List of contributors

Jordan Z. Adler (he/him) is a freelance writer, film critic, and educator. In 2024, he received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in English (media, cinema, and digital studies concentration). His scholarly writing has appeared in Jump Cut, AJS Perspectives, Offscreen, and Studies in the Fantastic. A Native of Toronto, Canada, Dr. Adler’s primary research has focused on representations of Millennial Jewish identity in film and television.

Bryan Banker is an assistant professor of English language and literature at TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Ankara, Turkey. He earned his PhD in American Literature from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (University of Munich). His publications span a wide array of themes, including race and racism in science fiction television and video games, philosophy in the works of Langston Hughes and John Coltrane, and Neanderthal ontology. Banker is currently finishing his manuscript on dialectical philosophy in African American aesthetics. He is also the co-founder of the Indigenous Study Circle within the association of American Studies of Turkey.

Ergün Baylan holds a BA in American Culture and Literature from Hacettepe University and an MA in American Studies from Heidelberg University, Germany, majoring in literature, cultural studies, and sociology. He continues his doctoral studies at Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany. Since 2009, he has worked as a research assistant at the Department of Western Languages and Literatures, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. In 2023, he attended the prestigious SUSI 2023 — Contemporary American Literature: Border Crossings program at the University of Montana, New York, and Washington (D.C.) His research interests include Transcendentalism, philosophy, literary theories, cultural studies, feminism, and Indigenous studies. Baylan is also the co-founder of the Indigenous Study Circle in the American Studies Association of Turkey.

Oumeima Bousrih is a Tunisian Ph.D. holder from the English Department at the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Humanities of Manouba, Tunisia. The focus of her Ph.D is on American Literature. Her field of research focuses on Trauma Studies and postcolonialism in the writings of female Indigenous authors. Her most recent researches, including her Master’s degree, address themes of storytelling and colonial trauma in the works of Native American female author Leslie Marmon Silko. Her current research is interested in themes such as identity crisis, trauma of displacement, and historical trauma in the works of fiction of Chippewa female writer Louise Erdrich. She is also interested in the study of literary works written by Indigenous women authors and in investigating their way of shaping subjectivities into full-fledged narratives.

Andrea Burgos-Mascarell is an assistant professor at the University of Valencia, where she got her PhD on 21st century dystopian fiction. Her field of studies involves contemporary speculative fictions with a particular focus on literature for young adults. She has recently co-authored the monograph El Ocaso de Koinonia: La distopía en la literatura norteamericana (2024).

Valentina De Brasi is a PhD student in International Relations at the University of Napoli “L’Orientale.” Her doctoral research is in English language and linguistics, focusing on a corpus-based critical discourse and multimodal analysis of selected Instagram and TikTok posts by Indigenous influencer-activists from Canada. She has also contributed to the UNITE Project, investigating the use of AI-powered chatbots for practicing English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Her research interests include corpus linguistics, discourse, activism, digital media, and artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on the complex and dynamic relationships among these domains.

Jennifer Komorowski is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson) where she teaches Indigenous philosophy, psychoanalysis, decolonial theory, and aesthetics. She is an active member of the Indigenous Faculty Council at TMU where she represents the Indigenous faculty at TMU. She holds a PhD from the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University and her dissertation, “The Masochian Woman: Coming to a Philosophical Understanding of Haudenosaunee Women’s Pain” focuses on Indigenous women’s pain, psychoanalysis, and Indigenous women’s writing. Jennifer is also a member of the Oneida Nation of the Thames, located just outside London, ON.

Nyssa Komorowski is a PhD Candidate in Art History at the University of Toronto, specializing in Book History and Print Culture. Her doctoral dissertation research investigates the creative work of E. Pauline Johnson Tekahionwake, with a focus on Haudenosaunee epistemologies, research-creation methodologies, and interdisciplinary approaches between book history and art history.

