Student Directory 2024-2025

  Iman Al Kaisy, PhD
iman.alkaisy[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: Arab Spring, Arab intellectual history, autobiography and testimonial writing, Arab women’s writings, Middle Eastern politics
—Languages: English, Arabic, French

Gianmarco Bocchi, PhD
gianmarco.bocchi[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: text-image relationship; theories of photography; pictorial/photographic ekphrasis; photo-texts and issues of spatiality; narratology; visual rhetoric; 20th- and 21st-century Italian and Latin-American literature; memory studies; W.G. Sebald
—Languages: Italian, English, Spanish, Portuguese (reading), Latin

Colby Chubbs, PhD
colby.chubbs[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: Hegel and post-Hegelian thought, especially the transmission of his philosophy amongst his schools as well as Heine and Marx and Engels; Marxist thought; psychoanalysis; German literature, especially Kleist, Heine, Kafka, and Brecht.
—Languages: English, German, French

Rayyan Dabbous, PhD
rayyan.dubbous[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: 19th c. French literature (Sand), psychoanalysis (Andreas-Salomé), political theory (Arendt), queer theory (Butler), cybernetics and communication (Wiener, Shannon, Bateson), history and philosophy of science (Hacking), Arab culture and Middle Eastern politics
—Languages: English, French, Arabic

Ran Deng, PhD
ran.deng[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Collaborative programs in Women & Gender Studies and Sexual Diversity Studies
—Research interests: consent and reproduction in the transpacific context, visual studies, political philosophy, queer aesthetic theory
—Languages: German, Mandarin, Japanese (in progress), French (in progress)

Sophie Feng, PhD
sophie.feng[at]mail.utoronto.ca
SSHRC Doctoral Scholar
—Research interests: Francophone literatures, Canadian literature, diasporic literature and theory, transnational feminisms, anticolonial theory and literature, vulnerability studies, cultural and literary theory, early modern women’s poetry, gender and sexuality studies, affect theory, 20th-century anarcho-feminism in China
—Languages: English, French, Chinese (Mandarin), Italian (reading), German (reading)

Anna Foran, PhD
anna.foran[at]mail.utoronto.ca
SSHRC Doctoral Fellow
—Research interests: 20th century art and architecture, abstraction, literary theory, media and information studies
—Languages: French, Creative Research, German (reading)

Zichuan Gan, PhD
z.gan[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Collaborative program in Women & Gender Studies
—Research interests: speculative fiction, critical theory, Chinese/Sinophone literatures, gender studies, digital media, epistemology, environmental humanities
—Languages: Chinese/Mandarin, English, French

Enzo Gavazzi-Renaud, MA
enzo.gavazzirenaud[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: Aesthetics & Politics; German Idealism (Schelling & Hegel); Psychoanalysis; Modern Japanese Literature & Philosophy; Proust
—Languages: French; Japanese; Mandarin Chinese; German (reading); Spanish (reading); Italian (reading)

Ben Hjorth, PhD
ben.hjorth[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Connaught International Doctoral Scholar
—Research interests: Theatre history & performance studies, early modern English poetry and performance (Shakespeare, Milton), 19th- and 20th-century Continental philosophy, particularly German and French (Hegel, Marx, Benjamin, Adorno, Derrida), psychoanalysis (Freud, Lacan), Caribbean anti-/decolonial literature, history and theory (Fanon, Césaire, Glissant, C.L.R. James, Wynter, Brathwaite)
—Languages: English, French, German, Spanish (in progress)
—Non-literary specialization: Philosophy

Josephine Houle, MA

josephine.houle[at]mail.utoronto.ca

Collaborative Program in Jewish Studies

—Research interests: Critical theory; deconstruction; contemporary poetry, poetics, and fiction; Hannah Arendt; Marxist philosophy; contemporary Indigenous literatures and philosophies; contemporary phenomenology (esp. Emmanuel Levinas); liberation philosophy; world literatures; statelessness; assimilation; postcolonialism; multiculturalism

—Languages: English, French, Spanish (reading)

Tanya Humeniuk, PhD
tanya.humeniuk[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: Brecht, Benjamin, Bersani, Berlant, Bataille, Barthes, Blanchot, Beckett, Baudelaire, Baudrillard, Blocker, photography, text-image relations, theatre and performance, sexuality and gender studies, ethics and aesthetics, psychoanalysis, 20th- and 21st-century continental philosophy
—Languages: English, German, French, Spanish (in progress)
—Non-literary specialization: Philosophy

William Hunt, PhD
william.hunt[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: philosophies of immanence (esp. Baruch Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze); 20th Century Black American Music (bebop through hiphop); Black American Literature (feminisms, prison abolition movements, Fred Moten, Nathaniel Mackey, etc.); methods and theories of improvisation and transcription.
—Languages: English, Creative Research (piano), French (in progress)

 

Ben Koonar, PhD

ben.koonar[at]mail.utoronto.ca

—Research interests: Contemporary literature, portraiture, translation, HIV/AIDS, queer theory

—Languages: English, French, Spanish (reading)

 

