We are thrilled to be welcoming four new faculty to the Department of English Language and Literatures: Sarika Bose, Ayasha Guerin, Christine Kim and Derek Woods.
Sarika Bose
Twelve-month Lecturer
Sarika Bose teaches nineteenth-century drama and fiction, and children’s literature. She has published on diverse topics, including immigrant experience in Canada, racism and labour in academic institutions, and Victorian drama. Her book-length publications include an edition of Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon (Broadview) and a composition textbook, Steps to Writing Well (Nelson). As a long-term contract faculty member at UBC, she serves on several committees, including the Student Directed Seminar Committee, the Green College Membership Committee, and the English Department Online Teaching Working Group. She chairs the UBC Faculty Association’s Contract Faculty Committee, and the Canadian Association of University Teachers’ Contract Academic Staff Committee. In her role as UBC’s Contract Faculty Committee Chair, she has established several academic and outreach programs for Contract Faculty at UBC, including a Community of Practice in pedagogical practices through UBC’s Centre of Teaching and Learning Technologies, an annual Colloquium of papers by contract faculty, and an annual exhibition of contract faculty publications in collaboration with UBC Library. She convened a Symposium at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2019 to highlight research by Contract Faculty. Dr. Bose is excited to be continuing her work in the UBC Department of English Language and Literatures.
Ayasha Guerin
Assistant Professor, Black/African Diaspora Studies
Ayasha Guerin joins UBC from New York University’s American Studies program where her dissertation Making Zone-A: Nature, Race and Resilience on New York’s Most Vulnerable Shores explores ecological history and Black social life in 17th-19th Century New York. Tracing how colonial capitalism cultivated a hierarchy of racial difference on urban landfill, the project considers how Black activism on the New York waterfront has been shaped by diasporic relationships and interspecies entanglements. Her second project is focused on Black feminism and activism in Berlin, Germany, where she is conducting research in the Audre Lorde and May Ayim archives.
Christine Kim
Associate Professor, Canadian Literature
Editor, Canadian Literature
Christine Kim is joining UBC as Associate Professor and editor of the journal Canadian Literature. Her teaching and research focus on Asian North American literature and theory, Canadian literature, diaspora studies, and cultural studies. She is the author of The Minor Intimacies of Race (University of Illinois Press, 2016) and co-editor of Cultural Grammars of Nation, Diaspora and Indigeneity (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2012). She has contributed chapters to essay collections on Asian Canadian literature and theatre and published articles in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Interventions, Mosaic, Studies in Canadian Literature, and Journal of Intercultural Studies. Christine is a founding co-director of Simon Fraser University’s Institute of Transpacific Cultural Research. Currently she is working on a SSHRC funded book-length project on representations of North Korea, cultural fantasies, and Cold War legacies.
Derek Woods
Assistant Professor, Media Studies
Derek Woods writes about ecology, technology, and modern narrative in relation to the history of science. He is writing a book about the distinction between harmful and “symbiotic” technologies and the influence of cybernetics on ecology and Earth system science. What Is Ecotechnology?shows that the terrarium and terraforming are themes across literature, science, and film that play a dynamic role in the construction of ecological consciousness and visions of what green technology might become. He is also working on a book about the mediation and aesthetics of scales too big or too small for our senses to perceive.
