Current Graduate Students

Greek Philosophy — Plato and Plotinus; Classical Islamic-Arabic Philosophy; Classical Arabic Literature; Classical Persian Literature; Sufism & Islamic Spiritual traditions; Shi’i Intellectual and ‘Irfāni Practices; Philosophical-Poetics: Mimēsis; Askēsis; and Theosis; Philosophy as a Way of Life; Continental Philosophy; Phenomenology; Neitzsche; Heidegger; Derrida; Foucault; Psychoanalysis — Freud & Lacan.

Languages: English, Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Punjabi, Greek, French, and Latin.

Afrofuturistic literature & movement, AfAm literature and AAE, Japanese lit and Japanese language.

Women’s studies; third world feminism; body politics; Foucault; gender studies; Turkish literature & politics; gender & the body. Link to Gulin’s academia.edu page

French and Francophone Fillm and Literature, Latin American Film and Literature, Performance Studies, Queer Theory, Horror Studies, Autobiography Studies, Autotheory.

20th and 21st century French and Latin American literary and visual cultures; Latinx cultural productions in the U.S.; queer theory; continental philosophy; Latin American philosophy; Critical Theory; semiotics; performance studies; autotheory.

Languages: French, Spanish.

Postmodernism and Postcolonialism; Nationalism, Feminism, Refugee Studies, Memory and Postmemory; the Vietnamese Diaspora, the Vietnam War; The dialectics between literature and national culture/history.

World literature and civilization, science fiction literature and film, China-Latin America cultural studies, history of science, culture industry and creative writing

Designated Emphasis in Speculative Fictions and Cultures of Science

Languages: Chinese (Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese), English, Spanish.

Lupina Farhana finished medical school before seeing the light and transitioning into the Humanities, where she earned two graduate degrees in literature and composition. In her Ph.D., she focuses on eighteenth and nineteenth-century American, French, and German literatures, by developing a theoretical framework from the artistic motif of the arabesque.

Plasticity, neuroplasticity, and epigenics in relation to rhythm in music, dance, theater, and French and Spanish poetry, translation theory, aesthetics, continental philosophy, especially Badiou, Meillassoux, and Malabou.

Languages: French, Spanish, Bengali.

Greek Philosophy, Arab-Islamic Philosophy, Philosophy as a Way of Life, Creative Writing

Languages: Greek, Arabic, Persian, English, Urdu.

Kate Huang, originally from Taipei, earned BA in English Literature, MA in Applied Linguistics (California State University, Fullerton), with Certificate in Basic and Advanced Core Early Childhood Education, and is currently working on her doctorate program at UC Riverside. Kate’s research interests focus on Samuel Beckett’s works, Contemporary Marxist school, Media and Cultural Studies, and Psycholinguistics. Her hobbies include listening to Baroque Music and visiting DTLA’s museums in her leisure time.

Research Interests: Sino-Western comparative science fiction, posthumanism, Sino-Hellenic comparative history of science, Sino-Hellenic comparative aesthetics, Wuxia and Xianxia fantasies.

Languages: English, Modern Chinese, Classical Chinese, Classical Greece.

Research Interests: Marxist literary criticism, 19th-century English and French literature, Modern Japanese literature and philosophy

Languages: English, French, Japanese, Korean.

Research Interests: modern and contemporary Chinese and Japanese literature; Asian American literature; cultural anthropology in relation to transpacific studies; Sino-Japanese studies.

Research Interests: Modern Chinese literature, studies between Wang Xiaobo and Calvino.

Languages: Mandarin, English.

Research Interests: Asian American literature, diaspora studies, Sinophone literature, transnational film and media studies.

Poetics, French and Francophhone studies, Asian American studies, the long nineteenth century, decadence, inscrutability, queer theory in film and media studies. 

Languages: English, French, Modern Chinese.

Research Interests: Gender Studies, Francophone African Literatures, Global Black Literatures, Film Studies and French Comics.

Languages: English, Igbo and French.

Research Interests: Children’s literature in English, Finnish, and Japanese; horror studies; fairy- and folktales and their English translations and adaptations; video game and internet studies.

Francophone West African Literature, French and Francophone Film and Media Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Comics Studies, Creole Studies.

Languages: English, French, Spanish.

Research Interests: modern Korean fiction; postcolonial studies; critical race theory.

Research Interests: French literature, Farsi literature, Gender Studies, feminism and women studies.

French and Francophone studies, Indigenous studies, Sociolinguistics, Language Contact, Indigenous Middle Ages.

Languages: English, French.

Yixin Xu‘s areas of research include Modern Chinese literature, Ming-Qing fiction, Taiwan cinema, gender studies, medical humanities, emotion studies.

Languages: Classical Chinese, Modern Chinese, Cantonese, English, Japanese, Taiwanese

Research interests: sense of place; diaspora studies; sociology of literature; theories of fiction; literature and intellectual culture in South Vietnam; the 1954–1955 Great Migration of Vietnamese Northerners.

His research interests are in Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, continental philosophy, and Postcolonial Studies.

The link to his publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ayman-Mleitat

Research Interests: Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Chinese philosophy, Comparative philosophy, ancient cosmology.

Languages: Ancient Greek, Ancient Chinese, Modern Chinese.