RESEARCH INTERESTS

Human Rights; Postcolonial & Globalization Theory; Postcolonial Literature (esp. Rwanda, Nigeria, West Africa, North Africa/Maghreb, Caribbean); Immigration & Cross Cultural Encounters; Affect, Trauma, Violence & Healing; Francophone Lit.; Czech Lit.; Translation; Cultural, Media & Gender Studies. 

FAVOURITE COURSES AT WLU (ones I created)

• EN 330: Global Issues & Contemp. Cultural Forms  (focuses on Human Rights Issues eg. Torture)
• EN 460h: Human Rights: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
• EN 309c: West African Literatures & Cultures
• EN 692w: The Witness & The Critic: The Documentary & Testimonial Genres
• EN 460l: Reading & Healing: Suffering, Literature & Medicine  

CURRENT PROJECTS

"Human Rights, Cultural Representations & Post-Genocide Rwanda." (SSHRC Grant 2008-2011).

My current work examines human rights issues in popular culture, especially in literary and cinematic representations of post-genocide Rwanda. As part of the project, I've created the Human Rights in the Humanities Website which includes a searchable database of materials on diverse human rights topics. I'm also writing a book on the cultural representations of Rwanda post-genocide -- both in the West and in Rwanda.  

PUBLICATIONS 

** NEW BOOK -- Hot off the Press!** 

• Translating Pain: Immigrant Suffering in Literature & Culture.

  University of Toronto Press, 2009.

Other Selected Publications

• Guest Editor. Special Issue on Post-Genocide Rwanda. Peace Review 21.3 (Fall 2009): 275-427.
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• “Itsembabwoko ‘à la française’? – Rwanda, Fiction and the Franco-African Imaginary.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 45.2 (March 2009): 162-175.
• 'but I find no place': Representing the Spaces of the Genocide in Rwanda," The Camp: Narratives of Internment and Displacement. Eds. Colman Hogan and Marta Marin-Domine. New York: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008. 196-224. 
•  'Ora na-azu nwa: The Figure of the Child in Third-Generation Nigerian Novels.' Research in African Literature. 39.2 (Summer 2008): 27-48. 
• "Torture Goes Pop!" Peace Review (Special Issue on Human Rights in Lit. & Film) 20.1 (Spring 2008): 22-30.
• "The Czech Émigré Experience of Return after 1989." The Slavonic and East European Review. 85.1 (January 2007): 47-78.
• “In The Maim of The Father: The Discourse of Disability in French-Maghrebi Immigrant Texts.” Disability Studies Quarterly. 25.4 (Fall 2005): http://www.dsq-sds.org/2005_fall_toc.html. 
• “Pathological Victims: The Discourse of Disease/Dis-Ease in Beur Texts.” French Literature Studies 32 (2005): 159-174.
• “In-Car-Ceration or Auto-Mobility?: Ethnic Minorities in the Space of the Car.” On the Move: Identity and Mobility. Ed. Krysztof Knauer and Tadeusz Rachwal. Bielsko-Biala: Wyedawnictwo ATH, 2005. 81-98.
• ”Naked Terror: Horrific, Aesthetic and Healing Images of Rape.” Cultural Expressions of Evil and Wickedness: Cult, Sex, Crime. Ed. Terrie Waddell. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, 2003. 127-56.
• “'Word Made Flesh': Czech Women's Fiction from Communism to Post-Communism." Journal of International Women's Studies (JIWS) 4.2 (May 2003): 81-98.
• Translation. Signs and Symptoms by Robert Gál. Prague: Twisted Spoon Press, 2003.