Marisa English
Marisa earned a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in Medieval Studies from Indiana University, and a Master’s degree in English with a focus on Medieval Literature from Purdue University. They have taught ENGL 10600 and worked in the OWL and are dedicated to student’s learning and ability to engage in language ad literature, They are mainly interested in queerness and gender fluidity in Medieval English and French texts and their research is also primarily focused on cross-dressing and medieval material culture. They came with a wonderful CLA Research Grant into the CMPL PhD program with a MA from the English Department at Purdue.
Anurati Dutta
Anurati joins us for the PhD in Comparative Literature at Purdue University. She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University, India. Her research focuses on the intersections of food, gender, sexuality, culture, and politics. She is also a Citizen Historian with the 1947 Partition Archive. An advocate for women's and queer rights, Anurati has collaborated with multiple non-profits. Outside of academia and activism, she indulges her artistic passions through painting and photography, capturing moments that intrigue her. She will be a Teaching Assistant in the School of Languages and Cultures this coming year.
Riley Grasham
Riley is in his first year of his master's program in Comparative Literature at Purdue University. He is from Frankfort, IN and completed his undergraduate degrees at Purdue in Creative Writing and English concentrated in Education. He is interested in almost anything, but his main interests lie in Italian Literature and translation, along with the future of education in an AI-led society. He is also interested in Cinema and it's creation. He is very excited to work with everyone, so please feel free to talk with him!
Xiaoyang Guo
Xiaoyang joins us for his studies towards the PhD in Comparative Literature in August 2024. He earned his B.A. in Chinese Language and Literature from Soochow University and his M.A. in Comparative Literature from Sichuan University. His research interests lie in Chinese and Japanese literature and intellectual history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a primary focus on issues of identity. Beyond his main field of study, he is also passionate about the visual arts and mass communication.
Sarah Jaran
Sarah earned a bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature from Lycoming College and a Master’s in Medieval Studies from Western Michigan University. She spent two years teaching high-school level Latin and French in New haven, CT. These experiences have helped to shape her interest in cultural literary analysis, particularly focusing on connections across English, French, and Latin in the Medieval Period. Sarah also has a keen interest in food culture, specifically representations of food in texts.
Bayan Konysbekkyzy
Originally from Kazakhstan, Bayan joined Purdue University’s Ph.D. program in Comparative Literature in Fall 2025. She holds an M.A. in Languages and Cultures (Japanese) from Purdue University, an M.A. in Culturology (World Cultures and Civilizations), and a B.A. in Foreign Philology (Japanese Language and Literature) from Kazakh Ablai Khan University of International Relations and World Languages in Almaty.
Her research examines representations of gender, family, and social norms in modern Japanese literature, particularly in the works of prominent women writers such as Takahashi Takako, Ogawa Yōko, and Murata Sayaka. She has received multiple academic honors, including a fellowship from Warmia-Mazury University in Poland and the Japanese-Language Program for Outstanding Students fellowship from the Kansai International Japanese-Language Institute in Osaka, Japan.
Diana Alejandra Torres Arias
Diana joins us with a Ross Fellowship for studies in Comparative Literature towards the PhD degree. She has her M.A. degree from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, and did her undergraduate studies in her home country, Ecuador. In addition to being a doctoral student, she is an editor and researcher. She is Managing Editor for Production for the academic journal, Spanish and Portuguese Review. Her work, both academic and literary, has been published in Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, and the United States. She taught in the Department of Languages, Linguistics, and Comparative Literature at Florida Atlantic, and was also a Librarian in the Boca Raton Public Library. Her research revolves around Disability Studies, posthumanism, ecocriticism, postmodernism, and film studies.
Chinaza Egere
Chinaza Justina Egere has a B.A. in Foreign Languages and Literary Studies grom the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and an M.A. in French from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. Her M.A thesis was entitled: “L’Image de l’Afrique dans Batouala de René Maran et Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu de Sembène Ousmane.” She has been at Purdue since the Fall Semester of 2023, first of all in French and since the Fall semester of 2025 in Comparative Literature. Her research deals with the intersections of gender, genocide, and memory studies across African, African American, and Holocaust literatures. Her work is grounded in fieldwork she conducted in Burundi and centers the experiences of women in contexts of mass violence. She has presented her research at various national and international conferences and venues, including the American Comparative Literature Association, the African Literature Association, Genocide and Human Rights Research in Africa and the Diaspora (GHRAD) Center at Northeastern Illinois University, the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, the Igbo Studies Association, Contradiction Studies, and others. She enjoys teaching, singing and travelling. Best wishes to her in CMPL at Purdue!
Gideon Akinwale Oladayo
Gideon Akinwale Oladayo has a B.A. in German from Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He has studied at Universität Hamburg and Universität Rostock, and has an M.A. completed in German Linguistics and Literature from The University of Georgia in Athens. His M.A. thesis was entitled: “Die Adoption und soziale Integration der ‘Brown Babies’ unter Jim-Crow Gesetzen: Eine Bewertung in den USA und Deutschlands politischer Dynamik.” He begins his Ph.D. studies in Comparative Literature at Purdue in Summer 2026. His research so far interrogates dominant narratives about Africa and explores alternative epistemologies that emerge from African contexts. He is especially interested in questions of colonialism, representation, translation, and knowledge production through challenging the orientalist framing that has shaped the narrative and representation of Africa in European literature. In response, he works with an Afrocentric perspective that re-centers African voices, epistemologies, and lived experiences. Through this approach, he critically re-reads European texts, exposing underlying assumptions and power dynamics while foregrounding alternative modes of interpretation embedded in African and European intellectual traditions. Welcome Gideon at Purdue University!
Alan Estefan Gutierrez
Diana Torres