Performing Identity/Crossing Borders: The Cyprus Symposium
Presenter Bios
Tomi Adeaga is a Nigerian who has lived and studied in Germany since 1992, where she received her doctorate degree in 2004. Her current research interests include translation studies and the African Diasporic studies in Europe. She is the author of the book entitled Translating and Publishing African Language(s) and Literature(s): Examples from Nigeria, Ghana and Germany (2006). Publisher: IKO Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She has also written a number of articles in literary journals and book contributions and most recently a short story entitled “Marriage and other Impediments” in African Love Stories; An Anthology (2006) Publisher: Ayebia Publishing House, England. She is a member of a number of organisations, notably the African Literature Association, African Studies Association, Modern Language Association. She has also been engaged in humanitarian work and she is a member of the European Academy, which takes her round Germany, where she presents papers on various aspects of African development.[abstract] [full paper] (160 KB)
Kristina Aurylaite is a teaching assistant at the Department of English Philology, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania, and a doctoral candidate at the Department of English, University of Bergen, Norway. Her dissertation, "Space and Power in First Nations Canadian Literature," explores racialized spatial constructions in contemporary First Nations Canadian drama, and fiction. Her research areas include multicultural literature, contemporary drama, performance studies.[abstract] [full paper] (174 KB)
David Bateman was born and raised in Peterborough Ontario. He is still in recovery. He completed his PhD in English Literature with a specializaiton in Creative Writing at the University of Calgary in 2001. He has taught performance, literature, and creative writing at a variety of insitituions across Canada, including Emily Carr Institute for Art & Design, University of Calagry, and Trent University. Bateman is also a performance artist who has presented new work across Canada and in parts of the U.S. for the past fifteen years. His most recent performance (Lotus Blossom Special) was presented at Western Front (Vancouver) and has been re-mounted in Calgary and Peterborough. He is currently teaching literature at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia.[abstract]
Dr. Núria Casado Gual lectures in English Language and Literature (Drama) in the Department of English and Linguistics at the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain). She is a member of the research group “Dedal” and also one of the teachers of the Theatre Section of the university, in which she directs theatre workshops for university students. Her areas of study include drama, Afro-Caribbean literature and the topic of ageing as reflected in theatre in English.[abstract] [full paper] (157 KB)
Gür Genç was born in Paphos in 1969. He lived four years in Turkey and seven years in Britain, and he resettled in Cyprus in 2003. Between 1992 and 2005 he published four poetry books, and is planning to publish a collection of his short stories in 2007. He is also working on a bilingual edition of short stories by Turkish-Cypriots from Ottoman times to the present.[abstract]
Hiromi Goto is an award-winning author whose short stories and critical writing have appeared, among others, in Ms magazine and the Oxford University Press anthology, Making A Difference. Her most recent book, Hopeful Monsters, is a collection of short stories released with Arsenal Pulp Press. Her first novel, Chorus of Mushrooms, was the 1995 recipient of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize Best First Book Canada and Caribbean Region and the co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Award. Hiromi is the subject of an ACCESS Network documentary, “A Woman I Know,” in which three young Canadian women writers talk about their work and their lives.
Hiromi’s second novel, The Kappa Child, was the 2001 winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award and was short-listed for the regional Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, Best Book Award, the Sunburst Award and the Spectrum Award. Her first children’s novel, The Water of Possibility was also released in 2001 and was a selection of the Canadian Children’s Book Centre. She was the 2003/04 Writer-in-Residence in a joint residency with the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, the University of Northern British Columbia and Powell Street Festival. She is a creative writing facilitator with experience working with elementary school-aged children, youth, undergraduates and adult learners. Her latest young adult novel, Half World, will be published by Penguin Canada in 2007.
