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Michael Lucey is the Sidney and Margaret Ancker Chair and Distinguished Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. His work bridges French literature from the 19th to 21st centuries with social theory, sexuality studies, and linguistic anthropology. He has authored the critically acclaimed What Proust Heard: Novels and the Ethnography of Talk (2022) and Thinking about Sexuality with Novels (forthcoming). As founding director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture , he has shaped interdisciplinary research in queer theory and gender studies. Current research focuses on novels as ethnographic tools Specializes in Proust, Balzac, Woolf, and contemporary French fiction Translation work includes Didier Eribon and Édouard Louis His recent articles explore phonetics in narrative, readability frameworks, and sociological implications of literary form. He actively engages with comparative methodologies and critical theory, while his teaching spans British and American literature’s intersections with French modernism. Lucey’s academic leadership includes directing Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Sexual Culture, which supports global discourse through fellowships and conferences. His office hours are held in Dwinelle Hall and via Zoom. Contact: mlucey@berkeley.edu

• French Literature
• Comparative Literature
• Sexuality Studies
• +7 more

Winnie Wong is a Professor of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on art history, particularly exploring themes of fakes, forgeries, and authorship through interdisciplinary approaches. She examines the global artistic networks of Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, challenging Western narratives of Chinese artistic practices. Wong holds a PhD from MIT's History, Theory + Criticism program and was a Harvard Society of Fellows Junior Fellow. Her major works include Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade (2014, Joseph Levenson Prize winner), Learning from Shenzhen (2017), and a forthcoming book on Canton trade portraitists. She teaches courses like Theory of the Copy and Rhetoric of the Image , mentoring undergraduates through the Undergraduate Research Apprentices program and advising PhD students in art history and visual studies. Wong's research has been supported by grants from Mellon Foundation, ACLS, SSRC, and others. Her work has been translated into multiple languages and appears in journals like Current Anthropology and Law & Literature . She frequently discusses her work on podcasts and collaborates with museums including M+ and the Asian Art Museum.

• Art History
• Fakes and Forgeries
• Art and Law
• +4 more

Lillie Padilla is an Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics at Sam Houston State University's Department of World Languages and Cultures. Holding a Ph.D. and M.A. in Spanish Linguistics from Arizona State University alongside a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ghana, her research explores interdisciplinary connections between: Afro-Latinx representation in educational materials Discourse analysis and language ideologies Sociolinguistic studies in Equatorial Guinea Critical race theory applications in language teaching Her work focuses on Spanish subject pronoun expression patterns in multilingual contexts and curriculum development for inclusive pedagogy. Recent publications examine: Representation gaps in Spanish language textbooks Methodological challenges in Equatorial Guinea research Critical discourse analysis of Netflix's Elite series Intersectional representation of Afro-Latinx women Scientific achievements include: Finalist for American Association of Linguistics 2025 award for co-edited volume Representation, Inclusion and Social Justice in World Language Teaching Padilla's research continues to shape conversations about linguistic diversity and marginalized voices in language education through both empirical studies and theoretical frameworks.

• Afro-Latinx Representation
• Discourse Analysis
• Language Ideologies
• +4 more

Tom McEnaney is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish & Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley, and Director of the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM). He holds a joint appointment in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and serves on the Executive Board of UC Cuba. He is affiliated with the Center for Cultural Analytics, the Program in Critical Theory, the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society, and the Data Science Lab (D-Lab). His research focuses on the history of media and technology, Argentine, Cuban, and U.S. literature, sound studies, linguistic anthropology, computational humanities, and new media studies. His book Acoustic Properties: Radio, Narrative, and the New Neighborhood of the Americas (2017) explores the interplay of radio and narrative in Argentina, Cuba, and the U.S., analyzing populism, state socialism, and the reimagining of the vox populi through listening practices. McEnaney’s work has appeared in journals such as diacritics , PMLA , and Representations , and media outlets like The New York Times and Public Books . He is a Mellon New Directions Fellow (2020–2023) in cultural analytics and leads a project on tape technology’s impact on testimonial writing, rock nacional, electronic music, and audiobooks in the Americas. Previously an Assistant Professor at Cornell University, he founded the Latin American Journals Project, an online archive of digitized literary journals from Latin America and the Hispanophone Caribbean. His current affiliations emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration and expanding access to cultural archives globally.

