IFUSS FELLOWS || IFUSS ASSOCIATED SCHOLARS || IFUSS AFFILIATES
2001 IFUSS Fellow Ana Celi (third from left) with IFUSS colleagues and friends at the University of Iowa.
IFUSS Fellows
DR. KOUSAR AZAM is former Senior Academic Fellow in Social Sciences at the American Studies Research Centre in Hyderabad; co-editor of The Indian Journal of American Studies; and Professor of Political Science at Osmania University. She recently completed a term as President of the Indian National Congress for Defence Studies, and for several years she served as Director of the Center for Policy Research at Osmania University. She is the author of Tribal Separatism in India (1966) and Political Aspects of National Integration in India (1980). She is the editor of India's Defence Policy for the 1990s (1990); Economic Liberalization in India: Implications for Indo-U.S. Relations (1997); and Federalism and Good Governance: Issues Across Cultures (1998). Dr. Azam earned her doctorate at Osmania University in 1974, and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. While at the International Forum for U.S. Studies, Dr. Azam worked on a project entitled "Internationalizing American Studies: The Search for a New Paradigm."
DR. ENIKÖ BOLLOBÁS is currently Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. She is the author of two books on American poetry--Tradition and Innovation in American Free Verse: Whitman to Duncan (1986) and Charles Olson (1992)--and dozens of articles in Hungarian and international and scholarly journals. Active in the political opposition in communist Hungary in the 1980s, Dr. Bollobás was also the founder of a political discussion group entitled "Hungarian Feminists," the first non-communist organization to address women's issues. Between 1990 and 1994, Dr. Bollobas worked as a diplomat in Budapest and Washington, D.C. and op-eds she wrote appeared in the Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune. Currently she is working on A History of U.S. Literature to be published in Hungarian. While at the University of Iowa, Dr. Bollobás worked on a project entitled "Literary Canons: A U.S.-East-Central European Comparative Study." Enikö Bollobás earned her doctorate in American Literature in 1978 at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary and is a former Fulbright visiting professor.
DR. ANA CELI is currently Professor of North American Literature and Director of the Department of Languages at the Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto, Córdoba, Argentina. She is the co-author of Las Relaciones Interculturales entre los Estados Unidos y America Latina (1998) and the co-editor of Saul Bellow. Ensayos Críticos (1996) and Las XXVIII Jornadas de la Asociación Argentina de Estudios Americanos (1997). In addition Dr. Celi has published numerous essays and articles in edited collections and journals relating to her interests in U.S. literature and the use of literature in the teaching of English as a foreign language. She is currently member of the Executive Board of the Argentine American Studies Association, coordinator of the Argentine American Studies Association's Regional Center for American Studies in Rio Cuarto, and coordinator of the American Studies center at the Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto. Dr. Celi is a former Fulbright fellow and earned her doctorate in Modern Languages at Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in 1988.
DR. NILA DAS is currently Professor of English at the University of Kalyani in West Bengal, India. She is the author of Protest and the Absurd: A Study of Eight Plays (1994) and of the forthcoming book Women's Power: Twentieth Century Multi-cultural Literary Perspective. Dr. Das has also published numerous essays, articles and review articles related to her interests in drama, romantic poetry, twentieth century American literature, twentieth century Indian literature in English, and twentieth century women's literature. She has been a member of the board of editors of the Indian Journal of English Studies and she has been an executive member of the Indian Association for English Studies. While at the University of Iowa, Dr. Das pursued her current research interest, Native- American literature. Dr. Das earned her doctorate in English from Visva-Bharati University in 1979.
