A WORD FROM THE DIRECTOR
PROFESSOR BEATE ALLERT
There have been changes in the Purdue University administration, especially the appointment of Professor Christopher Yeomans as the Justin S. Morrill Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Our former Head of the School of Languages and Cultures to which our Comparative Literature Program now belongs, Professor Jen William, has been tapped to serve in the new College administration as Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs, but fortunately she will remain an affiliated faculty member of Comparative Literature. Professor Elena Coda, Head of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies and a long-standing member of the CMPL steering committee, has been appointed as the new Head of the School of Languages and Cultures to begin July 1, 2026. Thanks and congratulations!!! Professor Beate Allert remains Director of the Comparative Literature Program.
RECENT EVENTS
Chinese Studies Colloquium March 26, 2026 - The Regulation of Literature in Modern China
Michel Hockx | University of Notre Dame
Michel Hockx is professor of Chinese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and director of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He has published widely, both in English and in Chinese, on magazine literature and print culture and contemporary Internet literature. His monograph Internet Literature in China was listed by Choice magazine as one of the “Top 25 Outstanding Academic Titles of 2015.” His latest book is Literature and Censorship in Modern China (Routledge, 2026).
His lecture focused on “examples of censorship in the history of modern Chinese literature. Since the 1990s, humanities scholars active in the field of New Censorship Studies have highlighted the ways in which all human communication inevitably takes place in contexts where social forces impose limits to free expression. New Censorship Studies shows us that, when it comes to culture, censorship is the norm rather than the exception, and that censorship is a global phenomenon. The challenge for humanities scholars, especially those of us working on China, is to document, describe, contextualize, and analyze these theoretical suggestions through case studies.”
Engaging with theoretical suggestions through case studies from modern Chinese literary practice, this lecture forged connections between censorship before and after the 1949 divide, between political censorship and moral censorship, and between print censorship and internet censorship. Prof. Hockx also assesses the oversimplified representation of Chinese censorship in American and European discourses, considering it a form of censorship in itself, which discredits or silences Chinese writers and artists who refuse to be dissidents.
Professor Michael Hockx at the dinner reception after his talk.
Sponsored by the Chinese, Asian Studies, and Comparative Literature Programs
On February 1, 2026, Dr. Tülin Ece Tosun, Assistant Director of Cornerstone, Indianapolis and Assistant Teaching Professor of Cornerstone, Purdue University, an affiliate faculty member of Comparative Literature, gave a lecture on “Turkish Shakespeares.” The aim of this project was to introduce Turkish Shakespeares to a broader international audience with the latest news about Shakespeare in Türkiye. This lecture was presented under the aegis of Medieval Renaissance Studies at Purdue lecture series organized by Professor Michael Johnston of the Department of English and Professor Kristin Leaman, Purdue Libraries and the School of Information Sciences, who are likewise CMPL affiliate faculty members. Below, Professor Tosin at the podium.
The 2026 SLC Graduate Student Conference was held on March 28, 2026. Two of the organizers were Comparative Literature students Marisa English and Diana Torres. Among the speakers was also Comparative Literature Student, Rida Altaf, here giving a lecture at the podium in the picture to the right.
The final gathering for Spring Semester 2026 of Comparative Literature students and faculty was held on April 30 at the Taste of India restaurant in West Lafayette. There was a great turnout with more than twenty participants present.
GRADUATIONS AND DEPARTURES
Andrew Kroninger successfully defended his dissertation, “Downfall and Xenophilia: Dostoevsky and European Modernists,” on March 3rd 2026. He conducted research for this work at the German Literature Archive (DLA) in Marbach am Neckar, Germany and the Literaturarchiv Salzburg in Austria with funding from Purdue’s Graduate Student Excellence in Research Award. At those archives, and at the State University of New York at Fredonia, Andrew handled primary documents, both printed and handwritten, from authors Hermann Hesse and Stefan Zweig. Andrew, who joined Purdue as a Comparative Literature Ph.D. student in August of 2020, graduated in May 2026. Above on Andrew’s right is Professor Jefftey Turco, his major professor, and to his left committee members Professors Beate Allert, Olga Lyanda-Gellert, and Thomas Broden. Dr. Kroninger will stay as lecturer at Purdue this coming year. Congratulations! He is wonderful to work with!