• History of Media and Technology
• Argentine Literature
• Cuban Literature
• +6 more

Crystal S. Rudds is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Utah, specializing in African American literature and culture. Her research focuses on twentieth-century American and African American fiction, qualitative narratives about urban life and housing, Black Feminisms, and black geography/ecology. PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2016) MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University-Bloomington (2004) BA in Communications with minors in French and Theatre from Wake Forest University (1999) Her scholarly work examines the intersection of literature and urban environments, particularly through public housing fiction. She uses interdisciplinary approaches combining qualitative research with literary analysis, emphasizing community engagement and the phenomenological experiences of residents in urban spaces. Her publications address topics like the historical context of public housing narratives and the concept of 'the black interior' as a framework for understanding spatial identity. Rudds has received prestigious honors, including the David D. Anderson Award for Midwestern Literary Studies and the Mary Blinn Poetry Prize. She is also a Faculty Research Fellow and Intersectionality Pedagogy Fellow at the University of Utah. Her teaching philosophy integrates experiential learning and community-focused methods, with courses such as African Amer Lit 2, Seminar in Lit. Study, and Studies Af Amer Lit. She emphasizes archival research, site visits, and performance-based learning to empower students as co-creators of knowledge.

• African American Literature
• Black Feminisms
• Twentieth Century American Fiction
• +3 more

Ryan Heuser is an Assistant Professor in Digital Humanities at the University of Cambridge, specializing in computational approaches to literary and intellectual history, prosody, and artificial intelligence's impact on language. His work bridges data science, machine learning, and literary studies through digital methodologies. Doctoral training in Eighteenth-Century British Literature, Stanford University (2019) Founding member & Associate Research Director, Stanford Literary Lab Junior Research Fellow, King’s College Cambridge (2019-2022) Research interests span computational modeling of semantic revolutions, large-scale literary field analysis, and the intersection of digital methods with historical and intellectual studies. His book Explorations in the Digital History of Ideas (2023) co-edited with Peter de Bolla exemplifies this approach. Recent publications focus on historical semantics, metrical analysis, and digital mapping of emotions in literature, reflecting his interdisciplinary expertise in natural language processing, network theory, and literary data visualization. Currently leads teaching initiatives at Cambridge Digital Humanities and contributes to computational projects exploring textual rhythms and large language models.

• Digital Humanities
• Computational Prosody
• Literary and Intellectual History
• +5 more

Nicholas Evans is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the School of Culture, History & Language, Australian National University. He is an ARC Laureate Fellow and serves as Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL), reflecting his leadership in integrating typology, descriptive linguistics, and cognitive science. His work spans linguistic diversity, endangered languages, and the interplay between language and culture. His research focuses on Australian and Papuan languages, with extensive fieldwork in remote communities. Key interests include linguistic typology, historical and contact linguistics, semantics, and the cognitive underpinnings of grammar. He has published foundational grammars and dictionaries of Kayardild, Bininj Gun-wok, and Dalabon, contributing significantly to the documentation of endangered languages. His recent publications reveal a strong trend in cross-linguistic studies of social cognition (SCOPIC), syntactic typology, and phylogenetic modeling of the Yam languages. These works integrate linguistic, cognitive, and genetic data, highlighting interdisciplinary approaches to understanding language evolution and human diversity. ARC Laureate Fellow Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA) Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (FASSA) Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) Evans supervises research students and leads major projects such as 'The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity' and CoEDL, which involve extensive collaboration across institutions and disciplines. His grants include modeling Pacific creoles and phonemic analysis of Tok Pisin. He is also involved in digital archiving initiatives like PARADISEC and the Language Data Commons of Australia, ensuring long-term preservation of linguistic data. He leads and contributes to research teams focused on Southern New Guinea languages, paradigm syncretisms (PARABANK), and cultural heritage preservation. His work emphasizes reciprocal engagement with speech communities and training the next generation of language documenters.

• Linguistic Typology
• Historical Linguistics
• Contact Linguistics
• +12 more

Haiyan Lee serves as the Walter A. Haas Professor of the Humanities and Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. She has held these positions since joining Stanford in 2009, and currently serves as Chair of the East Asian Languages and Cultures department (2020-present). Her academic journey includes previous teaching appointments at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Hong Kong, along with post-doctoral fellowships at Cornell University and Harvard University. Lee's research spans multiple interdisciplinary fields with particular focus on modern Chinese literature and cultural production. Her work bridges literary studies with law, philosophy, cognitive science, affect theory, gender studies, and environmental humanities. She has developed influential theoretical frameworks including the concept of "high justice" and "low justice" in Chinese legal imagination. Her current research explores animism, cognition, and the Chinese environmental imagination, extending her longstanding interest in human-animal relations. Lee's publications reveal a consistent trajectory examining Chinese cultural production through innovative theoretical lenses. Her recent work shows increasing engagement with legal theory, environmental humanities, and cognitive approaches to literature. She has produced significant scholarship on Chinese concepts of justice, love, and the stranger, moving across historical periods from early 20th century to contemporary China. Biennial Book Prize, Honorable Mention, International Society for Chinese Law and History (ISCLH) (2024) Humanities Seed Grant, Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences (2023-2025) Bass Fellowship in Undergraduate Education, Stanford University (2022-2027) Joseph Levenson Book Prize, The Association for Asian Studies (2009) Professor Lee actively mentors doctoral students across multiple disciplines, serving as dissertation advisor, co-advisor, and committee member for students working at the intersection of Chinese studies, law, literature, and cultural theory. Her teaching includes courses across East Asian humanities, comparative literature, and interdisciplinary environmental studies. She has received significant research support including the Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies and a residency at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