DR. KARUNA NAYAKE OVITIGALAGE DHARMADASA (Ph.D. in Linguistics and Sociology; Monash University, 1979) is currently the Cadre Chair Professor of Sinhalese at the University of Peradeniya, and the Editor-in-Chief of the Sinhala Encyclopedia. Dr. Dharmadasa's interests range from the sociology of language, to religious and cultural history, to tribal culture, and even to writing song lyrics. Dr. Dharmadasa has combined his academic work with extensive national service, including service on the Official Language Commission of the Republic of Sri Lanka. Long involved with debates concerning the establishment of a national language in Sri Lanka, Dr. Dharmadasa turned his expertise to the current U.S. controversy over the establishment of a national language while a fellow at the International Forum for U.S. Studies. His research, titled "Cultural Diversity, National Integration and the Question of Official Language in the U.S.," aims to make "a socio-linguistic study of the current concern about adopting English as the official language of the U.S.," with comparison to "language paradigms developed in other multi-lingual societies." Dr. Dharmadasa's extensive publications include Language, Religion and Ethnic Assertiveness: The Growth of Sinhalese Nationalism in Sri Lanka (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), Kumaratunga Jatyanuragayehi Aitihasika (The Political and Cultural Background to the Rise of Sinhale Language Nationalism in Sri Lankan society of the 1930s and 1940s) (Colombo: Ministry of State and the Ministry of Indigenous Medicine, 1985), and The Vanishing Aborigines: Sri Lanka's Veddas in Transition (ed. with S.W.R. de A. Samarasinghe; Delhi: Vikas, 1990)
DR. SYLVIA HILTON (Ph.D. in History; Complutense University, Madrid, with the University's Extraordinary Doctorate Award, 1979) is currently a Professor of History at Complutense University. Dr. Hilton has published extensively on Spanish-American history, with particular attention to Colonial Spanish America, Anglo-Spanish interactions in the New World, and American perceptions of Hispanic America (particularly in the late nineteenth century). At the International Forum for U.S. Studies, Dr. Hilton continued her work on "American Perceptions of the Hispanic World, 1895-1902." Dr. Hilton investigated American public discourse during this period for images of Hispanic peoples and cultures. Through an investigation of the Spanish colonial crisis and American intervention, Dr. Hilton analyzed broader American perceptions of the Hispanic world, seeking underlying assumptions regarding character, customs, culture and values. Dr. Hilton's nine books include such titles as Las Indias en la diplomacia española, 1739-1759 (Madrid: Editorial de la Universidad Complutense, 1980), Washington Irving: un romántico entre Europa y América (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1986), La Alta California española (Madrid: Editorial Mapfre, S.A., 1992) and Fuentes Manuscritas para la Historia de Iberoamérica: guiá de instruementos de investigación (Madrid: Fundación Mapfre América, Instituto Histórico Tavera, 1995). Dr. Hilton has also been very involved in promoting American Studies in Spain and Europe, and recently published" "American Studies In Spain: Recent Trends," (American Studies International vol 32, no. 1, April 1994).
DR. MANJU JAIDKA is currently Reader in the Department of English at Panjab University in Chandigarh, India, and a member of the Board of Directors of the American Studies Research Centre in Hyderabad. She is the author of three books on U.S. and English Poetry--Confession and Beyond: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath (1991), Tiresias and Other Masks: English and American Poetry after the Waste Land (1994), and T.S. Eliot's Use of Popular Sources (1997) as well as numerous articles, research papers, and reviews in India and abroad. Works in press include an annotated anthology of twentieth-century English and American poetry and a collection of essays on twentieth-century women's poetry. While at the University of Iowa, Dr. Jaidka worked on a project entitled "Beyond the Seven Seas: Asian-American Cultural Transactions in the Writing of Bharati Mukherjee, Sara Suleri, and Meena Alexander." Manju Jaidka earned her doctorate in English Literature in 1981 at Panjab University in India, and is a past recipient of awards from the American Studies Centre (India), the University Grants Commission (India), the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study Center in Italy, the USIA (USA) and the Fulbright Program (USA).
DR. LIAM KENNEDY is currently a Lecturer in the Department of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Birmingham, England. He is the author of Susan Sontag: Minds as Passion (1995) and of the forthcoming book Race and Urban Space in American Culture. Dr. Kennedy is also the co-editor of Urban Space and Representation (1998) and of the forthcoming volume American Cultural Studies. He has written numerous articles related to his interest in American film, literature, and urban studies. Dr. Kennedy earned his doctorate in American Studies at the University of Nottingham in 1990. While at the International Forum for U.S. Studies, he worked on a project entitled "Mapping Chicago: Urban Space and Representation."
