Comparative Literature at UCI Students
Grafitti Image

Comparative Literature Graduate Students

Philip Anselmo 
AnselmoB.A. University of Long Island, 2002

Research Interests: Literature of catastrophe, 20th-century French novel, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, film studies, aesthetic theory (especially of the avant-garde).

Emphases: Critical Theory Emphasis

Tamara Beauchamp 
BeauchampB.A., Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University, 2004

Research Interests: Psychoanalysis; critical theory; gender and sexuality studies;
Francophone and Anglophone decadence and modernism; masochism

Emphases: Critical Theory Emphasis and Graduate Feminist Emphasis

Nanterre Fellowship, University of Paris-Nanterre, 2009-10

Dan Costello 
CostelloB.A., University of Chicago, 2005

Research Interests: Post-war German and American
literature, collective memory, and the tensions between fiction, memoir, and history

Halah Darwazeh 
B.A. UC Berkeley 2007
English(with Honors) and French, Minor Creative Writing

M.A. New York University 2011
Interdisciplinary Master's in Humanities and Social Thought

Research Interests: Literatures of the Maghreb, Palestinian fiction and poetry

Sharareh Frouzesh 
B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science, University of California, Irvine
M.A. in Social Sciences with an emphasis in Social Thought, University of
Chicago

Research interests: Modern Iranian literatures and cultural productions; transnational literatures and feminisms; political and legal theory; postcolonial literatures and theory; psychoanalysis and phenomenology; dialectics of resistance and modernisms. Dissertation: 'The Use and Abuse of Guilt.'

Emphases: Critical Theory Emphasis and Graduate Feminist Emphasis

James Goebel 
GoebelB.A. in Philosophy, California State University, Fullerton 2011

Research Interests: European philosophy; animal and environmental studies; Indigenous histories; activist literature

C.J. Gordon 
GordonB.A. in English and History, University of Kansas, 2007

Research interests: Medieval and early modern
literature; tragedy; the classical tradition; religion and literature; literary theory;
psychoanalysis

Brandon J. Granier 
GranierB.A., in English, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2001
M.A. in Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College, 2006; M.A. in French, Middlebury College in France, 2007

Research interests: deconstruction; long 19th century European literature

Jennifer Gutierrez 
B.A., Chicana and Chicano Studies, San Diego State University, 2009

B.A., Comparative Literature, San Diego State University, 2009

Research interests: Critical Theories of Gender and Sexuality, the Latin
American Avant-Garde, Postmodern Geography, Art and Politics of
Subcultural Connections, and Border Studies.

Crystal Hickerson 
HickersonM.A., SUNY Buffalo, 2008

Research interests: aesthetics and models of thought; intersections between poetry, continental philosophy, urban design and visual culture; problematics of voice, style, and tone in discourse; hybridity and genre; poetic novels of 20th c. Latin America and postmodern world literature; modernisms and the avant-garde

Kim Icreverzi 
B.A. in Linguistics and English with concentration in Culture and
Performance, Georgetown University, 2002

Research Interests: Visual rhetorics; spectacularity; cinematic, urban and corporeal space; Japanese literature and cinema; feminist theory and cultural studies

Emphases: Graduate Feminist Emphasis, Visual Studies Emphasis

Alexander Jabbari 
JabbariB.A. in Community Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2008

Research interests: Persianate literary historiography; nationalism and
nationhood; colonialism and resistance

Karen Jallatyan 
JallatyanB.A., in Comparative Literature, minor in Philosophy, University of California, Los Angeles

M.A. in Comparative Literature, University of Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana

Research Interests: Post-structuralism; post-colonial studies particularly in East European and post-Soviet contexts; Nietzsche, Bergson, Blanchot, Deleuze; deconstruction; translation; cinema; contemporary, diaspora Armenian literature.

Will Jordan 
B.S. in Computer Science, Yale University, 2005

Research interests: Media theory; Japanese; games

Sarah Kessler 
KesslerB.A., Art and Semiotics, Brown University, 2003
M.A., English, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 2008

Research interests: postcolonialism, neo-pragmatism, feminist film theory, queer methodologies, third cinemas, science fiction, imagination and close reading

Joseph Krall 
KrallB.A. in English and American Indian Studies, University of Minnesota -
Twin Cities, 2011

Research Interests: Critical Theory, Dakota Language and Translation,
Media Theory, Modernism/Postmodernism, Race Theory, Video Games

Ryanson Alessandro Ku 
KuB.S. in Economics, The George Washington University, 2004
M.A. in Comparative Literature, Louisiana State University, 2008
M.A. in Philosophy, Louisiana State University, 2009

Research interests: Critiques of the given, theories of non-equivalence, semiotics/pragmatics, experimental fiction and film

Christopher Malcolm 
MalcolmB.A. Contemporary History and Politics, University of Sussex, UK, 2008.
M.A. Social & Political Thought, York University, Toronto, 2011.