Her fiction and poetry has often mediated a performative space. She has previously collaborated with Jason DeCouto on a poetic improvisational jazz video called “Variations on Infinite Possibilities” that was performed during Spatial Poetics in Vancouver, BC in the summer of 2005. She is currently collaborating on a full-length performance piece with David Bateman entitled _______________, a criticomical introspection on race, representation, queer identities and popular culture.[abstract]
Jonathan Hall completed his PhD thesis on pragmatism and postmodern fiction at the University of Cambridge in 2004. He is currently teaching in the Department of English at the University of Balamand in Lebanon. His research interests include postmodern fiction, writing the self/writing the nation, religion and nation, and US intellectual history. [abstract] [full paper] (4,748 KB)
Lisha Hassanali is a journalist and film reviewer for the Calgary Eyeopener on CBC Radio. Her first CBC Radio documentary "My Bollywood Family Reunion" was nominated for diversity achievement and was also broadcast on BBC Radio. Lisha uses her Political Science and South Asian background to entertain and enlighten Canadians. She was named one of Calgary ’s Top 40 under 40 for 2005 by Calgary Inc. Magazine. Lisha is also a Governor General’s Award winner for community service. She has presented on issues of minorities in the Media and cultural representation.[abstract] [full paper] (99 KB)
Ann Holloway was born in Kingston, Ontario by the shores of the Great Lakes Basin, which explains why she has a strong aversion to drains. Ann is a PhD candidate at the Drama Centre at U of T where she is researching contemporary Canadian women's drama in the context of comedy of resistance. Ann is a professional actor, playwright and comedian living in Toronto with her basset hound, Chloe Marie Presley. She is currently investigating workshop possibilities for her newest play entitled "Mummy" written during her playwright residency at Nightwood Theatre and performed as a staged reading as part of Groundswell 2006, Nightwood Theatre's new play development series .[abstract]
Wojciech H. Kalaga is Professor of Literary Theory and English Literature, and Director of the Institute of British and American Culture and Literature at the University of Silesia, Poland. He has lectured and conducted research at different universities, including Yale University, University of Mannheim, University of Queensland, and Murdoch University, where he was Chair of English and Comparative Literature. His books include The Mental Landscape (on Beckett's fiction), The Literary Sign, and Nebulae of Discourse: Interpretation, Textuality and the Subject as well as numerous articles on literary theory and semiotics. He is also editor of several collective volumes (including Discourses/Texts/Contexts, Sign/Text/Fiction, Memory-Remembering-Forgetting, Simulacra and the Real, Exile: Displacements and Misplacements) and editor-in-chief of Er(r)go: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura. Presently, he is also General Editor of the Literary and Cultural Theory series published by Lang Verlag.[abstract] [full paper] (191 KB)
Smaro Kamboureli, Canada Research Chair in Critical Studies in Canadian Literature at the University of Guelph, is the author of Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literature in English Canada. She is also the editor of Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Literatures in English and Pacific Rim Letters by Roy Kiyooka./p>
Stavros Stavrou Kariyanni Stavros was born in Cyprus and pursued English studies in Canada on a Commonwealth scholarship. He has published widely on culture, gender, and sexuality in the Middle East but Oriental dance has been the main focus of his intellectual interest and research. His book "Dancing Fear and Desire: Race, Sexuality and Imperial Politics in Middle Eastern Dance" (Wilfrid Laurier UP 2004, reprinted 2005, 2007) reveals the intricate ways in which the present tradition of this controversial dance has been shaped by Eurocentric models that define and control identity performance. Stavros has broken new ground for this controversial dance by incorporating it in his presentation of academic papers at international conferences, thus assisting its entry into cultural and critical debates. The United Kingdom Alliance of Professional Teachers of Dancing has made him an honourary Fellow while Dancing Fear and Desire has won the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) book award in Cultural Studies. He teaches English Literature and Cultural Theory in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Cyprus College. [abstract]
David Khang plays with language – visual, written, and spoken. In recent performance, video, and installation works that incorporate live animals, Khang uses language as a trope to interrogate constructions and performativity of gender and race. Khang's art practice is informed by previous educational backgrounds in psychology, theology, and dentistry. He received his BFA from Emily Carr Institute (2000), and MFA with Emphasis in Critical Theory at the University of California, Irvine (2004). He has recently shown and performed in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Santiago (Chile), and Vancouver, with upcoming shows in Toronto and New York City. Khang currently lives in Vancouver, where he teaches at the Emily Carr Institute. Khang is a 2006-07 recipient of the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art (NYC). [abstract]
Georgia Kotretsos, born in 1978, Thessaloniki, Greece. Kotretsos has attained a BFA Degree from The Durban Institute of Technology, in KwaZulu Natal, (2000) and an MFA Degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, (2004) in the United States. She has exhibited in South Africa, the United States, and Europe. Kotretsos has participated in numerous Mail/Postal Art projects worldwide and she is an official member of Art-O-Mat Artists in Cellophane (NY) and a Boots Contemporary Art Space founding agent, St. Louis MO, USA. Kotretsos is the founder and the editor-in-chief of Boot Print, a publication dedicated to contemporary art, which is published by Boots. Selected exhibitions: *10 Fingers 88 Teeth, BCAS, 2006, USA; Occasion for the basics, Qbox, 2006, GRC; ProTaseis06, Action Field Kodra, 2006, GRC; 5th Forum for European Artistic Mobility, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, 2004, GRC; *Untitled [Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) 1991] 2003, NSA Gallery, 2003, RSA; !XOE, Nieu-Bethesda site-specific and Grahamstown Arts Festival, 2000, RSA. [abstract] [full paper] (2,616 KB)