DR. RUI YAZAWA KOHIYAMA is currently Associate Professor of American Studies at Tokyo Woman's Christian University in Yokohama, Japan. A specialist on the history of women in both the United States and Japan, she is the author of As Our God Alone Will Lead Us: The 19th Century American Women's Foreign Mission Enterprise and Its Encounter with Meiji Japan (1992), for which she received the Aoyama Nao Prize for Women's History and the Scholastic Encouragement Award of the Japanese Society of Historical Studies of Christianity. In the 1990s, Dr. Kohiyama also published Japanese translations of R. R. Reuther's Sexism and God-Talk and Sara M. Evans' Born for Liberty, and is now pursuing comparative analyses of missionary experiences in East Asia, including the experiences of missionaries in Japan compared with those in Korea. While at the University of Iowa, she worked on another American women's venture in Asia in 1910s and 20s, namely the movement to establish seven women's colleges in the Orient. Rui Kohiyama earned her doctorate in Comparative Culture in 1991 at the International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan.
DR. ANNA MARIA MARTELLONE is currently Professor of American History at the University of Florence and President of the Institute of North American Studies in Florence. She is the author of Una Little Italy nell' Atene d'America: la Comunita italiana di Boston dal 1880 al 1920 (1973) on the history of the Italian community of Boston, and the (co)editor of three other books on U.S. civic and political history, including Towards a New American Nation? Redefinitions and Reconstruction (1995). Originally trained as a historian of modern Europe, Dr. Martellone has published articles on British-American cultural and ideological ties in the late nineteenth century as well as an Italian translation and commentary on Edmund Burke's political writings. In addition, she has published extensively on questions related to immigration in the United States, ethnicity, and national identity. While at the University of Iowa, she worked on a study of Contemporary American Historiography and American Identity: A Study of the Role of the Historian as Public Mentor. Anna Maria Martellone earned her doctorate in the humanities in 1953 at the University of Florence in Italy, and is a former Fulbright grantee.
DR. MAUREEN MONTGOMERY is currently the Chair of the American Studies Department at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand and a member of the Editorial Board of American Studies International. She is the author of Gilded Prostitution: Status, Money, and Transatlantic Marriages, 1870-1914 (1989) and Displaying Women: Spectacles of Leisure in Edith Wharton's New York (1998). Long active in American Studies and Women's Studies internationally, she also currently serves on the International Committee of the U.S. American Studies Association and on the foreign Board of Advisors of the Journal of Women's History. Dr. Montgomery obtained her Ph.D. in 1983 from the University of East Anglia before emigrating to New Zealand in 1986. While at the International Forum for U.S. Studies, she worked on a project entitled "Whiteness and Politeness: An Investigation of the Racialization of Civilization in the United States at the turn of the Century."
DR. KOLAWOLE OWOLABI is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. He is the author of Because of our Future: The Imperative of Environmental Ethics in Africa and of two forthcoming books: Issues and Problems in Philosophy and Avoiding Anarchy: Social Order and Social Justice in Africa. Dr. Owolabi has also published numerous articles on African philosophy, the philosophy of culture, and the philosophy of literature in a variety of academic journals and books. He earned his doctorate from the University of Lagos in 1989, and is a past recipient of a Federal Government scholarship and a research grant from the French Institute for Research in Africa. In 1993, he was a winner of the CODESRIA Governance Institute Programme. While at the International Forum for U.S. Studies, Dr. Owolabi worked on a project entitled "Cultural Identity, National Integration, and the Globalization Project: American Experience and the African Prospect."
