Candidates: 2024 MSA Board Elections

Standing for: A. 2nd Vice President

    • Jeremy Colangelo
    • Name: Jeremy Colangelo
    • Candidate Statement:
      Lecturer, The University of Western Ontario Broadly speaking, the challenges facing the MSA take two forms: 1) the deficiency of funding and employment opportunities caused by academic austerity and neoliberalization, and 2) the continuing barriers to access and resources suffered by minoritized scholars, including queer scholars, disabled scholars, and scholars of colour. As Second Vice President, I would seek every available means of ameliorating these problems – both by seeking new resources and opportunities for these and other marginalized groups, and by targeting financial, practical, and cultural impediments to access within the MSA itself. I would push for the greater incorporation of digital and remote conference attendance to reduce barriers to scholars impacted by disability, geographic isolation, or a lack of funding, and I would support locating and booking future conferences in locations which are both less expensive and more accessible. I would also expand the conference’s individual paper stream, which makes it more accessible by reducing the need for a pre-existing academic peer network (a need which advantages people with greater social privilege). My organizational experience includes editing an essay collection and a Print Plus cluster, serving on the board of trustees for my faculty union, and serving as chief editor of Chiasma, a peer-reviewed, graduate student-run philosophy journal.
    • Amanda Golden
    • Name: Amanda Golden
    • Candidate Statement:
      Associate Professor of English, New York Institute of Technology As Second Vice President, I would take an active role in shaping the Modernist Studies Association’s future as a vibrant, diverse, and inclusive organization. I bring experience as co-chair of the local organizing committee for the 2023 Brooklyn Conference, postponed from 2020. I also served on the Book Prize Committee for Editions, Anthologies, and Collections in 2021 and on the Program Committee three times. Since 2004, I have been a frequent presenter and organizer of sessions at MSA conferences. My scholarship as an Associate Professor of English at New York Institute of Technology has focused on modernism and twentieth-century literature. In 2020, I published the monograph Annotating Modernism: Marginalia and Pedagogy from Virginia Woolf to the Confessional Poets. I am co-editing The Poems of Sylvia Plath, a new, scholarly, annotated edition of Plath’s Collected Poems, with Karen V. Kukil, for Faber & Faber (2025) and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additionally, I have held leadership and advisory roles in modernist organizations. I was Vice President of the International Virginia Woolf Society (2021-3) and am on the International Advisory Board of the Modernist Archives and Publishing Project (MAPP) and the Editorial Board of Bloomsbury Academic’s Modernist Archives Series. Website: Agoldenphd.com
    • Robert Volpicelli
    • Name: Robert Volpicelli
    • Candidate Statement:
      Associate Professor, Randolph-Macon College I’m a scholar of modernist literature and culture who has developed a number of secondary interests (disability studies, postcolonial studies, and the sociology of literature, chief among them) that are vital to our current field. As my C.V. shows, I’ve written on a wide range of modernist authors (most notably, in the contexts of Irish, British, and African American literature) and placed much of this writing in important scholarly venues. I’ve been a regular attendee at the annual Modernist Studies Association Conference since 2010, and I’ve participated in many different levels of the conference (panels, roundtables, and seminars as a leader and a participant). My time as a member of MSA governance would be steered by my deep commitment to modernist studies as an important site for understanding the literature and culture of both the last century and the present one. I would be committed to furthering the accessibility and diversity of our field in every sense, and I would also be invested in joining many of my colleagues in the effort to imagine new, more sustainable practices for the profession of literary studies.