Frances Kruk is a polyartistic bodger who works with paper, ink, steel blades, goo, hammers, and acoustic and synthetic audio. Her vocal and hand-mashed works have appeared in jazz festivals, shiny journals, webspaces, and underground materials, as well as in dilapidated prisons, cemeteries, and galleries. She is currently based in London, where she is selling-out to the mainstream and commencing deep academic agony for doctoral purposes at Royal Holloway, University of London. [abstract] [full paper] (174 KB)
Larissa Lai Larissa Lai was born in La Jolla, California, grew up in Newfoundland and lives and works in Vancouver. Her first novel, "When Fox Is a Thousand" (Press Gang 1995) was shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Her second novel, "Salt Fish Girl" (Thomas Allen Publishers 2002) was shortlisted for the Sunburst Award, the Tiptree Award and the City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell Award. West Coast Line recently published a special issued focussed on her work. She has just completed a PhD in English at the University of Calgary. From January to June 2006, she was a Writer-in-Residence in the English Department at Simon Fraser University. She currently holds an SSHRC Post-doctoral Fellowship in the English Department at the University of British Columbia, where she will begin a tenure-track position in Canadian Literature in July 2007.[abstract] [full paper] (21 KB)
Marie-Claude Legault has a Ph.D in American literature from the University of Calgary where she taught as a sessional instructor from 2001 to 2006. Her dissertation deals with the American representation of France in the literary works of Henry James, Gertrude Stein, Alice Kaplan, and Adam Gopnik. Her research interests also include "littérature Québécoise" translated into English. She is currently teaching English as a second language at Collège Montmorency in Laval, Québec.[abstract] [full paper] (174 KB)
Aydin Mehmet Ali was born in Cyprus. She was educated in Cyprus, the USA and Britain. She is an international education consultant, project manager, researcher and writer. As a well-known intellectual community activist and advocate of multiculturalism and multilingualism, she has spoken at international conferences and her work has appeared in numerous publications. She has set up and managed many empowerment projects in the UK and in Cyprus. Her work focuses on young people and women. She is a passionate campaigner for peace in Cyprus and amongst Cypriots in the Diaspora. She has been a consultant adviser to the London Mayor and to numerous education and cultural establishments. She is the author of the acclaimed book, Turkish Speaking Communities &. Education - no delight (2001) and editor and translator of Turkish Cypriot Identity in Literature (1990). She is an award winning author and her short stories have appeared in the anthologies Diaspora City (2003), Uncut Diamonds (2003), Index (July 2002), Crossing the Border (2002) and Weeping Island (2000) and in the journal Cadences (2004). Her poetry translations and articles on literature have appeared in numerous publications and have been performed at international poetry festivals and on radio for over fifteen years. She has done readings in a number of venues and has organized Arts and Literature festivals, bilingual creative writing workshops, poetry and short story competitions for Turkish Speaking Women, Cypriot poetry evenings and projects using the arts to diffuse racial tensions and conflict between different communities. [abstract]
Marc Müller: M.A. in German Literature, Philology, Sports Science, at University of Freiburg. Teaching Fellow at Colgate University NY; Ph.D. Program University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC); and lives in Berlin.[abstract] [full paper] (120 KB)
Sofia Muñoz-Valdivieso is Associate Professor of English at the University of Málaga (Spain). She has published on Shakespearean drama and is the author of a volume on Shakespeare's The Tempest and the postmodern critical paradigm. She co-edited The EmLit Project: European Minority Literatures in Translation(2003), an anthology of minority writing in Europe funded by the European Union. She is currently working on diasporic and transnational fiction and has published on black and Asian British writers.[abstract] [full paper] (143 KB)
Mervyn Nicholson is Professor of English at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia and author of 13 Ways of Looking at Images: Studies in the Logic of Visualization and of Male Envy: The Logic of Malice in Literature and Culture. He did his Ph.D. with Northrop Frye at the University of Toronto and has served on the executive of the Association of Canadian University Teachers of English. He has published widely in a range of journals, including The Journal of the History of Ideas, Recherches Sémiotiques / Semiotic Inquiry, LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory, Literature/Film Quarterly, PMLA, Mosaic, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Arcadia, Ariel, The Wallace Stevens Journal, College English, The Wordsworth Circle, English Studies in Canada, Women's Studies, Essays on Canadian Writing, Historical Studies in Education, Literature of the Oppressed, The University of Toronto Quarterly, Children's Literature Quarterly, San José Studies, Comparative Drama, Modern Drama, Mythlore, The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, The Kentucky Review, CEA Critic, The Lamp-Post, The Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Ultimate Reality and Meaning, Interdisciplinary Studies in the Philosophy of Understanding, Renascence---and more. He welcomes feedback: mnicholson@tru.ca.[abstract] [full paper] (86 KB)
