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What Graduate Students Are Reading

Daniel Martini is reading "Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds? Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Aesthetics, Fiction and the Arts" by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides (2001), which can be found in De Gruyter's Handbook of Empirical Literary Studies (2021).
 
This piece informs Daniel's dissertation on the affordances of literature, specifically the means by which texts communicate through non-semantic stylistic features like parallelisms. 

Naz Keynejad is reading Persian poet Nur ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman Jami's "Yusuf and Zulaikha" (15th century CE).

The story of Yusuf and Zulaikha appears in Jami’s Haft Awrang (Persian: هفت اورنگ‎, meaning "Seven Thrones"). According to the story, Yusuf’s arresting beauty captures the hearts of all of the women he encounters. Zulaikha, unable to quell her thoughts of Yusuf, attempts to seduce him, but he rejects her advances until they meet again and marry many years later. 

Graham Feyl is re-reading/revisiting There's a disco ball between us: a theory of Black gay life (2021) by Jafari S. Allen. Lyrical and genre transforming/bending, Allen presents an ethnographic and intellectual history of what he calls "Black gay habits of mind"  as a way of renarrating and reconsidering Black, gay histories. Moving across various temporalities and spaces, and using pieces from visual art, performance and literature, Allen considers how Black gay life has resisted and survived under systems of oppression through community, radical joy and care. Graham reaches for Allen's text because of his prose and methodological approach to history as flashes that are still present today. The text itself acts as an example of community: first names are used, there are reminders to take deep breaths, and it is a chorus of voices that come together to formulate alongside Allen. 
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Surojit Kayal is reading The Marvelous Clouds by John Durham Peters.

In The Marvelous Clouds, the author argues that though we often think of media as environments, the reverse is just as true—environments are media. Drawing from ideas implicit in media philosophy, Peters argues that media are more than carriers of messages: they are the very infrastructures combining nature and culture that allow human life to thrive.  

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Richard Nedjat-Haiem is reading Broadcasting Change: Arabic Media as a Catalyst for Liberalism by Joseph Baude.

Amid civil war, failing states, and terrorism, Arab liberals are growing in numbers and influence. Advocating a culture of equity, tolerance, good governance, and the rule of law, they work through some of the region’s largest media outlets to spread their ideals within the culture. This book analyzes this trend by portraying the intersection of media and politics in two Arab countries with seismic impact on the region and beyond. 

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James Nichols is reading Exorcismos de la memoria: Políticas y poéticas de la melancolía en la España de la transición by Alberto Medina Dominguez. 

Through an interdisciplinary approach in which the analysis of philosophical, filmic, literary and political texts coexist, the book deals with a reading hypothesis of the period in which the lines of demarcation between the aesthetic and the political are blurred.

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Ursula Friedman is reading The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China, edited by Wilt L. Idema and Beata Grant.

Because of the burgeoning interest in the study of both premodern and modern women in China, this anthology offers a glimpse of women's writings not only in poetry but in other genres as well, including essays and letters, drama, religious writing, and narrative fiction.

Rachel Feldman is reading Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest (Hebrew: פתאום בעומק היער: אגדה‎) by Amos Oz. 

A dark, yet gen­tle, "fable for all ages" about silence, tolerance, and the role of language, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in Hebrew in 2005. The narrative is based in a mysterious town without animals or birds. Legend tells that they have been spirited away by the Pied Piper figure of Nehi, the mountain demon. Two children set out into the forest to find out more. 

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GCLR Event Proposal 

As we begin working to fill our calendar for the upcoming academic year, students and faculty, please submit your event suggestions for the GCLR by completing this form. All submissions will be reviewed by the GCLR board.

5/12 GCLR Academic Writing and Development Workshop
This professional writing workshop is designed to equip graduate students with the skills necessary to craft compelling cover letters and persuasive grant proposals. Through targeted instruction and hands-on practice, students will learn to articulate their qualifications, research interests, and professional goals in clear, concise, and impactful ways. Emphasis will be placed on understanding audience expectations, aligning documents with institutional or funding priorities, and developing a confident professional voice
 
Cover letters and grant proposals are essential tools for academic and career advancement. Whether applying for jobs, fellowships, or research funding, graduate students, and early career scholars, must be able to present themselves and their work effectively. This workshop provides practical strategies to help students navigate these high-stakes writing genres with clarity and confidence.
 
Time: Monday May 12th, 2025
 
Place: Phelps 6206C
 
RSVP here!
4/14 Ethnographic Film Workshop with Prof. Meghanne Barker
Prof. Barker will be holding a workshop for faculty and graduate students who are interested in ethnographic film and filmmaking. She will discuss fieldwork on film culture in the former Yugoslavia, which includes following, participating in and organising filmmaking workshops at film clubs and other film camps in the region. She will also facilitate an interactive workshop on our own films in progress. Please see the attached flyer for more details. 
 
Time: Monday April 14th, 10am-12:30pm 
 
Place: HSSB 2001A
4/14 Prof. Meghanne Barker (UCL) "Throw Your Voice: Suspended Animations in Kazakhstani Childhoods"
Please join us for this event in which prof. Barker will be discussing her recently published ethnography of childhood in Kazakhstan, Throw Your Voice.
 
Time: Monday, April 14, 2025 3-4:30PM
 

Place: HSSB 6020 

5/16 Prof. Ilya Kliger (NYU) in Conversation with Prof. Sven Spieker (UCSB)

Join us for a conversation between professors Sven Spieker and Ilya Kliger on Kliger's new book, Sovereign Fictions: Poetics and Politics in the Age of Russian Realism

The nineteenth-century novel is generally assumed to owe its basic social imaginaries to the ideologies, institutions, and practices of modern civil society. In Sovereign Fictions, Ilya Kliger asks what happens to the novel when its fundamental sociohistorical orientation is, as in the case of Russian realism, toward the state. Kliger explores Russian realism’s distinctive construals of sociality through a broad range of texts from the 1830s to the 1870s, including major works by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Pushkin, Lermontov, Goncharov, and Turgenev, and several lesser-known but influential books of the period.
 
Time: May 16th at 12pm
 
Place: Zoom
4/11 Prof. Svitlana Biedarieva "Resistance and Decoloniality in Ukrainian Contemporary Art"

This lecture focuses on the decolonial changes that Ukrainian art has undergone in the last eleven years, following the beginning of Russia's war against Ukraine in 2014 and subsequently, the full-scale invasion in 2022. It examines how collective resistance to Russia's war against Ukraine shaped the reinterpretations of contested memory and divided identities of the past. The focus on politically and socially engaged art practices allows for tracing important societal transformations through the lens of resilience and a quest for epistemic justice. The lecture draws on research findings from two recently published books: the edited volume Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance (Routledge, 2024) and the monograph Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian-Russian Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).

Time: Friday April 11th, 5-6pm

Place: Zoom

4/11 "Coralations": A Talk by Prof. Melody Jue (English, UCSB)

Please join us for the next entry in the GCLR co-sponsored Interdiscplinary Brown Bag Lunch Series, this time featuring prof. Melody Jue who will be presenting on her newest book Coralations. A description of the talk can be found here. 

Remember to RSVP for a provided free lunch!

Time: Friday April 11th, 12-2pm

Place: Phelps 6206C and on Zoom

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