Standing for: B. Interdisciplinary Studies Chair

    • John Hoffmann
    • Name: John Hoffmann
    • Candidate Statement:
      Lecturer, Philipps-Universität Marburg I am a lecturer at the Philipps-Universität Marburg, and this fall I’ll be moving to Chapman University as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature and the Humanities. My first book Modernism, Aesthetics and Anthropology (Cambridge, forthcoming) is a fairly interdisciplinary affair that studies the emergence of concepts such as “race” and “Volk” in aesthetic theory and the arts from the German Enlightenment to World War II. My work ranges between literature and film, and I’ve published articles in Film History, Modernism/ modernity, New Literary History and elsewhere. I’m also the founder and current co-organizer of the Film Studies SIG, which has now grown to over 100 members. As Interdisciplinary Chair, I would be eager to support the current SIGs while looking to add new groups as a way of encouraging interdisciplinary offerings at the MSA. One possibility would be an Art History SIG, which would complement the Film SIG by bringing more visual arts to the conference. Finally, I would look forward to collaborating with other board members. My years in Germany would allow me to work with the International Rep, and I would be keen to help the Contingent Faculty Rep encourage non-tenure-track scholars.
    • Jonathan Najarian
    • Name: Jonathan Najarian
    • Candidate Statement:
      Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric, Colgate University As a scholar whose research and teaching moves between the boundaries of literary modernism, art history, and visual culture studies, I’m well-suited to serve as Interdisciplinary Chair of the MSA, and to represent the interests of scholars working across disciplines. I am the editor of Comics and Modernism: History, Form, and Culture (2024), a project that was necessarily an interdisciplinary undertaking. Comics is a medium that insists that readers move across and between the boundaries between word and image; the essays in Comics and Modernism, moreover, come from scholars working from backgrounds in literary studies, art history, film and media studies, and textual culture studies and print history. My scholarly interests extend beyond comics studies, and I am continually motivated by questions of formal uncertainty: are books that are written and illustrated by painters, such as Rockwell Kent’s provocative travel narratives, properly the domain of literature or art history? What aesthetic sensibilities do we bring to, say, the richly illustrated journals of Frieda Kahlo, which seamlessly weave words and images, or the wordless narratives of Lynd Ward, which tell sophisticated, elaborate stories entirely through the progression of images? Below are publications that attest to the interdisciplinary focus of my scholarship.
    • Joel Terence Rhone
    • Name: Joel Terence Rhone
    • Candidate Statement:
      Assistant Professor of English at the University of Louisiana I defended my dissertation Disciplinary Aesthetics: Race and Representation After the Cold War at the University of Chicago in June 2023. This project attends to generative overlaps between late-twentieth-century African American literary production and the manufacture of racial knowledge in the academic disciplines. I show that beginning with the Cold War, African American writers have routinely renegotiated the empirical, archival, and aesthetic priorities underlying the multiculturalist logics that publishers, philanthropies, universities, and state bureaus have taken up since the mid-century period. My revisions toward a book manuscript are underway, and pubic-facing pieces of my work have appeared in The Drift, The Point, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. I have remained an active MSA member since 2022. As a graduate student, I presented an excerpt of my dissertation chapter “ Representation Matters: James Baldwin and the Origins of High Cultural Pluralism” on the “Modernism, Politics, and the New York Intellectuals” panel in Portland 2021. I also participated in the seminar on Black Modernism and its afterlives this past year in New York, and for 2024 I’m organizing a panel on claims to aesthetic autonomy among Blacks Arts movement thinkers. My organizational experience also includes several coordinated lectures at the University of Louisiana as well my founding of the interdisciplinary Race and Racial Ideologies workshop and working group at the University of Chicago. Website: https://english.louisiana.edu/node/337