DR. HAZEL ROWLEY (Ph.D. in French Literature; University of Adelaide, 1982) has recently been affiliated with the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard and the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe where she is completing a biography of Richard Wright. Dr. Rowley's interests include autobiographical writing, exile writing, protest writing, contemporary Australian literature, African American literature, and twentieth century women's writing. Her many publications reflect all of these interests. Her recent publications include From a Distance: Australian Writers and Cultural Displacement (co-edited with Wenche Ommundsen; Deakin University Press, 1996) and Christina Stead. A Biography (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1993; New York: Henry Holt, 1994; London: Secker & Warburg, 1995), which won the National Book Council Award in Australia and was named on the 1994 New York Times Notable Books list.
DR. CHRISTOPHER SAUNDERS is currently Associate Professor of History at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. A persistent interest in Dr. Saunders work has been to compare racial policies and practices in South Africa and the U.S. Specifically, this interest has lead to a comparative study of the origins of racial segregation in Cape Town and New Orleans, a topic explored in the article "Racial Segregation, Ethnicity and Execeptionalism: the Cape Town Case" (South African Historical Journal, 32,1995). He has also published extensively on the history of race in South African history and his books include titles such as Writing History: South Africa's Urban Past and Other Essays (1992) The Making of the South African Past: Major Historians on Race and Class (1988) and Historical Dictionary of South Africa (1983). In addition, Dr. Saunders has also edited and co-edited several collections and he is the author of numerous articles published in African, British and U.S. journals. Dr. Saunders earned his doctorate at St. Anthony's College, Oxford in 1972, and is a former Fulbright visiting professor.
DR. MOSHE SHOKEID (Ph.D. in Social Anthropology; University of Manchester, 1968) is currently a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Shokeid's interests and fieldwork have carried him from Nicaragua to North Africa to New York City as he has studied the effects and processes of immigration, cultural displacement, and ethnicity, particularly within Israel. At the University of Iowa, Dr. Shokeid investigated "The Evolution of Gay Space and Gay Institutions in America." Having already completed his research at the Lesbian and Gay Community Service Center in Greenwich Village, Shokeid spent the spring writing and collating his research. His project "aims to trace the development of that Center, analyze the purpose of participation in its varied activities and the meaning it has in the lives of participants." Beyond this specific discussion, Dr. Shokeid also hopes that this research will "identify significant developments in the position of social minorities in the United States and, by implication, suggest the future of similar minorities in other countries." Among Shokeid's publications are The Dual Heritage: Immigrants from the Atlas Mountains in an Israeli Village (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971) (winner of the 1974 Ben-Zvi Prize), The Generation of Transition: Continuity and Change among North African Immigrants (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1977), Children of Circumstances: Israeli Emigrants in New York (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), A Gay Synagogue in New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
DR. JOHN STRATTON is currently Professor of Cultural Studies in the School of Communication and Cultural Studies at Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia and a member of the Executive Board of the Australian Cultural Studies Association. He is the author of Coming Out Jewish: Constructing Amibvalent Identities (2000), Race Daze: Australia in Identity Crisis (1998), The Desirable Body: Cultural Fetishism and the Erotics of Consumption (1996), The Young Ones: Working Class Culture, Consumption and the Category of Youth (1992), Writing Sites (1990), and The Virgin Text: Fiction, Sexuality, and Ideology (1987) as well as numerous articles on national identity, tourism and capitalism, the status of cultural studies, and Jews and multiculturalism in Australia. At the present he is collaborating on a 3-year project "Reimagining Asians in Multicultural Australia" funded by the Australian Research Council, and working on a project on the postmodern experience of "Jewishness." While at the University of Iowa, he worked on a project entitled "The Promised Land: Developing a Comparative Understanding of the Circumstance of Jews in the U.S. and in Australia in the Postmodern World." Jon Stratton earned his doctorate in sociology and cultural studies in 1978 at Essex University in England.
