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
Monica Berlin was the Richard & Sophie D. Henke Distinguished Professor of English at Knox College, serving from 1998 until her passing in 2022. She held leadership roles as Chair of the Department of English and Associate Director of the Program in Creative Writing. Her academic background includes a B.A. in English Writing (1995, Knox College), M.A. in Literature and Composition (1998, Western Illinois University), and M.F.A. in Poetry (2002, Vermont College). Her research focuses on creative writing (poetry, nonfiction, fiction) and modern/contemporary American literature. She has published extensively in literary journals and anthologies, earning major awards like the Crab Orchard Poetry Series Open (2018) and New Measure Poetry Prize (2013). Her collaborative work with Beth Marzoni has been widely recognized in literary circles. Beyond academia, Berlin directed The Space (a literary center) and spearheaded digital archives like A Map of Voices: The Knox Writers' House . She contributed to campus governance as a member of the Faculty Personnel Committee and engaged with the community through roles at the Galesburg Public Library and literary festivals. Students praise her ability to guide them in refining their craft, emphasizing the 'elusive mechanics of writing.' Her legacy includes fostering literary innovation and accessibility in education and public spaces.
Michael Mejia is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Utah, where he teaches creative writing. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Western Humanities Review and co-founding editor of Ninebark Press . Mejia is the author of the novels TOKYO and Forgetfulness , with his work appearing in journals like AGNI , DIAGRAM , and Seneca Review . His creative practice bridges fiction, nonfiction, and visual media, interrogating narrative form and socio-cultural dynamics.
José Angel Araguz is an Assistant Professor of English at Suffolk University, specializing in creative writing and literary studies. His research focuses on Latinx poetics, poetic forms, and experimental literary genres. He holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati, an MFA from New York University, and a BA from the College of Santa Fe. Dr. Araguz is deeply involved in literary publishing, serving as Editor-in-Chief of Salamander , a member of The Cincinnati Review’s Strategic Board, and an advisory board member for SWING literary journal. He also leads editorial roles at Airlie Press and Right Hand Pointing. His creative work spans poetry, nonfiction, and hybrid genres, with a focus on Latino/a identity, speculative elements, and formal innovation. Major publications include Ruin and Want (2023), La esperanza espera (2023), and Rotura (2022). His research explores blackout poetry, microcuentos, and the intersection of creative writing with cultural critique. He teaches courses like Latinx Literature, Creative Writing, and Poetry Workshops. Office hours are Fridays 10:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m. or by Zoom appointment.
Sara Stymne is a Senior Lecturer in Computational Linguistics at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, where she has been working since 2012. She initially joined as a post-doc (2012-2015), then worked as a researcher (2015-2017), and served as an assistant professor (2017-2023) before her current position as Senior Lecturer. Prior to Uppsala, she was a researcher at Linköping University's Department of Computer and Information Science. Dr. Stymne earned her PhD in Computational Linguistics from Linköping University in 2012 with the thesis 'Text Harmonization Strategies for Phrase-Based Statistical Machine Translation,' following a Licentiate degree in Computational Linguistics (2009) and a Master's degree in Cognitive Science (2006), both also from Linköping University. During her doctoral studies, she spent the autumn of 2010 and spring of 2009 at Xerox Research Centre Europe in Grenoble, France. Her primary research interests focus on cross-lingual natural language processing and digital humanities, with particular emphasis on multilingual dependency parsing. Dr. Stymne is passionate about applying computational linguistics to solve research questions in other fields, including language history, literary analysis, and political science. Her earlier work concentrated on machine translation, with specific interests in discourse-aware translation, compound processing, and error analysis. She has made significant contributions to the development of language technology tools for analyzing dialogue, narrative, and stylistic features in literature. Analysis of Dr. Stymne's recent publications reveals a strong focus on cross-lingual and cross-domain natural language processing. Her work spans multiple subfields