• Modern Chinese literature
• Chinese popular culture
• philosophy and literature
• +9 more

Sigrid Schmalzer is a Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, specializing in the history of science and modern China. She holds a Ph.D. in History and Science Studies from the University of California, San Diego (2004). Her research bridges the social, cultural, and political dimensions of science in China, with a focus on the intersections of agriculture, activism, and revolutionary movements. Schmalzer is the author of *Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China* (2016), winner of the Joseph Levenson Book Prize, and *The People's Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China* (2008), recipient of the Allan Sharlin Award. Her current projects include a book on agricultural heritage in the People’s Republic of China and leadership roles in organizations like the Critical China Scholars and Science for the People. She co-edits the *Activist Studies of Science and Technology* series for UMass Press, emphasizing socially engaged scholarship. Schmalzer also serves as Co-President of the MSP faculty union at UMass Amherst. Research interests span the history of science activism, transnational movements, and the legacy of Maoist science. Notable awards include the Freeman Book Award (2018) for her children’s book *Moth and Wasp, Soil and Ocean*, which integrates science education with historical narratives. Her work often critiques capitalist and authoritarian structures while advocating for science as a tool for justice and sustainability. Recent publications explore themes like agroecology, science policy, and the global dimensions of China’s scientific history. She teaches courses on modern China, science in society, and radical science movements, blending interdisciplinary approaches to engage students in critical analysis of historical and contemporary issues.

• History of Modern China
• History of Science
• Science Activism
• +3 more

Christopher Rea is a Professor of Modern Chinese Literature in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Arts. He serves as a faculty member and former Associate Head of the Department of Asian Studies, former Director of the Centre for Chinese Research, an associate of the Hong Kong Studies Initiative, and a Faculty Fellow of St. John's College. His academic journey includes a Ph.D. from Columbia University (2008) and a B.A. from Dartmouth College (1999). Rea's research focuses on the modern Chinese-speaking world, with particular expertise in Chinese literature, cinema, print culture, translation, and the cultural history of humor and deception. His scholarly approach bridges literary analysis, cultural history, and film studies, creating a distinctive interdisciplinary perspective on modern Chinese cultural production. He is particularly known for his work on Republican-era China (1912-1949), exploring how cultural forms evolved during this transformative period. His major publications reveal a trajectory from studies of humor and laughter in modern China ( The Age of Irreverence , 2015) to literary hoaxes and deception ( The Book of Swindles , 2017), Chinese cinema ( Chinese Film Classics , 2021), and research methodology ( Where Research Begins , 2022). His current projects include China on the Make: Stories of Chinese Deception and The Unfinished Comedy , a sequel to The Age of Irreverence . National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship (2024) UBC Dean of Arts Mentorship Award (2024) UBC Killam Research Prize (2022) Joseph Levenson Book Prize (2017) Rea actively supervises graduate students and has developed significant digital resources, including the Chinese Film Classics project (chinesefilmclassics.org) featuring 40+ subtitled Chinese films and 22 video lectures, and a YouTube channel with over 250 videos on Chinese cinema and culture. His teaching extends to free online courses on The Modern Chinese Novel and early Chinese cinema, demonstrating his commitment to making scholarly resources accessible beyond traditional academic boundaries.

• Modern Chinese literature
• Cinema and film history
• Cultural history
• +5 more

Christopher Merkner is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of English at the University of Colorado Denver's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. His expertise spans the short story, its historical evolution, compressed fiction, and creative writing pedagogy. Education: MFA from University of Florida, PhD from University of Denver Courses Taught: Narrative Form & Theory, Introduction to Creative Writing, Fiction Workshop, Advanced Fiction Workshop, The American Novel, The American Short Story Awards: Recognized in O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Mystery Stories anthologies His published work The Rise & Fall of the Scandamerican Domestic has been featured in prestigious literary collections, including the W.W. Norton anthology New Micro .