Ching-Jen Sun successfully defended his dissertation “The Mago Generation’s Arduous Stand: Cultural Nationalism after Taiwan’s Democratization,” on April 11, 2026. The picture here was taken during his oral defense in Stanley Coulter Hall. Ching-Jen joined Purdue as a Comparative Literature Ph.D. program student in August of 2021 with a two-year Fulbright scholarship from Taiwan, graduated with his Ph.D. from Purdue with his final year supported by a Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship. The director of his dissertation was Professor Aparajita Sagar, other committee members were Professors Beate Allert, Pedro Bassoe, and Rebekah Klein-Pejšová. We congratulate Ching-Jen for his excellent work and wish him every success. Dr. Ching-Jen Sun will return back to Taiwan.
Rida Altaf successfully defended her Master’s thesis “Wonders, Marvels, and Tilisms in South Asian and Arabic Speculative Fiction” on April 15, 2026. Rida who joined us in August 2024 on a two-year Fulbright Scholarship from Pakistan, graduated in May, 2026. The Director of her thesis was Professor Shaun Hughes, and the committee members Professors Aparajita Sagar and Ahmed Idrissi Alami. Best wishes and congratulations!
In May, 2026, Paul Dixon, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese in the School of Languages and Cultures, retired after being a faculty member since 1981. For most of his 45 years at Purdue he was a member of the Comparative Literature Committee. He often chaired doctoral dissertations and master’s theses in comparative literature, likewise serving when needed as a committee member, especially for those studies that involved Latin American literature, or Brazil. Thanks and best wishes!
Geraldine Friedman, Associate Professor of English, recently retired after being a faculty member since 1991. Coming to Purdue with a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale (1985), it was natural that she too has been associated with Comparative Literature for most of her career here. Her cross-listed seminars were a particular draw for graduate students and she weas always ready to help out with dissertation responsibilities. Warm regards to Geri!
PROMOTIONS
In April 2026, the Board of Trustees announced the promotion of our Comparative Literature colleague Dr. Pedro Bassoe to the rank of Associate Professor of Japanese. The previous month had appeared his first book, Supernatural Japan: Izumi Kyōka and the Global Fantastic, Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, volume 107 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2026). A wonderful work of amazing scholarship, congratulations!
In April 2026, the Board of trustees announced the promotion of Dr Tülin Ece Tosin, Assistant Director, Cornerstone Indianapolis, to the rank of Clinical Associate Professor. Dr. Tosin had received her Ph.D. from the Purdue Comparative Literature Program in 2018. She taught the “Shakespeare in World Literature” Comparative Literature seminar in Spring 2026, a great success! In the Fall Semester 2026 she will be offering another Comparative Literature graduate seminar, this time on “Urban Nostalgia.”
NEW CMPL GRADUATE STUDENTS
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!
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!
RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS: New Books
Beate Allert edited with Amy Emm of The Citadel a new book, published with the University of Delaware Press/Rutgers in July 2026. It also includes an essay by Beate Allert on Annette von Droste Hülshoff’s poetry. It is a book that for the first time systematically gathers and engages with contributions of German women authors to the discourse on interiority (Innerlichkeit) from 1750 to 1850. The volume shifts focus on inwardness to consider the origins of interiority in literature and philosophy as written and experienced by women from the Age of Sensibility (Empfindsamkeit) to the Romantic era. Contributors investigate works of women authors who searched rescue from their cultural and personal entrapment via creative spaces and various modes of interiority in theatrical performances, poetic writings, letters, biographical narratives, prose, and fairy tales.
Thanks to support by the Purdue University Books Initiative.
Pedro Bassoe has just published a book in which he takes a comparative literary approach to examine the confluences of global influences in the work of Izumi Kyōka, the founding figure of literature of the fantastic in Japan. Kyōka is renowned for his surreal and imaginative modern tales of ghosts, monsters, the supernatural, and journeys throughout mountains, forests, villages, and cities. In addition to work by Kyōka, the book explores themes, narrative conventions, and genre formation in work by writers including Hans Christian Andersen, Prosper Mérimée, and Guy de Maupassant, as well as in premodern text such as the Arabian Nights and traditional Japanese picture books known as kusazōshi. In its chapters, the book treats themes such as visuality and fantasy, modern medicine and horror fiction, and scholarly approaches to constructing fantastic narratives. Supported by Purdue University Books Initiative.