including dependency parsing across genres and topics, discourse relation analysis in low-resource languages like Egyptian Arabic, direct speech identification in Swedish literature, and causality detection in governmental documents. A notable trend is her application of NLP techniques to digital humanities problems, particularly in analyzing literary texts and historical language change. Her research often involves creating and utilizing specialized datasets for specific linguistic phenomena across multiple languages. Dr. Stymne actively supervises graduate students, having guided numerous master's and bachelor's theses on topics ranging from speech recognition to multilingual parsing and causality detection. She leads or participates in several research projects including 'Fictional prose and language change' (funded by VR, 2021-2023) and 'Enabling climate-resilient development' (funded by Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation, 2023-2027), demonstrating her commitment to interdisciplinary research with practical applications. Her work has resulted in several notable software resources including uuPronPred for cross-lingual pronoun prediction, uuparser for dependency parsing, and Docent for document-level machine translation. Within the Computational Linguistics and Language Technology group at Uppsala University, Dr. Stymne contributes to multiple research initiatives focused on developing language technology tools for digital humanities applications. Her team works closely with literary scholars and historians to create computational methods for analyzing large corpora of literary texts, particularly focusing on Swedish literature across different historical periods. Her research bridges the gap between theoretical computational linguistics and practical applications in the humanities, creating new methodologies for quantitative analysis of literary and historical texts.
David Means is a Visiting Associate Professor of English at Vassar College, where he has taught since 2001. He holds a BA from The College of Wooster and an MFA in poetry from Columbia University. His academic work centers on creative writing, modern and contemporary fiction and poetry, and American culture. Education: BA, The College of Wooster MFA, Columbia University in the City of New York Means is a celebrated author of short fiction and novels, known for his lyrical prose, experimental narrative structures, and deep exploration of trauma, memory, and redemption. His work frequently appears in The New Yorker , Harper’s , The Paris Review , and other prestigious literary journals. His writing often returns to themes of violence, loss, and the quiet grace that emerges in their aftermath, drawing comparisons to Flannery O’Connor and Denis Johnson. His stories are marked by a nonlinear sense of time and a profound empathy for marginalized or broken characters. His recent publications include the story collection Instructions for a Funeral (2019) and Two Nurses, Smoking , with his novel Hystopia longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His forthcoming non-fiction book, Pivot: Ruminations in the Shadow of Death , reflects on mortality and personal reflection. Selected Awards and Honors: Guggenheim Fellowship (2013) Three O. Henry Prizes Three Pushcart Prizes Los Angeles Book Prize for Fiction Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize Longlisted, Man Booker Prize Means has advised and influenced many emerging writers through his teaching and public readings. While specific students are not named in the sources, his role as a mentor is evident in his sustained presence in creative writing programs. He has no known research grants or lab affiliations, as his work is primarily literary and individual. He continues to publish and engage in public discourse on the nature of storytelling, including critiques of AI-generated fiction.
Anna Chiafele is an Associate Professor of Italian in the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Auburn University. Her research examines ecocriticism, ecological disasters, and climate change fiction within Italian literature. Chiafele received the 2022 Italian Prose in Translation Award for her co-translation of Silvana La Spina's 'Penelope'. Her scholarly publications analyze representations of waste, toxicity, and environmental crisis in contemporary Italian fiction. Recent work explores climate fiction narratives and ecological dystopias. Chiafele's research methodology combines environmental humanities with literary analysis to address pressing ecological concerns. She teaches Italian language and literature courses while maintaining active translation projects. Her academic background includes a PhD from University of Toronto and degrees from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and University of Virginia.