Research interests: Marxism. Critical theory: Adorno, Benjamin, Derrida, Deleuze.Dialectics; natural-history; the concept.The postwar; postmodern literature; film.

Ali Meghdadi 
MeghdadiB.A. in English with Theology minor, Loyola Marymount University, 2005
M.A. in English, Loyola Marymount University, 2007; M.F.A. in poetry, Otis College of Art and Design, 2008

Research interests: My critical and creative writings articulate a hybridized language that mediates between American and Iranian cultures and their specific histories, with an explicit focus on the political and theological aesthetics established in their literatures.

Ghada Mourad 
MouradB.A. in English, CSU Los Angeles, 2007

Research interests: critical theory; postcolonial theory; translation; colonial and postcolonial Arabic
and French literary productions; the Lebanese/French encounter; 20th-century Russian political and literary
theory; feminism in the Middle East

Nathaniel Murphy 
MurphyB.A. In Philosophy, CSU Fullerton 2012.

Research Interests: Anarchism, political motivation, global justice, parecon, poetry, platonic love, democratic practice, spontaneous self-organization.

Tetsuro Namba 
NambaB.A. in English, Reed College, 2007

Research interests: "Modernism, science fiction, biopolitics, psychoanalysis, race, colonialism, Pacific/Oceania literature, sovereignty, nuclear testing and apocalypse."

Toru Oda 
B.A. in Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, University of Tokyo, 2003
M.A. in Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, University of Tokyo, 2006

Research interests: literary anarchism; cultural history in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries; French naturalism; English modernism

Mark Pangilinan 
PangilinanB.A. in English with Spanish minor, Christopher Newport University, 2006

Research interests: Pilipino literature and culture; cultural studies; critical theory;
ethnography; Anglophone modernist literature; postcolonial theory; gender studies;
translation studies

Ariel Perloff 
PerloffB.A. in Rhetoric with minors in Philosophy and Creative Writing, UC Berkeley, 2005

Research interests: phenomenology, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis; modern and postmodern novel;
painting and photography; affect

Eddie Pinuelas 
B.A. in Comparative Literature, University of California, Los Angeles

Research interests: Postcolonialism; diasporic literature and culture

Jamie Rogers 
RogersB.A. in Print Journalism, Cal State Long Beach, 2003
B.A. in Spanish, Western Washington University, 2010
M.A. in English Studies, Western Washington University, 2008


Research interests: Visual culture; radical politics; feminism; critical race theory; Latin American and Caribbean film and literature; theories of subjectivity and representation.

Abraham Romney 
RomneyB.A. in English with Spanish minor, BYU-Idaho, 2005
M.A. in English, University of Oregon, 2007

Research interests: History of rhetoric; translation; 19th-century Hemispheric American literature; 19th-century rhetoric and philology; digital rhetoric.

Fall 2013: Tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition in the Department of Humanities at Michigan Technological University.

Kirsty Singer 
SingerB.A. in Gender Studies, Brown University, 2003

M.F.A., School of Critical Studies, California Institute of the Arts, 2010

Research Interests: poetry; death and sacrifice; political protest; current and antiquated scientific theories; personal mythologies and belief systems; queer theory; phenomenology; globalization and alternative development models

Denise Spampinato 
B.F.A., Art Center College of Design
M.F.A. in Writing, Cal Arts, 2002

Engel Szwaja-Franken 
Szwaja-FrankenB.A. in Comparative Literature and History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2005

Research interests: Latin American literature and poetry (mostly 20th century), modernism, French literature (19th and early 20th century)

Aubrey Tang 
TangB.A. in Comparative Literature, The University of Hong Kong 1998

M.A. in Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages, The University of California, Riverside 2012

Research Interests: theory of perception; voice in cinema; Cantonese opera; Chinese and Sinophone cultures

Parisa Vaziri 
VaziriB.A. in Comparative Literature with French minor, New York University, 2007

Research Interests: memory, theories of narrative, psychoanalysis, its appropriations, phenomenology, trauma, narratives of secularization

Ameeth Vijay 
VijayB.A. in Comparative Literature, Brown University, 2004

Research interests: migration, globalization

Robert Wood 
B.A. in History (minor in Comparative Literature), University of Minnesota, 2003

Research Interests: Marxism, modernism, science fiction, crisis, the body and production, critical theory, the avant-garde, the fantastic