Zohra Saed Bio

Zohra Saed is the co-editor of One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature (University of Arkansas Press) and editor of the chapbook: Langston Hughes: Poems, Photos and Notebook from Turkestan (Lost & Found, The CUNY Poetics Documents Initiative). Her essays on the Central Asian diaspora and their food history have appeared in Eating Asian America (NYU Press) and The Asian American Literary Review. She co-founded UpSet Press, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit indie press, with poet Robert Booras. In Fall 2017, Belladonna Collective along with Makhzin magazine published my poetry chaplet: Woman. Hand/Pen. (#217). Dissertation: Langston Hughes in Turkestan, 1932-1933.

I am assistant professor at Bard High School Early College, Queens.

Filipa Calado

Hello! I’m Filipa, a PhD student in the English program here at the Graduate Center. I work in the fields of British Modernism and Digital/Visual Studies. My interests in these fields range widely, but I’m mostly concerned with questions about materiality, embodiment, and form between different media (especially digital versus print media) and how that may have a bearing on queer representation, presence, and erasure. Besides high modernist literature written by women or queer authors (particularly Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, and Oscar Wilde), you can find me reading comic books (especially Batman!) and science fiction novels (the latest being “Galatea 2.2”, which I highly recommend).

When I’m not doing academic work, I enjoy exercising, sleeping, meditating, or trying new kinds of beer. Since a foot injury put me on a looong break from running last semester, I have been really into swimming, and I find it to be an unexpected blend of calming and invigorating activity. Exercise is absolutely crucial for maintaining work/life balance in graduate school, and I will often schedule my days around it, making it an absolute priority. Finally, when I have extra extra time, I also like to see galleries and museums, and just spend some hours looking at pretty pictures.

Z Lloyd Bio

Hello all, I’m Zach. I am a PhD student in Comparative Literature here at the GC, and an adjunct instructor in the English dept. at Brooklyn College.  I grew up in a small town in Nebraska, working, for most of my young life, as a detasseler and machine/tractor operator in corn and bean fields (a rather arduous and unforgiving occupation if there ever was one).  I also did my undergrad studies at a small liberal arts school there, graduating with a major in Philosophy and minors in Computer Science and Studio Art. I came to NYC to do an MA in Philosophy at The New School for Social Research, and matriculated into the CUNY system shortly thereafter.

I will confess that I never imagined I would become a teacher. Both my father and my grandfather are/were English and Irish literature professors, and in my youthful rebellion I had originally vowed to strike out on a different path (probably involving some sort of work in graphic design). Yet here I am, teaching, and teaching in an English department no less.  A funny thing, life.  And when it comes down to it, I find it to be incredibly engaging and rewarding work, and can’t really imagine myself doing anything else.  The apple never falls far from the tree, as the old saying goes.

The ITP program has so far been one of my favorite aspects of academic life here at the GC, and I am very much looking forward to another semester with you all.

Natacha Pawa Bio

Hi, I am  Natacha Pawa a second-year French Ph.D. student at the Graduate Center, B.A in English/ French  Literatures with a minor in linguistics from the University of Buea (Cameroon), a Master in French literature, and a D.E.A in French Literature both from the University of Yaoundé I.

I am currently – starting from Fall 2017-  an Adjunct Lecturer of  French at Hunter College and a Graduate Teaching Fellow at Brooklyn College – from last Fall.  I previously taught French core courses respectively at St John’s University and Queens borough Community College. In my teaching, I am dedicated to bringing to my students of varied academic disciplines a new approach to university core foreign language courses, which are most often viewed by them as a loss of time.

My academic interests are broad and varied, My master thesis was on  The Images of Africa in The Color Purple of Alice Walker and La Rose de sable of Montherlant,  and my D.E.A used  Freudian psychoanalytic approaches to examine the psychoses(agoraphobia, schizophrenia, madness, etc.)  in  The Bluest Eye of  Toni Morrison, Le Baiser au lépreux of Francois Mauriac and Kamouraska of Anne Hébert.  For my forthcoming Ph.D. dissertation, I went through a specialization Ph.D. course in the  Clinical Psychology Department at City College. I  intend to continue working with the psychoanalytical approaches (Freudian and contemporary American schools)  on the issues of memory, trauma, self and identity in selected works of some twentieth and twenty-first-century  French and francophone authors (I prefer to keep them secret for now!)

My  Great Hobby is singing , I am an active member of   Souls in Harmony (don’t google it; it’s one of my parish choir and its fame is still in process!).