Roland Greene is the Mark Pigott KBE Professor and Anthony P. Meier Family Professor of the Humanities at Stanford University, holding dual appointments in the Department of English and the Department of Comparative Literature. He serves as Director of the Stanford Humanities Center and co-chair of the Renaissances and Poetics Workshop research groups. Educated at Brown University (A.B., 1979) and Princeton University (Ph.D., 1985), his academic career includes prior roles at Harvard and Oregon universities. His research focuses on Renaissance literatures of England, Latin Europe, and the transatlantic world, with expertise in poetry and poetics from the Renaissance to the present. Major works include Five Words: Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes (2013) and editing the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (2012). Recent lectures address topics like Juan Caramuel’s Metametrica , Baroque aesthetics, and digital humanities challenges. Greene has advised over 50 Ph.D. students, many of whom hold academic positions globally. Awards include American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership and leadership roles like MLA President (2015–2016). His work engages with interdisciplinary themes such as colonial baroque, digital humanities, and global literary history.
Daniel Medin serves as Professor at The American University of Paris within the Department of Comparative Literature and English History and Politics, joining the faculty in January 2010 after teaching positions at Stanford University, Washington University in St. Louis, and Free University Berlin. His academic credentials include: PhD, Washington University in St. Louis MA, Washington University in St. Louis BA, University of Connecticut Professor Medin's research centers on contemporary international fiction and the global reception of Franz Kafka , with significant contributions to Central European literary studies. His scholarly focus extends to autobiographical writing , editorial practices for translated fiction , and small prose forms , consistently examining cross-cultural literary exchange through interdisciplinary lenses that bridge literature, history, and translation theory. Analysis of his recent publications reveals a pronounced trajectory toward edited volumes spotlighting global literary voices across European, Asian, and Latin American traditions. His work demonstrates sustained engagement with translation as cultural mediation and Kafka's enduring legacy in contemporary writing, frequently connecting literary analysis with musical composition through collaborations with composers and musicians. His distinguished recognition includes: Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship As director of the Center for Writers and Translators and editor of the Cahiers Series, Professor Medin cultivates transnational literary networks through institutional leadership rather than traditional grant-funded research. His extensive involvement with literary prizes—including the International Booker Prize and European Union Prize for Literature—complements his editorial work at publications like Music & Literature and Schreibheft. He actively shapes contemporary discourse through the Center for Writers and Translators, organizing events that connect authors, translators, and scholars across linguistic boundaries. His recent festival appearances at Cheltenham, Bergen, and Dublin highlight ongoing commitment to examining Kafka's relevance and fostering dialogue about global literary trends.
Mark de Rond is Professor of Organisational Ethnography at Cambridge Judge Business School and Fellow of Darwin College, University of Cambridge. His work focuses on immersive ethnographic studies of human behavior in extreme contexts including war zones, high-stakes sports, and controversial social movements, revealing how individuals navigate challenging circumstances through compromise and sensemaking. His educational background includes a DPhil from the University of Oxford alongside advanced degrees in management and economics, photojournalism, documentary photography, biography, creative nonfiction, and prose fiction. This multidisciplinary training informs his unconventional methodological approach. De Rond's research centers on extreme context ethnography, examining how pressure-cooker environments expose fundamental organizational dynamics. His work spans military medicine (Camp Bastion fieldwork), elite sports (Cambridge Boat Race), Amazon river expeditions, and controversial practices like paedophile hunting. Key contributions explore negotiation, conflict resolution, serendipity, institutional persistence, and the emotional toll of fieldwork, often employing innovative methods like enactive ethnography and linguistic analysis of digital communities. His recent publications reveal a growing focus on digital vigilantism and the societal implications of extreme practices, with increasing interdisciplinary reach across organizational studies, criminology, medical anthropology, and sociology. The work demonstrates methodological creativity through linguistic analysis of Facebook groups, embodiment studies in extreme environments, and dream-based reflexive techniques. Scientific recognition includes: BEST ARTICLE AWARD FOR 2016 Favorite MBA Professor honors from Poets & Quants (2021, 2022) Guinness World Record for first unsupported Amazon row De Rond advises MBA students and delivers executive education to top law firms (Slaughter and May, Allen & Overy), professional services (McKinsey, KPMG), corporations (Sky, BT, Diageo), and NGOs (UNICEF, NHS). His negotiation training from Harvard Law School informs both academic work and university mediation practice. Current research involves collaborative teams studying paedophile hunting (featured in Sundance-nominated documentary Predators ) and high-performance sports organizations, with fieldwork requiring deep immersion in challenging environments. His research methodology involves embedded collaboration with diverse teams including medical personnel in conflict zones, elite rowers, and controversial activist groups, often pushing methodological boundaries through photojournalism and creative nonfiction approaches.