On February 20, 2026, Comparative Literature graduate student, Alan Estafan Gutiérrez, held a book launch for his 544 page manual in Spanish focused on writing about literature at the university level. Influenced by the “Writing in the Disciplines” (WID) movement, it posits that writing about literature differs from that of other fields—even within the humanities (e.g., history or philosophy)—and that, consequently, a literature student must become familiar with the specific practices inherent to their field. It details the topics a student needs to master in order to write literary criticism in Spanish: ranging from spelling and grammar to the most common genres assigned by professors in class, and covering writing processes, types of evidence in literary criticism, and the uses and guidelines of the MLA format in Spanish.
Angelica Duran has published two volumes that she lead-edited: Global Bunyan and Visual Art (Bloomsbury, 2025), co-edited with Katherine Calloway of Baylor University, and Milton and the Network of Disability, Embodiment and Care (Edinburgh University Press, 2025), co-edited with Pasquale Toscano of Vassar College, both supported by the Purdue University Books Initiative. The Comparative Literature nature of her current research is reflected in the following: “Recent Spanish Translations of Milton’s Sonnets” (Milton Quarterly 59.2, 2025); “The Blind Milton as Caretaker, Englishman, and Husband on the Spanish Stage (Milton and the Network of Disability, 205–23), and her Purdue College of Liberal Arts Wilke Undergraduate Research Internship “Spanish Transcription and English Co-translation of El Paraíso de Milton (1878),” with Intern Norah Wills. She has been able to present her research in such venues as follows: “Teaching Individually and Globally in and with Bunyan,” Keynote (11th Triennial Conference of the International John Bunyan Society, Prince Edward Island, Canada, June 2025) and “The Multilingual, International Foundation of the Canonization of The Pilgrim’s Progress”(Dialogues of Nonconformity across the British Atlantic World, 1500–1800, Conference, University of Birmingham, UK, September 2025), “Doré’s Collaborative and Unfinished Illustrations of Shakespeare” (71st Renaissance Society of America Conference, Boston, MA, March 2025).In June 2026, she will complete her 4-year stint as Conference Chair for the ~4,000-member Renaissance Society of America.
In December 2025, Dino Franco Felluga concluded over $400,000 of grant work awarded to COVE: Collaborative Organization for Virtual Education (National Endowment for the Humanities and Innovation Hub grants). The site has expanded to 22 million words of literary content, the equivalent of an 88-volume encyclopedia, and now includes hundreds of thousands of objects from the great libraries and collections of the world. Purdue faculty and students can access the site for free via BoilerKey at https://purdue.covecollective.org/. The site, which is non-profit, is designed to share tools and content with its collective of users. Students improve their engagement with course content by annotating course texts and images. Teachers can make all their course content available for free. For info on using COVE Studio Purdue, email felluga@purdue.edu.
Dr. Olga Lyanda-Geller has done outstanding Undergraduate Student Mentoring: Simon An and Emily Gervais, both Margo Katherine Wilke Undergraduate Research Interns, completed their comparative literature and interdisciplinary research projects. Simon An presented the results of his trilingual (Russian-Vietnamese-English) project “Chekhov's Literal and Cultural Legacy in Viet Nam” at the Fall 2025 EXPO. His talk was awarded as “a presentation with highest distinction.” Simon also presented his talk “The Vietnamese Reception and Translation of Chekhov's Ward No.6” at the 2026 Literature, Linguistics, Languages Colloquium (LLLC). Emily Gervais’ research, presented at Purdue Undergraduate Research Conferences and at the LLLC was awarded multiple prizes and invited for publication in the “Out of the Box” section of The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research 15 (2025): 139–146 as “Medical Minds, Literary Voices: The Intersection of Healing and Storytelling in Russian Literature.” Olga Lyanda-Geller also published “Language as Thinking in Losev and Gebser,” Arts of Creative Communication, edited by Žilvinas Svigaris and Patricia Arneson (Vilnius: Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, 2025), 64-71; and “Dialogue in Sofia Gubaidulina’s Film Music,” in Women Philosophers and Russia, edited by Alyssa DeBlasio, Tatiana Levina, and Oksana Goncharko, Contemporary Russian Philosophy 9 (Leiden: Brill, 2026), 234-58.