Standing for: C. International Relations Chair

    • Doug Battersby
    • Name: Doug Battersby
    • Candidate Statement:
      Lecturer in Modern Literature, University of Leicester, UK (permanent) I teach and research anglophone literature from the 19th century to the present, with interdisciplinary interests in emotion studies, the health humanities, and philosophical approaches to literature. My first book, Troubling Late Modernism (shortlisted for the MSA First Book Prize), explores how postwar novelists from Vladimir Nabokov to Toni Morrison have reinvented modernist techniques for their own aesthetic and political ends, whilst my second book (OUP, under review) spotlights modernists who radicalised the corporeal styles of experiential description they found in 19th century fiction. See my website for a full publications list. Through postdoctoral and visiting fellowships at the universities of Bristol (UK), Columbia (USA), Stanford (USA), Sydney (Australia), Tokyo (Japan), and Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), I have developed extensive international networks that would be an asset for this position. As International Relations Chair, I would focus on supporting graduate students and early career colleagues to participate in events run by MSA and affiliated organisations. I have recently organised a symposium on modernist fiction and sincerity (2021), an MSA panel (2022), and a stand-alone panel on modernist fiction and the health humanities (2023). This position would be an opportunity for me to further develop my organisational experience and skills.
    • Yasna Bozhkova
    • Name: Yasna Bozhkova
    • Candidate Statement:
      Associate Professor, Université Paris Nanterre, France I am Associate Professor of American Literature at Université Paris Nanterre, France. My research focuses on intertextual, intermedial and transnational poetics from modernism to the present. My first monograph, Between Worlds: Mina Loy’s Aesthetic Itineraries, was published in 2022 in Clemson UP’s series “Seminal Modernisms”. I am the co-editor of The Wanderings of Modernism: Errancy, Identity, and Aesthetics in Interwar Modernist Literature and a special issue on “Modernist Transmissions” (forthcoming). I have published articles and book chapters on modernist and contemporary poetry, fiction, and avant-garde experimentation across the arts. Being a Bulgarian-born scholar working on American literature in France has contributed to shaping my approach to modernism, prompting an interest in transnational figures like Loy, Djuna Barnes, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Hope Mirrlees, and Claude McKay. I would be honored to serve as International Relations Chair of the MSA. Since 2021, I have been a board member of the French Society for Modernist Studies (SEM). I regularly participate in MSA conferences and other modernist events, and I have represented the SEM in promoting international collaborations with other modernist organizations like the MSA, BAMS, MSIA and AMSN, so I would be well-suited to promote MSA membership and partnerships outside the USA.
    • Ewa Barbara Luczak
    • Name: Ewa Barbara Luczak
    • Candidate Statement:
      Associate professor, University of Warsaw, Poland Over the past decade I have examined the response of American literature and culture in the years1900-1940 to the all-pervasive and dominant science and discourse of eugenics. I have focused on the works of both canonical modernist writers such as F.S. Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway, early Hollywood (Charlie Chaplin film comedies and film scripts by Anita Loos) as well as the fiction and journalism by the writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Wallace Thurman and George Schuyler. My recent two monographs and the book that I have co-authored address the confluence of race, eugenic social engineering, nativism and the discourse of degeneration in American modernism. As a result of my research, I regularly lecture on American as well as transatlantic modernism at my home university and have edited volumes on William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway addressed to the Polish reader. While attending the MSA conference in Portland, I was impressed by the collegial atmosphere and the spirit of academic inquiry shared by the MSA members. I regularly follow MSA journal Modernism/modernity and feel an intellectual connection with "new modernist studies." Given that I am stationed in Central Europe but also teach in China, am connected with scholars in Europe as a member of the European Association for American Studies and collaborating on the EU research projects (recently in Spain), I can provide expertise and connections necessary for the role of the International Chair. My past administrative experience, due to my role as the President of the Polish Ass for American Studies (2021-24) might also be valuable. I believe that I could be a good addition to the MSA board and would be honored to be considered for this position.