María Cristina Manzano-Munguía is a research professor at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Puebla, Mexico and adjunct professor at Mount Allison University (NB, Canada). She received her Ph.D. from Western University (2009). A member of the National Research Council in Mexico since 2014 and she belongs to the academic research group “Racism, Identities, and Modes of Subjectivity”. She has published on issues related to Indigenous forced transnationalism across borderlands, Aboriginal Human Rights in Canada, Canadian Indian diaspora, Indian policy and legislation in Canada, Indigenous mobility and Indigenous return migration among others. Awarded the “Phillips Fund for Native American Research”, the American Philosophical Society (APS) in 2012 and the “Democracy, Diasporas, and Canadian Security in International Perspective” in 2007–2008, the York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS), York University, Toronto, Ontario. She is fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar (American Studies Association (SSASA) and the American Philosophical Society (APS) since 2012.

Anna Mongibello, PhD, is Associate Professor of English Language and Translation at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” (Italy), and Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto (Canada). She is the Director of the I-LanD Research Centre, the Italian interuniversity research center for the linguistic investigation of identity and diversity in discourse, and a member of the Board of the Italian Association for Canadian Studies. Her research interests include the intersections of language, ideology and power explored through corpus-based critical discourse analysis, with a focus on the discursive constructions of gender and ethnic identities across different media in Canada. She has also published on digital resistance and new media discourse.

Raphaela Pavlakos (she/her) is a fourth-year PhD candidate in McMaster University’s English and Cultural Studies Department. She is also a 2024–2025 Teaching Fellow and Teaching Assistant within her department. Her dissertation research looks at Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee poetry and drama in Southern Ontario, considering landscape as an alternative site of memory and framework for ongoing Indigenous activism. To do this work ethically as a settler-scholar, Raphaela is developing her own methodological framework called Critical Dispositioning. Her scholarly work can be found in Canada and Beyond (2025), Cultural Studies (2025), Contingencies (2024), Theatre Academy (2023), and The Scattered Pelican (2023).

April Prosper is from Mi’kma’ki Territory and resides in the community of Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation. She has dedicated the last 9 years of her career as a First Nation Support worker; working with community youth within the provincial school system and had created a safe space for Mi’kmaw youth to be themselves and seek guidance if needed. She became a role model and an auntie figure by nurturing Mi’kmaw youth through culture and language, while also advocating for Mi’kmaw youth leadership and amplifying their voices. When she is not working, she is furthering her education, participating in ceremony/ land based activities. During her free time she enjoys creating through sewing, beading and sometimes quillwork. Recently, April has taken on a new role within her community as the Director of Education, in this new position she plans to continue the nurturing and support of community youth but at a higher level.

Kamelia Talebian Sedehi is an adjunct lecturer at Sapienza — University of Rome, Italy and Mount Allison University in Sackville, Canada. Currently, she is a postdoctoral fellow researcher at Sapienza University of Rome. She is the author of Subjectivity Gained, Subjectivity Lost in Melancholic Female Eunuchs in Alice Walker’s Selected Novels (Aracne, 2021), and Uncovering History through Testimony. A Traumatic Account of Aboriginal Peoples in Canadian Residential Schools (Aracne, 2022). She edited one essay collection on utopian and dystopian literature entitled Role of Religion in Shaping and Reshaping of Inclusive/ Exclusive Communities (Cambridge Scholars, 2023). She co(authored) academic papers on trauma, melancholia, Indigenous studies, and American literature.

Andrew J. Weiler is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Waterloo. He is the recipient of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship for his work on Victorian novelist and poet Charlotte Brontë. His dissertation, Somatic Literacies: a Hermeneutics and Rhetoric of the Body considers how the body and mind are enmeshed in acts of perception, and understudied phenomena with significant implications in all areas of learning. Current areas of research include somatics and somatic thinking, cognitive literary studies, and composition pedagogies. These diverse interests stem from professional experience teaching a variety of subjects from grades K-12, first-year writing courses at multiple universities, working with the Ojibwa people of Shoal Lake 40 (Winnipeg), and as a special educator for the Chinook School Division in Saskatchewan. He graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a Bachelor of Education and the University of Windsor with an MA in English literature and language. Andrew instructed ENGL 109 Academic Writing and Somatic Literacies at the University of Waterloo, and has been published with the Brontë Studies Journal (Taylor and Francis): “An Orphan’s Dissent: Charlotte Brontë’s Spiritual Vision in Jane Eyre” (2022). https://​www​.tandfonline​.com​/doi​/full​/10​.1080​/14748932​.2022​.2121626