Dr. Kristin Browning Leaman published the following articles: “Disinformation in John Foxe’s Edition of Ælfric’s Easter Homily, 1570-1684,” Journal of Documentation, 82.7 (2026): 187-205, and “Medieval Misinformation and Disinformation: Filling a Gap in Medieval Studies,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching: SMART 32.2 (2025): 7-22. Her book project, Printing Ælfric in Early Modern England, 1566-1687 is under contract for the series “Library of the Written Word: The Handpress World” published by Brill in Leiden. At the 60th International Congress on Medieval Studies held at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo in May, 2025, she presented “Malleus Maleficarum: Teaching Critical Disinformation Studies with Medieval Texts” in the Roundtable: “Narrowing In, Broadening Out: Teaching the Medieval from a Single Object.” At the Medieval + Monsters Conference sponsored by the Medieval Association of the Midwest (MAM), the Mid-America Medieval Association (MAMA), the Illinois Medieval Association (IMA) and the Newberry Library and held at the Newberry Library in Chicago in October 2025 she was invited to present a workshop on “Critical Disinformation in the Medieval and Early Modern World.”
Marisa English, our special CMPL events coordinator and well underway towards her PhD in Comparative Literature, has served as the Workshop Chair in the SLC Graduate Student Committee for the past two semesters and organized four workshops, with a final one given in April, 2026, where she also presented on Assignment Design for literature courses. She has recently been awarded Excellence Award in the Purdue University’s 2026 Literary Awards Contest. This summer, she is excited to serve as one of the Research Assistants aiding administrators and professors in meeting the newly established ADA guidelines. She got accepted into the Medieval Academy of America’s Summer Professionalization Workshop this summer along with a honorarium of $1250 which will help her in completing her dissertation. In May 2026, she received the 2026 CLA GSEIR (Graduate Student Excellence in Research) Award.
Diana Torres Arias presented a paper “Technology, Transhumanism, and Disability in Los cuerpos del verano by Martín Felipe Castagnet” in the session “Disability and rhetorics of Dystopia” at the 141st Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association in Toronto in January, 2026. She served as co-chair of the 2026 SLC Graduate Symposium “The Intersection of Humanities and Sciences.” In addition, she presented her paper, “Cli-fi y ecologías discapacitadas en la ciencia ficción futurística de América Latina” in the session “Speculative Ecologies: Utopia, Disability, and Coloniality in Latin American Futurisms” at the XLIV International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association in Paris in May, 2026. She received her Digital Humanities Certificate from Purdue University at the end of Spring 2026 and the SLC Outstanding Achievement in Teaching Award in the Teaching Assistant category.
Anurati Dutta, second-year PhD student in Comparative Literature, was selected to present at two conferences this semester. In April, she presented her paper, “Muted Voices, Material Desires: Food and Everyday Resistance in South Asian Cinema,” at the 2026 English Graduate Organization Conference hosted by the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg in April 2026; she also presented another paper titled “Writing With Silenced Texts: Activist Literature and Pedagogies of Withness” at the UW Praxis 2026 Conference organized by the University of Washington, Seattle, in May 2026.
CLOSING REMARKS
Thanks to everyone in our Comparative Literature Program, first of all our wonderful creative and brilliant students, TAs, and RAs, helpful and knowledgeable faculty from SLC, as well as the English and History Departments, and to our helpful staff members: Tatiana, Joni, Twyla, Soledad, Business Reps, and ITAP experts. Thanks especially to our wonderful guardians the former and current Heads of SLC, Prof. Jen William and now Prof. Elena Coda, and all the best wishes for a restorative and productive summer to each and every one of you. We are grateful also to our amazing Alumni and appreciate all updates and continued support to our vibrant Comparative Literature program at Purdue University. Cordially yours, Beate Allert