Bengali masculinity in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland," International Journal of Masculinity Studies. Link

    "Situating Right-Wing Populisms and Revisiting The Men and the Boys under the Neoliberal Turn," Journal of Boyhood Studies. Link

  • We are proud that Diacritics published articles by two of our recent alumni: Jason Parry's "Philosophy as Terraforming: Deleuze and Guattari on Designing a New Earth" and David Spitzer's "Broken Light on the Ground of Home: Non-Being and Diasporic Trauma in the Parmenidean Poem."  Congratulations Jason and David.
  • Congratulations to our Alumna Diviani Chaudhuri on her publication of "Between Glaciers and Fossils: Landscape, Literature and the Anthropocene in Pakistan" in the prestigious South Asian Review!
  • We are pleased to announce that alumnus David Spitzer (PhD 2018) published an image-text collaborative project with his partner Sara on Hawai'i Review's Trans|lingual page: https://hawaiireview.org/translation-multilingual)
  • In collaboration with colleagues from the Department of Anthropology, our faculty members Giovanna Montenegro and Jeroen Gerrits were awarded a 2020-21 Material and Visual Worlds Transdisciplinary Area of Excellence Seed Grant for "Smaller Narratives for a Larger World." This multimedia, cross-disciplinary project--an expansion of the radio show "Broadcasting World Literature"--explores the significance of narrative and storytelling across the humanities and social sciences. Congratulations Giovanna and Jeroen!
  • Our grad Daimys Garcia published a moving piece "Mi Vida" in the online journal Convivial Thinking. Way to go!
  • We are proud to announce that alumna Tamkin Hussain has been appointed Assistant Professor of English at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan. Congratulations Tamkin!
  • Congratulations to Dr. Elif Sendur (PhD Spring 2020) on her appointment as teaching instructor at the Rutgers Writing Program!
  • We are happy to announce that the Journal of World Literature publsihed an essay by our graduate student Mushtaq Bilal: “Reading Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West as a World Novel,” (vol. 5, 2020, 410–427). Mushtag also published  a thoughtful, warm piece on “Teaching Pakistani Literature to Old, White America,” in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, and received the Bucali Manav Huseyin Skerecisoy Award for Lyceum, Binghamton's Lifelong-Learning Institute (LLI). Congratulations!
  • Congratulations to Dr. Rania Said. Rania will be at UMass-Boston in 20-21, as a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.
  • Congratulations to Jessica Chang, our PhD candidate, and Midya Khudur (MA, 2019) on their publications, respectively: "Sharing Spaces and Crossing Borders: Voices from Taiwan" and "Solidarity Network in Iraq during COVID-19: This Time the Enemy is Invisible." The two chapters appear in the collection Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid during the COVID-19 Crisis, edited by Marina Sitrin, Collectiva Sembrar (Pluto Press).
  • Daiki Yoshioka (Comparative Literature and Philosophy) and John Santare (Comparative Literature and Biological Sciences) were selected to receive the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Student Excellence!
  • Congratulations to Jeroen Gerrits on receiving the 2019-20 award for Outstanding Graduate Director. This award honors graduate directors who demonstrate "exemplary leadership and service." The award letter notes that Jeroen has met the criteria, "by all measures." The committee was impressed with his leadership in introducing new initiatives related to recruitment, orientation of new students, and professionalization of current students, as well as in rethinking longstanding departmental programs and practices.