• Short Story
• History of American Short Story
• Compressed Fiction
• +2 more

Crystal S. Rudds is an Assistant Professor of African American literature and culture in the Department of English at the University of Utah, specializing in twentieth-century American and African American fiction, urban life narratives, Black Feminisms, and black geography/ecology. She earned her PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2016) and MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University-Bloomington (2004). Her research explores intersections between literary analysis and community engagement, focusing on urban spatiality, public housing representation, and black interiority. She has published works analyzing Frank London Brown and Jasmon Drain's housing narratives, digital archiving practices, and pedagogical identity evolution. Key grant activities include: Gathering, Sewing, Giving: Chronopolitics and Black Women's Quilting (TRIC/Mellon Foundation, 2023) Utah Presidential Leadership Fellowship (2023) Recognitions: David D. Anderson Award for Midwestern Literary Studies (2023) Mary Blinn Poetry Prize (2022) University of Utah Fellowships (2022) Teaching activities feature: Experiential learning with archival documents Historic site visits Performance-based literary analysis Community-focused pedagogy

• African American Literature
• Black Cultural Studies
• Urban Studies
• +3 more

Sharese King is the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Chicago, where she has taught since 2018. She earned her Ph.D. and Master's in Linguistics from Stanford University, focusing on language variation across African American communities. Her research bridges sociolinguistics, critical race theory, and phonetics to examine how African American speech is constructed, racialized, and socially evaluated. Education: Ph.D., Linguistics, Stanford University (2018) M.A., Linguistics, Stanford University Research Interests: Sociolinguistics Language Variation & Change African American Language Critical Race Theory Phonetic and experimental analysis Dialect and judicial systems Notable Contributions: Interdisciplinary studies on raciolinguistics and courtroom bias Analysis of /s/ articulation in intersectional contexts Reconceptualization of AAVE as AAL to emphasize linguistic diversity Fieldwork in Bakersfield, Rochester, and Chicago Publications in American Speech , Journal of Sociolinguistics , Language , and Nature Scientific Awards: Provost's Postdoctoral Fellowship Neubauer Family Assistant Professorship Labs & Projects: Co-founder of the Chicagoland Language Project

• Sociolinguistics
• Language Variation & Change
• African American Language
• +4 more

Florian Mussgnug is Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian Studies at University College London (UCL), Faculty of Arts and Humanities. He has held visiting roles at Heidelberg University, Roma Tre University, La Sapienza University Rome, University of Siena, and British School at Rome. Educational Background: PhD in Literary Studies (2009) at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa DPhil in Italian Literature (2000) at University of Oxford MSt Research Methods in Modern Languages (1999) at University of Oxford BA in Philosophy and Modern Languages (1995) at University of Oxford Research Interests: His scholarship spans theories of authorship, genre and mode; religious/secular apocalyptic storytelling; posthumanism; anthropocene studies; comparative literature; intermediality; narratives of catastrophe and resilience; and modern/contemporary Italian, English, and German literature and culture. Grants and Research Leadership: As co-investigator for the AHRC-funded 'Interdisciplinary Italy 1900-2020' project (£831,131 total), he explores intermediality and interdisciplinarity. Additional grants include £35,000 (UCL Global Engagement Office, 2017) and £12,300 (ANCI, 2019). Scientific Awards & Service: He serves on prize juries (Premio Strega, Peter Lang Young Scholars) and national research assessment panels (Italy, Portugal). Awards include Edinburgh Gadda Prize (2012), Premio Nicoletta Quinto (2002), and Oxford Gibbs Prize (1998). Editorial and Institutional Roles: He sits on editorial boards (Arabeschi, Between, Modern Languages Open) and held leadership roles at UCL, including Vice-Dean International (2021) and Acting Head of School of European Languages, Culture and Society (2022).

• Theories of authorship, genre and mode
• Creative critical writing, co-creative research
• Religious and secular apocalyptic storytelling
• +7 more

Nicholas Evans is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL) at the Australian National University’s School of Culture, History & Language. His work bridges fieldwork-based language documentation with theoretical questions in typology, cultural evolution, and social cognition. Focus on endangered Australian and Papuan languages Director of ARC Laureate Project on 'The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity' Co-leader of SCOPIC (Social Cognition Parallax Corpus) study Collaborator in global linguistic diversity initiatives His research explores how micro-level community multilingualism shapes macro-level linguistic diversity, with fieldwork spanning seven years in remote Indigenous communities. Recent projects include PARABANK (paradigm syncretism analysis) and Southern New Guinea language studies, particularly Nen and Yam family languages. Scientific recognition includes the Ken Hale Award (Linguistic Society of America), Anneliese Maier Forschungspreis, and fellowships in the Australian Academy of Humanities, Australian Social Sciences Academy, and the British Academy.

• Endangered Languages
• Linguistic Typology
• Historical and Contact Linguistics
• +5 more