Hong Liu, PhD
ishong.liu[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: Early modern theatre, history plays, tragedy, and comedy in philosophy, aesthetics, material culture, text-image relationship, iconoclasm and iconography
—Languages: Chinese, English, Spanish, German, Latin (in progress)

 

Isabella MacKay, MA 

i.mackay[at]mail.utoronto.ca

CGS-M Award

Collaborative Specialization in Book History and Print Culture

—Research interests: Benjamin, Arendt, Modernist literature, contemporary literature, queer theory, Early Modern theatre

—Languages: English, French, Spanish (in progress)

 

Gaia Malnati, PhD
gaia.malnati[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Collaborative program in Jewish Studies
—Research interests: orality, Holocaust testimonies, migrants’ performance, Paul Celan’s poetry, public theory
—Languages: Italian, English, German, French (reading), Yiddish (in progress)

 

Ben Meyerson, PhD
ben.meyerson[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research interests: flamenco, medieval troubadour lyric, peninsular Spanish poetry, contemporary poetry and poetics, materialism and process philosophy (Spinoza, Simondon, Serres, Deleuze, etc.), medieval and early modern Jewish philosophy, diasporic ontologies, critiques of speculative realism, Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy, ineffability in sonic cultures
—Languages: English, Spanish, Medieval Occitan (reading), Hebrew (reading), French (reading)

 

Ido Moses, PhD
ido.moses[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Collaborative program in Jewish Studies
– Research Interests: 20th-century war novels, soldier-authors, Hebrew literature, history and literature, adaptation of experience, new media, post-ideological conflict, diary writing, POW experiences.
– Languages: Hebrew, English, German, French (reading)

Matthew Mucha, PhD
matthew.mucha[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Ontario Graduate Scholar
Collaborative programs in Diaspora & Transnational Studies and Women & Gender Studies
—Research Interests: contemporary Philippine literature, postwar Taiwan literature, 20th Century Polish literature, diasporic literatures, postcolonial theory, queer theory, trauma & memory studies
—Languages: English, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Taiwanese Hokkien, Tagalog, Polish, Italian (reading)

 

Graeme Myers, PhD
graeme.myers [at]mail.utoronto.ca
Collaborative Program in Jewish Studies
—Research interests: Latin American Literature, Contemporary Argentine poetry, Yiddish in Latin America, Mapuche poetry, translation
—Languages: Spanish, Yiddish, Portuguese (reading), French (reading)

 

Dominic Pizzolitto, PhD
dominic.pizzolitto[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research Interests: Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Continental Philosophy, Aesthetics, Modernism, Walter Benjamin, Baudelaire, Trauma Studies, Dramaturgy
—Languages: French, German

 

Suntisuk Prabunya, PhD

suntisuk.prabunya[at]mail.utoronto.ca

Connaught International Doctoral Scholar

—Research interests: Comparative modernisms; the historical and neo- avant-gardes (esp.  in interwar France and postwar US); Aesthetics; Comparative media aesthetics and media history (esp. textual and optical media); Visual culture and transdisciplinary study of the image (e.g., textual, anthropological, art-historical); cinema and media studies; modern intellectual history

—Languages: Thai, English, French, German (in progress)

Felix Roessler, PhD
felix.roessler[at]mail.utoronto.ca
—Research Interests: Poetry and Poetics, Disability Studies, Experimental Literature
—Languages: German, English, French, Spanish (reading), Russian (reading)

 

Sophie Ivanka Shields, PhD

sophie.shields[at]mail.utoronto.ca

Diaspora and Transnational Studies Collaborative Program

—Research Interests: Migration and Refugee Studies, Ukrainian Displaced Writers, Contemporary Ukrainian Literature, Postcolonial Theory, Caribbean Diasporic Literature and Theory (Stuart Hall, Édouard Glissant, David Chariandy)

—Languages: Ukrainian, French, German

 

Julian Stuart, PhD
julian.stuart[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Collaborative program in Jewish Studies
—Research interests: W.G. Sebald; Patrick Modiano; Walter Benjamin; Psychoanalysis (esp. Freud); Trauma and History; Temporality and Memory (esp. Postmemory); Continental Philosophy (esp. Heidegger and Kierkegaard); Modernism (esp. British and German)
—Languages: English, French, German (in progress)

Lily Tarba, PhD
lily.tarba[at]mail.utoronto.ca
– Research interests: literary representations of shame and honour; Northwest Caucasus; Russo-Circassian, Caucasian war; 18th- and 19th-century Russian poetry and prose; 19th-century Georgian poetry and prose.
– Languages: Russian, Georgian, French (reading)

 

Krystale Tremblay-Moll, PhD
krystale.tremblaymoll[at]mail.utoronto.ca
SSHRC and FRQSC Doctoral Fellow
—Research interests: Hispanic Caribbean Literature and cultural production, tourism studies, gender/sexuality studies, postcolonial studies, environmental humanities
—Languages: English, French, and Spanish

Ami Xherro, PhD
ami.xherro[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Research/Creation
—Research interests: experimental poetry & poetics, women’s life-writing & private space, embodied translation, idiosyncratic transcription practices
—Languages: Albanian, French, English

Updated September 12, 24