 

Lauren’s Bio

Hello! I’m a librarian and the Associate Director of the McEntegart Hall Library at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, NY.  A lot of my day is spent working on administrative responsibilities and the less glamorous side of making a small college library run smoothly, but I enjoy all aspects of the work.  I love working with students and enjoy learning new thing from them and the work they’re doing!

Currently, I’m pursuing a MALS in Digital Humanities which has provided me with many opportunities to rethink how an academic library contributes to the college community.  This class is my 4th in two years.  It’s been difficult finding that perfect balance of work, school, and life, but I’m looking forward to continuing the work I started in DH Praxis last spring (more on that in the project proposal).  I also look forward to working with everyone this semester on their projects and learning about new technological tools to be used in the classroom.

Thanks for reading and see you on Monday afternoon.

Intro to: Kyueun Kim

Hi, I am a feminist, researcher, educator, and a dreamer, aiming to become a creator. I am Level II Ph.D. student in Theatre and Performance at CUNY Graduate Center, and I have been teaching speech communication course at Baruch College as a Graduate Teaching Fellow since Fall 2016. I am interested in how different material conditions of technology have influenced the defining, delimiting, and/or expanding the boundaries of the human body, especially as it relates to issues of embodiment and agency from Renaissance humanism to posthumanism. My other research areas include the notions of “the public” and “the political” in/and performance and urban modernities and contemporary performance in East Asian cities (Seoul, Shanghai, Tokyo). I am a current president of Korean Students Association at the Graduate Center and Theatre Program’s Doctoral Students Council Representative for the 2017-2018 academic year. I recently completed Critical Theory Certificate, and I am happy to be a part of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate Program.

If I am not reading or writing, I love to walk around the city, say “hi” to dog-friends, watch theatrical performances, visit nice small cafes, analyze social-media responses, and daydream. I have recently turned 30 (in Korean age; still 28 in US age) and have been obsessed with collecting words about the age 30 from novels, poems, and songs. I hope to file my annotated collection of quotations/words about the age 30 especially from the perspective of a woman (if you have one in mind, please send it to me!) to my blog that I am currently developing. I strongly believe that we need more education about our ethical responsibilities in social media platforms.

Carolyn A. McDonough Bio

Hi all, I’m Carolyn and I’m a non-matric hoping to become a matric in Fall 2018, applying to the MA in DH program at the GC. I hold my BA in Renaissance Studies and my first MA in Media Studies. My areas of focus within these two fields of study are history, Italian, Cultural Studies and all-things-media. I really like how Digital Humanities combines my two fields of study and the ITP Certificate Program is affirming this while also allowing me to explore many new ideas in combining the two. I’m very interested in critical thinking and thinking critically. I’ve adjuncted with a lecture appointment in Media Studies 101 “Media and Everyday Life” which was a Tier-1 critical thinking requirement for the Freshman I taught.

I’ve also worked as a digital media producer/editor for my own ventures and on the staff of major digital portals and international periodicals. I was awarded a post-grad Fellowship to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy, and more recently, a scholarship from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for the online course “CATALYSTS: Artists Creating with Video, Sound and Time” through which I launched my blog/vlog cultureartmedia.com.

My avocation is music, voice, and vocal recording. I’m a third generation performing artist with performance credits that include national voice over campaigns, and I also teach voice in my “spare time” primarily to my daughter who is an accomplished singer/actor, but also to other up-and-coming young performers. I feel an equal passion for both my academic work and my creative/artistic work. I met my husband in Italy at the PGC where he was a fellow “fellow” and together with our daughter, we’ve shared many adventures in the arts over the years.

I’m really enjoying the ITP Certificate Program classes, fellow students, professors, labs and all that I’m learning through all of these.

Kahdeidra Martin Bio

My name is Kahdeidra Monét Martin. I am a writer, self-publisher, educator, and researcher with more than 13 years of working in education. I have worked as a tutor, club facilitator, after school site coordinator, community center assistant director, special education teacher, and lecturer of developmental English and composition.

My lifelong interests are in language, literacy, sociolinguistics, pedagogy, and Africana studies. I have a B.A. in African and African American Studies and an M.S.Ed. in Teaching Urban Adolescents with Disabilities. Currently, I am a Ph.D. student in Urban Education at the Graduate Center. In addition, I am a research assistant for Professor Melissa Schieble at Hunter College on a project examining critical conversations, and I am a Mellon Humanities Alliance Graduate Teaching Fellow at LaGuardia Community College.

My writing is divinely inspired, ancestrally edifying, and culturally conscious. I am outside of the mainstream, aligned with the Universe. I teach from my spirit, driven by the ethos of unity and justice to fan the flame of inquiry within all students. What inspires them to be their highest selves?