DR. SONIA TORRES is Associate Professor of English Language Literatures and Hispanic Literatures at the Institute of Letters, Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is also former president of the Brazilian Association of American Studies, and is currently Vice-President of the International American Studies Association. As an IFUSS Fellow during spring semester 2002, Dr. Torres taught a special six-week course titled "America: Crossed Gazes, Close Encounters," which focused on different national identity discourses as they are defined through representations of space, such as the domestic sphere, "contact zones," metropolitan spaces, and the open road. Readings for the course included novels, short stories, poems and essays by Carson McCullers, Clarice Lispector, Paule Marshall, Karen Tei Yamashita, Jamaica Kincaid, Rolando Hinojosa, Ana Castillo, Silviano Santiago, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Paul Auster, Rubem Fonseca and Julio Cortázar. Films screened in the course included Lone Star (US), Central Station (Brazil), Highway 61 (Canada) and Four Days in September (Brazil). In addition to teaching this course during her time as an IFUSS Fellow, Dr. Torres also delivered a talk entitled "Remembering the Alamo, Dismembering the Cowboy" as part of the American Studies Floating Friday lecture series.
DR. TATIANA VENEDIKTOVA is currently Professor in the World Literature Department of Moscow University and a member of the Board of the Russian Association of American Studies. A specialist in American poetry and literature, she is the author of four books: The Poetry of Walt Whitman (1982); The Art of Poetry in America: Modern Phase (1989); Self-Made Man: The Experience of American Culture (1993); and Finding the Voice: National Poetic Tradition in America (1994). Dr. Venediktova earned her doctorate in World Literature in 1990 at Moscow University where she has long served on the Council of American Studies. While at the International Forum for U.S. Studies, she worked on a project entitled "Conversation in American: Literary Tradition as a Communication Pact."
DR. YU JIANHUA (Ph.D. in American Studies; University of East Anglia, 1991) is currently a Professor of English at Shanghai International Studies University, and is the Dean of the School of International Commercial Law. Dr. Yu has published extensively on American literature (particularly twentieth century American novels), as well as New Zealand and Chinese literature. His interest has repeatedly been drawn to representations of the cultural confrontations between immigrant/native groups as seen in the writings of immigrants. For the duration of this fellowship Dr. Yu continued his work entitled "A Look at the Exertion of Ethnicity on Leftist Ideology in some Immigrant Writers in the early Decades of the Twentieth Century" for an upcoming book entitled The High Tide in American Literature: Social and Cultural Events and American Literature in the 1920s and 1930s. Dr. Yu contends that the "cultural roots" of writers such as Abraham Cahan, Michael Gold and John Reed, "rather than their immigrant status in America, played a vital role in shaping the radical ideology in their writings." Dr. Yu, a member of the editorial boards of Foreign Language World and Journal of English-Chinese Contrastive Studies, includes in his publications An Introductory Criticism of Twenty Best-Known American Novels (Shanghai: Foreign Language Education Press, 1989) and A Survey of New Zealand Literature (Shanghai: Foreign Language Education Press, 1994), for which Dr. Yu was awarded the China University-Press Association Book Award in 1995.
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IFUSS Associated Scholars
DR. SABINE BROECK is Vice President for International Relations and Professor of American Studies at the University of Bremen, with a major emphasis on Gender Studies and African-American Studies. Her publications include White Amnesia - Black Memory? American Women's Writing and History. (Lang, Frankfurt/New York 1999) and Der entkolonisierte Koerper. Die Protagonistin in der afroamerikanischen weiblichen Erzähltradition der 30 bis 80er Jahre with Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/New York 1988 as well as various articles in Amerikastudien/American Studies, in American journals including Callaloo, and in German and American anthologies. Her current research focuses on comparative aspects of the Black Diaspora in the 'New World' and Europe, particularly in Germany, and on American-African-European transatlantic literary and cultural relations in the modern and postmodern context. Currently, her research focuses on two areas: the complicated and complex relationship between Enlightenment and the slave trade; as well as the mediation/reception of the Black Diaspora in Germany. She teaches American Studies with a strong gender/race focus at the University of Bremen, and is rather interested in options for international cooperation in American Studies. She also participates in the development of a new internationally advertised MA program "Intercultural Studies" that will start in winter 2003. Dr. Broeck visited the University of Iowa from during the spring of 2002 to discuss possibilities for establishing transnational collaborative research projects with IFUSS.