Sharanpal Ruprai is a poet and cultural organizer, currently in the M.A. program at the University of Calgary. She graduated from the University of Winnipeg with a Bachelor of Honours in English. As well, she holds a Bachelor of Education with a double major in English and Theatre. Sharanpal has commented on violence among South Asian Youth for CBC Radio. Her poetry has appeared in Red Silk: an Anthology of South Asian Canadian Women Poets; Exposed: an Anthology of Five Winnipeg Women Writers ; and Prairie Fire’s special issue entitled Race Poetry Eh?[abstract] [full paper] (99 KB)
Sondra Sainsbury is a doctoral candidate at Binghamton University, SUNY, in New York. Her MA work focused on community and migration in the highlands of Bolivia. Her dissertation research deals with the politics of identity, inclusion and citizenship in the context of Europeanization in Cyprus, with a particular focus on women’s experiences. One of the guiding questions of her research is how Asian women’s positionalities—as “globally southern,” as temporary, low-status workers, and as visibly foreign vis-a-vis Greek-Cypriots—intersect with other factors such as ethnicity and political partition to impact their daily experience in Cyprus and contribute to ethnic tensions and anxieties about foreign influx on the island. She has taught at Binghamton University and at Cyprus College, and has been a guest lecturer at the University of Cyprus as well as for the Cyprus program of the School for International Training (U.S.). She is currently an Educational Counselor/Program Advisor at the Cyprus Fulbright Commission.[abstract] [full paper] (117 KB)
Louise Saldanha is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba. She is presently on leave and teaching at Grande Prairie College, Alberta. Her research and teaching interests are involved in the theory and practice of anti-oppression, especially concerning racialised and gendered identities. Her work is informed by critical theories of race, cultural studies, gender, diaspora and pedagogy and has focussed on children’s literature and culture and Canadian literature and culture. [abstract] [full paper] (111 KB)
Slavica Srbinovska is Associate Professor (Ph.D.) in the Department of General and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Philology, Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje. Her professional experience is in the theory and methodology of literature (including theory and methods in comparative literature). She publishes and translates studies in the field of theory and comparative literature. She was a participant in many international conferences with interest profile in cultural analyses, interdisciplinary approach to the literature and art, comparative literature, theory of literature. Main studies: Strolling Spectator in the Novel, Skopje, 2000, Through the perspective of the Other, Sigma press, Skopje, 2003, The Novel: Status, Interpretations, Perspectives, Sigmapress, Skopje, 2004 (Ed. By Slavica Srbinovska and Maja Bojadzievska), Subject, Literature, Culture, Skopje, 2006.[abstract] [full paper] (151 KB)
Aruna Srivastava teaches at the University of Calgary. Her research interests include postcolonial studies, critical race theory, and critical theories of pedagogy, particularly those addressing social justice as well as the use of new technologies in inquiry-based learning. Her academic and activist work has focussed on anti-racism and, in particular, on issues related to her own identification as a person of mixed-race heritage, as well as on political/artistic concepts such as métissage.[abstract] [full paper] (111 KB)
Stephanos Stephanides is Professor of Comparative Literature and currently Dean of Humanities at the University of Cyprus. His publications include Translating Kali’s Feast: the Goddess in Indo-Caribbean Ritual and Fiction, and Blue Moon in Rajasthan and other poems (2005), and he has produced two documentary films, Hail Mother Kali (1988) and Kali in the Americas (2003).[abstract]
Proma Tagore is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Victoria, Canada. Born in Calcutta, India, Proma immigrated to Canada in 1976, and lived in Manitoba and Québec before moving to British Columbia. Her research is located at the intersections of postcolonial, feminist and queer studies, and she is currently working on a book-length study entitled The Shapes of Silence: Writing by Women of Colour and the Politics of Testimony. Her essays and poetry have been published in Six Lenses for Anti-Oppressive Education and Journal of Canadian Poetry and Red Silk: Anthology of South Asian Canadian Women Poets. She is also the editor of In Our Own Voices: Learning and Teaching Toward Decolonisation. [abstract] [full paper] (173 KB)
Dr. Rossitsa Terzieva-Artemis is Assistant Professor, Languages Department at Intercollege in Cyprus. She earned an MA in English, University of Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria; an MPhil in Gender Studies, Central European University, Hungary; an MPhil in the Human Sciences, The George Washington University, USA; and a PhD in the Human Sciences, George Washington University, USA. She has published and made conference presentations in Literature, Psychoanalysis and Philosophy.
Terzieva–Artemis is a member of The Modern Language Association (MLA), The Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society (APCS) and the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE). [abstract] [full paper] (148 KB)
Petra Tournay-Theodotou is Associate Professor of English at Cyprus College, Nicosia, Cyprus, where she teaches Postmodern and Women’s literature. She obtained both her Masters and her PhD in English and Spanish language and literature from the University of Aachen, Germany. Her publications include essays and one book on Spanish and Latin-American literature and articles on postmodern and postcolonial literature in English. [abstract] [full paper] (148 KB)