Professor Ben Bollig holds the position of Professor of Latin American Literature and Film at the University of Oxford's Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages. He is also a Fellow and Tutor in Spanish at St Catherine's College, and an Associate Lecturer at St John's College. His research focuses on contemporary Latin American literature and film, with a specialization in Argentine poetry and its cinematic adaptations. He has authored or edited numerous books, including Moving Verses and The Poetry-Film Nexus in Latin America , and serves as editor of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies . Teaching responsibilities include the entire Spanish course for first-year students and Latin American literature and film options for upper years. He supervises MPhil/DPhil students in Latin American cultural studies, particularly Southern Cone literature and film. His work explores intersections of poetry, film, translation, and postcolonial theory, with a focus on Argentina's cultural production. He has published widely on topics such as poetic adaptation, political literature, and cultural activism. Key contributions include co-editing Latin American Cultural Studies: A Reader and producing translated volumes of Cristian Aliaga's work. His research themes span comparative literature, postcolonial studies, environmental humanities, and global cultural dynamics. He is actively engaged in academic leadership roles within his field, maintaining a strong international profile in cultural studies and literary criticism.
Geraldine Heng is the Mildred Hajek Vacek and John Roman Vacek Chair in English at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is cross-appointed to Middle Eastern Studies, Women's Studies, Jewish Studies, and the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Social Justice. Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023 and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, she founded and directs the Global Middle Ages Project (G-MAP), a major interdisciplinary initiative promoting global perspectives on premodernity. With a Ph.D. from Cornell University, Heng has pioneered the field of premodern critical race studies, fundamentally challenging the assumption that race is a modern construct. Her research focuses on literary, cultural, and social encounters between worlds, particularly through the lenses of race, gender, sexuality, class, and religion, with special attention to medieval Europe's interactions with Asia and Africa. Heng's scholarly work reveals how medieval global connections shaped cultural production and identity formation long before the so-called 'Age of Exploration.' Her approach synthesizes literary analysis, historical research, and critical theory to uncover the deep roots of globalization and its implications for understanding contemporary identity politics and cultural exchange. Her publications demonstrate a consistent trajectory toward increasingly global frameworks, moving from studies of medieval romance to comprehensive examinations of early global interconnectedness. This evolution reflects her commitment to dismantling Eurocentric narratives of the medieval world and revealing the complex networks of exchange that characterized premodern societies across Afro-Eurasia. 2019 PROSE prize in Global History 2019 Academy of American Literature prize in Historical Studies 2019 Robert W. Hamilton Grand Prize 2020 Otto Gründler prize Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2023) Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America Heng has secured approximately $750,000 in grants for digital projects and held eight major fellowships at research centers. She co-edits the Cambridge University Press Elements series in the Global Middle Ages and the University of Pennsylvania Press series RaceB4Race: Critical Studies of the Premodern. Her teaching encompasses courses on early global literatures, premodern race, Crusades literature, Arthurian traditions, and feminist theory. As founder and director of the Global Middle Ages Project (G-MAP), Heng has built an international scholarly network that challenges traditional disciplinary boundaries and promotes collaborative approaches to studying premodern global connections. The project has fostered numerous digital initiatives, publications, and conferences that have significantly reshaped how scholars understand medieval intercultural exchange.
