M.A., University of California, Irvine
Email: smoti@uci.edu
I grew up as part of Romania’s German-speaking community. Before coming to
UCI, I studied English, German, and Applied Linguistics at the University
of Timisoara (Romania), the Humboldt University in Berlin, and Lancaster
University (U.K.). The experience of having lived and studied in these
multicultural environments has taught me to appreciate the vibrancy of
cultural diversity as well as my extraterritorial place in-between
cultures and languages, a fact that is reflected both in my research and
in my teaching. My dissertation project, "Postcolonizing Europe:
Encounters with Slav Alterity in the Literature of the Late Habsburg
Empire," rethinks the Austro-Hungarian Empire in terms of (post)colonial
theory and examines the construction of the Austro-German self and the
Slavic other in the works of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil, and
Franz Kafka. I enjoy exploring both canonical and non-canonical
German-language literature of the nineteenth and twentieth century from
the transnational perspectives of (post)colonial, migration, and minority
studies. My most recent publication focuses on the intersection between
the growing field of culinary studies and literature, and takes a look at
the copious references of food and eating in Thomas Mann’s prose. Apart
from research, I truly enjoy teaching and interacting with my students.
Curriculum Vitae |