Standing for: D. Graduate Student Representative

    • Debakanya Haldar
    • Name: Debakanya Haldar
    • Candidate Statement:
      PhD student, University of Florida As the 2022-2023 President of the English Graduate Organization at the University of Florida, I have overseen board meetings and finalized decisions regarding academic and social events for the department’s graduate students. Under my leadership, EGO organized roundtable and panel discussions on pedagogy, the job market, and peer research. I would also liaise with the department’s graduate coordinator to share graduate student concerns and set up faculty-student meetings to address these issues. As the 2022-2023 Graduate Student Representative for the CLAS Faculty Council, I would drive discussions regarding the productivity and well-being of graduate students in the College. I am also an instructor at the Department of English. I have designed lower and upper-division courses on film analysis, modernism, and 20th-century American literature and culture. My teaching evaluations have consistently signaled my strengths in fostering environments for generative discussions and providing accessibility to students. I have also worked as an editorial assistant at Taylor & Francis, where I regularly collaborated with commissioning editors and the production team to achieve profit goals. Thus, I have learned to prioritize timely communication and collaboration, which I believe is a useful skill for the MSA Graduate Student Representative to possess. Website: https://www.debakanyahaldar.com/
    • Lucie Kotesovska
    • Name: Lucie Kotesovska
    • Candidate Statement:
      PhD Candidate and Sessional Instructor Department of English University of Victoria, BC, Canada I decided to put forward my candidacy for the Graduate Student Representative on the MSA executive board as this position and its mandate would allow me to pursue and combine my two long-standing interests: research and teaching in the field of modernist studies with the support and advocacy for graduate students (not only) in this field. In terms of my scholarship and expertise, I completed two MA theses focusing respectively on post-WWII transformations of the modernist novel and the long poem, and have passed a candidacy exam in British and Irish literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. I have published and presented on multiple aspects of late modernist poetry and prose, and helped organize two annual symposia on Joyce’s Ulysses in my home department. In my teaching, I draw on indirect pedagogical approaches and elements of play in order to dispel the myth of modernism’s inaccessibility. Throughout the four years of my doctoral studies, I have been an active supporter and advocate for graduate students. I have been a board member of the English Graduate Student Society, a representative for my department in UVic’s Graduate Student Society and in the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English. I have also acted as a Teaching Assistant Consultant and student mentor in my department. As a sessional instructor, I have mentored and collaborated with several MA students who were assigned as TAs in my courses. I see the MSA as a very dynamic organization that cultivates a dialogue with junior scholars in the field and realizes that it is this dialogue which brings some of the best impulses to update the extant research and scholarly discussion. It would be an honour for me to act as the Graduate Student Representative for this association.
    • Jenna Marco
    • Name: Jenna Marco
    • Candidate Statement:
      PhD Candidate University of South Carolina My name is Jenna Marco, and I am an ABD PhD candidate at the University of South Carolina. My dissertation investigates overlaps between modernist experimentation, supernatural fiction, and popular spiritualist movements. I have built a strong reputation in my department with professors and colleagues alike through leadership, diligence, and camraderie. Before I moved away from South Carolina, I was often tapped by our department administrators to meet with prospective and new graduate students, so I have experience providing academic and professional advice to early-stage students. I was also an active member UofSC’s branch of United Campus Workers. I have attended the annual MSA conference several times and worked on the editorial board for Modernism/modernity. As the graduate student representative on the MSA board, my priorities would include, but not be limited to: promoting cross-institutional collaboration between graduate students, expanding mentorship opportunities for graduate students, and ensuring equitable conference access for graduate students in a way that reflects our precarious financial status within our respective institutions.
    • Jessica Masters
    • Name: Jessica Masters
    • Candidate Statement:
      PhD candidate (English) and teaching assistant University of Sydney, Australia I am a current PhD candidate (English) at the University of Sydney. My dissertation investigates intermedial literary modernism, with particular interests in Black Studies, plastic and visual arts, and queer studies. I am cognizant of what it means to work in transatlantic modernist studies while based in Australia. While I regularly visit the US for work, I have an international perspective and established global scholarly networks. I am the Graduate Convenor for the University of Sydney’s Novel Network (affiliated with Duke University), where I manage graduate events with international visiting scholars. My own networks stretch across the US via the MSA, the Space Between, and Harvard University’s Institute for World Literature, and more locally, the Australian Modernist Studies Network, and the Australia-New Zealand Association of American Studies. As the co-editor of the Book Reviews section of The Space Between journal, I have brought these worlds slightly closer together by building working relationships with US- and UK-based scholars and publishing houses, so extending the society’s reach to Australasia and Europe. I hope to extend MSA’s networks to a greater diversity of graduate students and early career scholars, not only through disciplinary intersections (particularly Black and queer studies, and plastic arts), but by increasing accessibility for scholars based outside the US, scholars of color, and those experiencing disadvantage or disability. I’d like to facilitate opportunities between MSA and other organizations through shared conference panels and working group ‘hubs’. I have a particular interest in facilitating special sessions geared to graduate issues and professional development, and would like to suggest a more formal relationship of the Association and Modernism/modernity geared to publication opportunities for graduate students, with, for example, a publishing mentorship offered by more senior scholars. I am well-organized and highly motivated not only to maintain but also to extend the excellent structures set up by past graduate representatives, Zoë Henry and Annie Strauss.
    • Diana Proenza
    • Name: Diana Proenza
    • Candidate Statement:
      PhD Candidate, Department of English, University of Maryland, College Park I am grateful for the opportunity to present myself as a candidate for MSA’s Graduate Student Representative position. As a dedicated advocate for graduate student interests, I hope to leverage my organizational experience to foster a more inclusive and diverse academic community. I have been an active member of MSA since 2022, involved in both the Graduate Student Caucus and the Modernism & the Environment Special Interest Group. As a PhD candidate in global modernist literature and material culture, my research and pedagogy center critical making, experiential learning, and diverse print networks. My graduate assistantship in the English department’s makerspace and community press, BookLab, has given me the opportunity to develop and facilitate public humanities programming and hands-on instruction in modernist media like found and collage poetry, little magazines, artists’ books, and other DIY print counterculture. I have spearheaded regular book arts events at the local public library and collaborations with groups like the Latinx Alumni Association. Additionally, I have served on my department’s Graduate English Organization, where I planned yearly graduate student conferences, professional development seminars, and work-in-progress workshops. I will bring this experience to MSA, creating more opportunities for graduate student involvement and support.