Who I am:

I am an Associate Professor of English at the University of Florida, where I am also an affiliate faculty member in UF’s Center for European Studies. I work primarily in comparative children’s literature, comics, and visual studies, and I am particularly concerned with how works of popular culture depict intergenerational memory and trauma. My first book, Second-Generation Memory and Contemporary Children’s Literature (Routledge 2013) received the Children’s Literature Association Book Award in 2015. I have since collaborated with scholars in my field on publications on memory and trauma in global children’s literature and comics with an emphasis on Eastern and Central Europe. I am currently working with Dr. Mateusz Świetlicki (Dr. Hab. University of Wrocław) on the first Anglophone introduction to Ukrainian children’s literature.  When I take time away from my research and writing, I enjoy swimming, attending events at my local library, and traveling to new places where I might install myself at local cafés.

My Fulbright grant focuses on:

I am in the process of completing my second monograph, entitled Through Western Eyes: Representations of Eastern Europe in Western Comics, 1989-2022. This project argues that the form of comics has played a particularly significant role in both reaffirming and contesting contemporary Western images of Eastern (and Central) Europe – not only because it uniquely draws on the affective combination of words and images, but also because its popular appeal involves its transmission through such various genres as memoirs, journalistic reportage, travel narratives, fantasy, and superhero narratives that allegorize global cultural tensions. During my stay at the University of Wrocław, I will write my final chapter on contemporary comics travelogs produced by journalists, visiting artists, and (grand-)children of immigrants in search of their European “roots.” Mindful of the ways that works of Western European and North American travel literature have historically depicted Eastern and Central Europe as a European “Other” on which they have claimed their identities, I will teach a course on travel literature at the University of Wrocław in which I will invite Polish students to respond critically to the logic that underpins these texts. Additionally, I will consult with art professors at this university and others in Poland, as well as with comics producers in Poland, in order to study how Central/Eastern European artists productively counter stereotypical Western depictions of this geo-political region.

I decided to apply for Fulbright because:

My research has a particularly personal component because I grew up in Ukrainian and Polish diasporic communities in Baltimore, Maryland. Moreover, in the past decade, I have established a close working relationship with colleagues at the University of Wrocław, whose program in children’s literature is as renowned in Europe as the University of Florida’s own program is in the US. After multiple visits to Wrocław, including one as a Fulbright Specialist in 2021, I have come to regard this city as a second home where I might best be able to complete my research project within a vibrant intellectual community. Moreover, since Wrocław, like many cities in Poland, has been very hospitable to Ukrainian refugees, I hope that my stay there might enable me to enrich my study of children’s literature and comics with direct interactions with Ukrainian and Polish young people. 

After completing my Fulbright grant, I would like to:

I hope that the publication of my book might bring greater awareness to the ways that Western European and North American writers and artists have envisioned post-Cold War-era Central and Eastern Europe – as well as the ways that writers and artists within this geo-political region have responded critically to such representations. Moreover, I would like to sustain and develop a partnership between the University of Wrocław and the University of Florida that might further enhance the transnational study of children’s literature, comics, and visual studies.