Transnational Cultural Studies
Graduate Coordinator: Professor Theresa Runstedtler
Contact: tr23@buffalo.edu
UB has a strong contingent of faculty and graduate students from across the disciplines working in the field of Transnational Cultural studies. Challenging notions of U.S. exceptionalism, this area of study focuses on the flows of people, capital, commodities, culture, and ideas that have always defied national borders. Some of the major themes examined include internationalism and transnationalism; imperialism, postcolonialism, and neocolonialism; human trafficking, immigration, and diasporas; borderlands, and frontiers; Americanization and globalization; transnational discourses of race, gender, class, and sexuality; and mass culture, late capitalism, and postmodernism.
UB Faculty and Graduate Students working in the field of Transnational Cultural Studies
American Studies Core Faculty:
Jose Buscaglia: Caribbean studies; Coloniality and Post-national studies; Travel narratives
Carl Nightingale: History of race; World history; Urban history
Theresa Runstedtler: Race, gender, and resistance in popular culture; Black transnationalism, Imperialism and globalization; European race relations; Black Canada
Camilo Trumper: Latin American history, Urban studies, Visual culture, Methods of cultural history, the Pacific World
Kari Winter: History and literature of transatlantic slavery; Resistance, dissent, and revolution
Cynthia Wu: Asian American studies; Comparative ethnic studies
American Studies Adjunct Faculty:
Greg Dimitriadis (Education): Critical ethnography; Urban education; Educational policy; Popular culture and Cultural studies; Postcolonial music, art, and literature
Keith Griffler (African American Studies): African American and African Diaspora history; Race and labor; the Underground Railroad
Jolene Rickard (Visual Studies): Aesthetic practice of First Nations and Indigenous peoples within a global context
Faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences:
Carrie Bramen (English): American studies, Latino/a literature; Critical race theory
Janina Brutt-Griffler (Polish Studies): Language use in society; multilingualism; contemporary dialogue on heritage languages; language maintenance
Thomas Burkman (Asian Studies): Japan and the League of Nations
Andreas Daum (History): German, European, and Transatlantic History from the late 18th to the 21st century; History of Science and Knowledge
Masani Alexis De Veaux (Global Gender Studies): Black diasporic writing; Black women writers; Black feminist theory
Christian Flaugh (Romance Languages and Literature): Francophone studies; Négritude; Bodies and normality
David Gerber (History): European immigration to the United States; Transnational social fields; Problems of pluralism
Hal Langfur (History): Colonial and post-independence Brazil; early modern Atlantic world; Race relations; Comparative indigenous history; Cross-cultural encounters; Cultures of violence
Arabella Lyon (English): Human rights discourse; Rhetoric
Patrick McDevitt (History): Atlantic world history; Irish studies; Imperialism
Carine Mardorossian (English): Diaspora theory; Postcolonial and Gender studies; Caribbean studies
Susan Moynihan (English): Asian-American literature; Autobiography
Elizabeth Otto (Visual Studies): Gender and biopolitics; Visual representation of New Womanhood as a trans-national phenomenon; Relationship between popular visual cultures and Modernism
Justin Read (Romance Languages and Literature): Transamerican poetics with an emphasis in Spanish-American vanguardismo, Brazilian modernismo, and U.S. modernism
David Schmid (English): Cultural studies; popular culture; twentieth-century and contemporary British and American studies
Claire Schen (History): Early Modern Europe; North and South Atlantic; Piracy
Erik Seeman (History): Colonial North America with an emphasis in religion, Indians, African Americans, and death rituals
Ramón Soto-Crespo (American Studies): Latina/o and Caribbean literature, continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, queer studies
Gwynn Thomas (Global Gender Studies): Feminist thought, gendered theories of nationalism and citizenship, women in Latin America, and international feminist movements
Hershini Bhana Young (English): Contemporary black diasporic literature; African-American literature; South African literature
Jason Young (History): The Black Atlantic; Slave culture and religion; pre-colonial Kongo
American Studies Graduate Students
Ph.D
Kritika Agarwal
Swati Bandi
Peter Bjelskou
John Burdick
Patrick Callan
Nicholle Dragone
Jeffry Iovannone
Heidi Nickisher
Nayda Pares-Kane
Sunanda Ray
Michael Rio
Stephen J. Smith
Gregory Young
M.A.
Verdis Robinson
Yin Song
Working Groups and Conferences at UB
Crossing Borders Conference (Canadian Studies)
Thinking Beyond the Nation-State: A Symposium on Empires, Diasporas, and Indigeneity