DR. LESLEY MARX is a Professor of Literature at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research and teaching interests include American and South African culture, with a particular focus on literature, film, and history. Dr. Marx met with the IFUSS delegation on their trip to South Africa during the summer of 2001 and returned to the University of Iowa in the spring of 2002 to participate in the Crossing Borders Convocation where she delivered a paper entitled “Keep it Country: The Americanization of My Father.”
MARIA EUGENIA MORALES is a professor of Political Science and chair of the North American Studies Program at the University of Chile. She is the current president of the Chilean Association for Canadian Studies and a past president of the Chilean Association for North American Studies. Her publications include: "Handbook of Political Science" with Dr. Ricardo Isreal (1995), "Politicas de Innovacion: Tiempo de Innovar" (2000), and a number of journal articles covering topics from Bill Clinton to Latino voting patterns in the USA, from Chilean presidential elections to democracy in the USA, and from NAFTA to Planned Parenthood. In addition, Dr. Morales produces a radio program on politics and society for University of Chile radio titled, "Talking about the End of the Century.” Prof. Morales visited Iowa City during the summer of 2002 for an IFUSS-sponsored research residency.
DR. MAKARAND PARANJAPE is Professor of English in the Centre for Linguistics and English, School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Dr. Paranjape spent a month in Iowa City during the spring of 2002. During his time in Iowa City, Dr. Paranjape conducted research on American literature and gave a public lecture entitled “Re-Presenting India: Indian English and its Con/texts,” co-sponsored by IFUSS and the University of Iowa South Asian Studies Program. The lecture explored the differences between Indian English texts and those written in other Indian languages. Looking beyond the content of the images of India, Dr. Paranjape examined the process of mediation through which such imaging takes place.
Dr. Paranjape is the author of The Serene Flame, Playing the Dark God, and Used Book (poetry); This Time I Promise It'll Be Different and The Narrator (fiction); and Mysticism in Indian English Poetry, Decolonization and Development, and Towards a Poetics of the Indian English Novel (criticism). The books he has edited include Indian Poetry in English, Sarojini Naidu: Selected Poetry and Prose, Nativism: Essays in Literary Criticism, The Best of Raja Rao, The Penguin Sri Aurobindo Reader, and In Diaspora: Theories, Histories, Texts.
DR. RADHE SHYAM SHARMA is Professor Emeritus of the Department of English and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Osmania University. He received his M.A. from Birmingham and his Ph.D. from Osmania University. One of the pioneers of American Studies in India, he has contributed to American Studies curriculum development in Indian universities and at the American Studies Research Center at Hyderabad. His research interests include the study of landscape and literature in America. He has edited several volumes, including The Closing of American Frontier (1994), Literature and Popular Culture (1990), and is the author of Anita Desai (1981), The Rainbow: A Study of Symbolic Mode in D. H. Lawrence’s Primitivism (1981), and The King and the Tyrant: A Study of Monarchy in King Lear (1983).
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IFUSS Affiliates
DR. EVA FEDERMAYER, Professor of American Studies at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary, conducted research at the University of Iowa during Spring, 2002. A Keller Foundation grant recipient and IFUSS Affiliate Scholar, she was able to research her specialty area of African American literature and culture while in Iowa. During her stay in Iowa City, Dr. Federmayer also delivered a lecture that was co-sponsored by The International Forum for U.S. Studies & the African American World Studies Program, “A ‘New Negro Woman’: Race, Gender, and Class in Jessie Fauset’s Plum Bun.”
DR. LILEA RILEA is Dean of Languages at Moldova State University. Dr. Rilea came to the University of Iowa as a Fulbright grant recipient and IFUSS Affiliate during the spring of 2002. During her research residency, Dr. Rilea worked on developing an American Studies curriculum for a new M.A. program in American Studies at Moldova State University.
