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News & Stories
Dr. Aqdas Aftab: Transgender Studies and Post-Colonial Literature
Assistant Professor Dr. Aqdas Aftab has been part of Loyola for four and a half years, operating as part of both the English and Women and Gender Studies Departments. Their aim is to show how the burden of the modern gender binary is central to the processes of racialization of colonialism. "I think of myself as an interdisciplinary scholar of transgender studies and post-colonial literary studies, but my method is extremely literary. I was really drawn to the University of Maryland because they are very strong in the African Diaspora. I wanted specifically to explore how Black Studies are talking about gender and sexuality. This exploration and questions of gender and sexuality I think I have been interested in because of my personal history as a queer and trans person. I think gender and sexuality just say so much about our power structures and the ways in which we are configured as human beings."
Nancy Caronia: Teaching Immigration with a Holistic Focus
I think it helps us to see immigration in a much more holistic way. People like to conveniently forget this history that is contested, that they were discriminated and are now like, "Look at us, we just pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and now we're all assimilated". I find that kind of false history really damaging, and it takes away from immigrants today who work really hard, who struggle in many of the same ways that Italian immigrants struggled. So [this work] has a lot to say with how and what is the United States? How did the United States become the United States? How is it that immigrants still have a connection to Italy?
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Nina Li Coomes, Creativity, and the True Power of Imagination
The English Department is excited to welcome Nina Coomes to our major. She is a Lecturer and Japanese/American writer who believes in helping each student protect the flame of creativity that lives inside of them. I was able to sit down with Nina to learn a little more about her history and what goals she has to her students and herself.
Meet New Faculty Member: Dr. Spencer Tricker
Dr. Spencer Tricker is one of three new hires that the English Department has welcomed this year. Hailing from Florida with an M.A. in Literary, Cultural, and Textual Studies, from the University of Central Florida and a Ph.D. in English, from the University of Miami, Dr. Tricker brings a focus in comparative ethnic American literature with emphases on Asian American and Pacific Islander writings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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