Literature

George T. Amis, Emeritus

Murray Baumgarten
Dickens, Victorian literature and culture, the Bible, translation, modern Jewish writing, the Holocaust

Harry Berger Jr., Emeritus

Gabriel Berns, Emeritus

Margaret R. Brose
Italian literature, 19th- and 20th-century poetry and poetics, the novel, Romanticism, medieval literature, gender studies, autobiography

Julianne Burton-Carvajal
Twentieth- and 21st-century Latin(o) American visual media, particularly film; melodrama as a transnational form; gender and authorship; history, cultures, and representations of California, particularly the Central Coast

Robert M. Durling, Emeritus

John M. Ellis, Emeritus

Carla Freccero
Renaissance studies, French and Italian language and literature, early modern European history and literature, postcolonial theories and literature, contemporary feminist theories and politics, queer theory, pre- and early modern studies, contemporary fiction by women of color in the U.S., identity politics as political formations

Pascale Gaitet
Nineteenth- and 20th-century French literature, sociolinguistics, political history, Celine, Genet

Mary-Kay Gamel
Performance studies, ancient Mediterranean performance, Greek and Latin literature, film, feminist approaches to literature and performance

Susan Gillman
Nineteenth-century American literature and culture; theories of culture, race, and gender; world literature and cultural studies

Wlad Godzich
Theory of literature, emergent literature, globalization and culture, European integration

James B. Hall, Emeritus

John O. Jordan
Dickens, Victorian literature and culture, the English novel, literature of South Africa, narrative theory

Norma Klahn
Latin American literary and cultural studies (specialization: Mexico), Chicano/Latino literature and culture from a cross-border perspective, popular culture and the novel, poetics and politics, fiction and history, nation and narration, cultural and feminist theories

H. M. Leicester Jr.
Psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, gender theories, theory of cultural change; cultural studies and popular culture: opera, film, American country music

John P. Lynch
Greek and Latin literatures; Plato and Aristotle; Lucretius, Virgil, and Petronius; ancient education

Nathaniel E. Mackey
Twentieth-century American literature, Afro-American literature, creative writing

Helene Moglen
The English novel; feminist, cultural, and psychoanalytic theory

Madeline Moore, Emerita

Marta Morello-Frosch, Emerita

Priscilla W. Shaw, Emerita

Paul N. Skenazy
Contemporary U.S. fiction, popular culture (especially detective fiction), practical criticism and reviews, oral history, the teaching of literature, American writers abroad, journalism

Greta Slobin, Emerita

S. Page Stegner, Emeritus

Richard Terdiman
Nineteenth- and 20th-century French and European literature and culture, literary and cultural theory, contemporary critical theory, cultural globalization

Thomas A. Vogler, Emeritus

Michael J. Warren, Emeritus

Rob Wilson
Transnational and postcolonial literatures, especially as located in Asia/Pacific emergences as posited against American empire of globalization; cultural poetics of America; the sublime, Longinus to Hiroshima; mongrel poetics of experimental writing, especially poetry

Associate Professor

Karen Bassi
Greek and Latin literatures, Greek drama, Hellenistic poetics, feminist interpretation, literary and cultural theory, pre- and early modern studies

Louis Chude-Sokei
Modern and contemporary African American literature, Caribbean and West African literatures, post-colonial literature and theory, modernism, black diaspora, cultural studies, popular culture

Christopher Connery
World literature and cultural studies, globalism and geographical thought, the 1960s, Marxism, pre-modern and modern Chinese cultural studies, cultural revolution

Jody Greene
Seventeenth- and 18th-century British and French literature and culture, pre- and early modern studies, early modern colonialisms, gay and lesbian cultural studies, gender studies, history of authorship, history of the book

Kirsten Silva Gruesz
Comparative Americas studies, Chicano/Latino literatures and cultures, 19th-century U.S. literature, poetry and translation, genre theory

Margo Hendricks
Early modern English literature and culture; theories and discourses of race, gender, drama, and theory; women playwrights; pre- and early modern studies

Earl Jackson Jr.
Japanese intellectual history, medieval Japanese literature, modern Japanese literature, Japanese cinema, semiotics, psychoanalysis, Korean cinema, Korean language and culture, Buddhist philosophy, and film theory

Sharon Kinoshita
Intercultural relations in 12th- and 13th-century literature, Mediterranean studies, globalism, postcolonial theory, world literature and cultural studies

Lourdes Martínez-Echazábal
Latin American and Caribbean literatures, Afro-Latin American literatures, cultures, and societies; found[n]ational narratives; Brazilian literature; literatures of Cuba and the Cuban diaspora; critical race theory

Tyrus Miller
Modernist, avant-garde, and postmodernist literature; the interrelations of the arts in the 20th century; aesthetics; cinema and film theory; the Frankfurt School; philosophy and social theory; contemporary poetry and language arts

Loisa Nygaard
Eighteenth- and 19th-century German literature, German romanticism, European and American romantic fiction, Goethe

Micah E. Perks
Reading and writing contemporary fiction, memoir, historical fiction; gender, literature and culture; alternative communities

Juan Poblete
Latin(o) American literatures; transnational/global cultures (literature, radio, film); Latin(o) American cultural studies; 19th-century studies; the history of reading practices

Daniel Selden
Afroasiatic languages and literatures, Greek and Latin, Hellenistic culture, the classical tradition, history of criticism, literary theory

Deanna Shemek
Italian literature and cultural history, Renaissance studies, early modern popular culture, narrative (early modern to contemporary), women’s studies, literary theory

Karen Tei Yamashita
History and anthropology of Japanese immigration to Brazil, Asian American literature, modern fiction, playwriting

Assistant Professor

Vilashini Cooppan
Postcolonial studies, comparative and world literature, literatures of slavery and diaspora, globalization studies, cultural theory of race and ethnicity

Lecturer

George P. Hitchcock, Emeritus

Professor

Michael H. Cowan (American Studies)
American cultural theory and history, history of American studies, symbolic expression in American life, urban cultural studies, American literary studies, studies in the institutional culture of higher education

Teresa de Lauretis (History of Consciousness)
Semiotics, psychoanalysis, feminism, film theory, literary theory, and queer studies

Charles W. Hedrick Jr. (History)
Greek social, cultural, and intellectual history; Greek religion; Greek historiography; Greek archaeology

Akasha Hull, Emerita

Gary B. Miles, Emeritus

Forrest G. Robinson (American Studies)
American literature and culture, the American novel (Twain, Melville, Faulkner), regional literature, California studies, popular culture, and American cultural theory

David Swanger (Education and Creative Writing)
Aesthetic education, educational philosophy, creative writing, poetry, poetics, literary theory

Lecturer

Charles Atkinson (Creative Writing/Poetry)
Director, Learning Assistance Program in Writing; creative writing, poetry

Roswell Spafford (Writing)
Journalism, media criticism, fiction, poetry, service learning, educational partnerships, community studies