Ato Quayson is the Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Stanford University, where he also chairs the Department of African and African American Studies. He previously held professorships at New York University (2017–2019) and the University of Toronto (2005–2017), where he was inaugural director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies and became a University Professor (2016), the university's highest honor. His academic journey includes a B.A. (First Class Honors) in English and Arabic from the University of Ghana (1989) and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Cambridge (1995). He held a Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford, and was a Reader in Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literature at Cambridge (1995–2005), concurrently directing the Centre for African Studies and serving as Pembroke College Fellow. Quayson’s research explores postcolonial literature, urban studies, disability studies, and cultural theory. His work bridges global and local contexts, with notable publications such as Oxford Street, Accra (Urban History Association Prize) and Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature (Warren-Brooks Prize). He co-edits the Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature and chairs initiatives like Contours: The Cambridge Literary Studies Hour . His accolades include fellowships from the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006), the Royal Society of Canada (2013), the British Academy (2019), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2023). He has also served as President of the African Studies Association (2019–2020). Quayson curates the YouTube channel Critic.Reading.Writing , discussing literature and urban studies, and teaches courses on global Black diaspora studies and Toni Morrison’s work. His current projects include Accra Chic: A Locational History of Fashion and studies on exile in African literature.
Si Nae Park is an Associate Professor at Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Director of Graduate Studies for Regional Studies East Asia. Her research focuses on the interplay between cosmopolitan Literary Sinitic and vernacular Korean in premodern East Asia, examining genres like yadam (vernacular stories) and sosŏl ŏrokhae (fiction glossaries). Affiliation: Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University Role: Director of Graduate Studies for Regional Studies East Asia Her work explores inscriptional ecologies, vernacular reading practices, and the materiality of texts in Chosŏn Korea. She has written on the Tongp’ae Naksong and the evolution of vocal reading practices. Publications include her monograph The Korean Vernacular Story (2020) and peer-reviewed articles on Confucian classics (2019), yadam heritage narratives (2021), and Chosŏn manuscript culture (2022). She co-organized a 2022 Harvard conference on Korean book history. Her current project, Within Earshot , investigates oral-aural dimensions of reading in Chosŏn Korea, analyzing how auditory practices shaped textual authority and literary production. She has contributed to translations of premodern Korean prose and Japanese studies on the Sinographic Cosmopolis.
Steven G. Kellman is a Professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), where he has taught since 1976. A leading scholar in comparative literature and literary translingualism, he was UTSA's first Ashbel Smith Professor (1995-2000) and has received numerous accolades including the National Book Critics Circle Balakian Citation and the New York Society Library Award for Biography. His academic foundation includes: Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley (1972) M.A. in Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley (1969) B.A. in English & General Literature, State University of New York at Binghamton (1967) Kellman's research focuses on comparative literature, modern and contemporary literature, prose fiction, literary translingualism, film, and biography. He pioneered the study of writers who create in non-native languages, examining how linguistic displacement fuels creativity and shapes identity across cultural boundaries. His work bridges literary analysis with cultural history, particularly in American literature and biography. His recent publications demonstrate sustained engagement with translingualism, pandemic-era literary interpretation, and biographical recovery of marginalized voices. Articles from 2022-2025 reveal consistent thematic threads: re-examining classic texts like Camus' The Plague through contemporary crises, analyzing translingual writing as spiritual practice, and recovering erased narratives in literary partnerships. Honors include the National Book Critics Circle Nona Balakian Citation (2006), New York Society Library Award for Biography (2006), and Gemini Ink Literary Excellence Award (2008). Additional distinctions: UTSA COLFA Researcher of the Year Award (2019-2020) McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Nonfiction (2008) San Antonio Public Library Foundation Arts and Letters Award (2005) Two UTSA President's Distinguished Achievement Awards in Research Excellence (1990-91, 2005-2006) Kellman has secured prestigious fellowships including the Fulbright Distinguished Chair at Sofia University and Harvard's John E. Sawyer Fellowship. He served four terms on the National Book Critics Circle board and edits Brill's Literary Multilingualism series, demonstrating sustained commitment to advancing literary scholarship through editorial leadership and institutional service.
