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Marika Preziuso
Marika Preziuso is Associate Professor of World Literature at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She holds a Ph.D. in Literature from the Caribbean Diaspora and an M.A. in Gender, Society and Culture, both from the University of London, UK.
At MassArt, Marika teaches 20th century and contemporary postcolonial literature, particularly by migrant and diasporic writers, and speculative fiction of the uncanny, magic realism and Afrofuturism. The transnational scope of Marika’s classes actively invites the skill of intercultural understanding.
Marika is also the organizer of Creative Counterpoints at MassArt, an annual series in its fourth year, devoted to the intersections of narratives of creativity and difference as investigated by visual artists, writers, public intellectuals, and other culture makers.
Marika’s academic research explores Western imaginaries of ‘otherness’ and the literary and aesthetic strategies employed by writers, artists, and theorists from the African and Caribbean diasporas to critique and expand such imaginaries and create “opaque” and hybrid spaces for themselves and their art.
As a published poet and RYT yoga and meditation instructor, Marika leads workshops specifically for creatives who straddle various languages and cultures, to rekindle their creative flow through the practices of meditation, journaling, and verse in translation.
Publications
Book-length Publication
- 2014 - Migrant Identities of ‘Creole Cosmopolitans’: Transcultural Narratives of Contemporary Postcoloniality. Peter Lang, Postcolonial Series Publishers. Co-edited with Dr. Nirmala Menon, India Institute of Technology, Indore, India.
Chapters in Edited Collections and Articles in Peer Reviewed Journals
- 2016 - "A Subtlety by Kara Walker: Making Vulnerable Art," The Journal of International Women’s Studies, Summer
- 2012 - P. Noxolo and M. Preziuso, "Moving Matter: Language in Caribbean Literature as Translation between Dynamic Forms of Matter," Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. 14:1
- 2011 - "Negotiating Unity with Freedom: Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies," Sargasso: Journal of Caribbean Literature, Language and Culture. 2010- 2011, I & II
- 2011 - "Liberating Border and Sensual Veils: Edwidge Danticat’s Poetics of Haiti’s ‘Vulnerability,’ Academica Press," Latin American Studies: Critiques of Contemporary Cinema, Literatures, Politics and Revolution, edited by David Gallagher, UK 2011
- 2011 - "Literary Authorship and the Diasporic Imagination: Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies and Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in Alison Donnell and Michael Bucknor (eds.)," The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature, London, UK, June
- 2010 - "Mapping the Lived–Imagined Caribbean: Postcolonial Geographies in the Literature of the ‘Diasporic’ Caribbean," Journal of Intercultural Studies, Vol. 31 Issue 2, April 2010
- 2010 - "Do I belong here? Images of Belonging and Cultural Hybridity in Erna Brodber’s Myal, Velma Pollard’s Homestretch and Caryl Phillips’s" Cambridge Journal of Caribbean Literatures, vol. IV,
- 2010 - "Llevando el Velo y Cruzando la Frontera: Geografías Imaginarias" en The Farming of Bones por Edwidge Danticat, Hipertexto, University of Texas-Pan American, no.12, Summer 2010
Published Interviews
- 2011 - Conversation avec Maryse Condé: ‘Race et identité culturelle aux Antilles.’ Sargasso: Journal of Caribbean Literature, Language and Culture 2010-11, Special Issue
- 2010 - Interview with Achy Obejas,SX Salon: A Small Axe Literary Platform, November 3, 2010
- 2001 - Interview with bell hooks (in English and Italian), Leggere Donna, Luciana Tufani eds. Italy. #90, 2001
Organizations
- 2011-2014 - Member of the Committee for the Visual Arts and Film Initiatives, Caribbean Studies Association (CSA)
- 2009-2014 - Member of the Student Mentorship Committee, Caribbean Studies Association (CSA)
- 2007-2009 - Research Students’ Representative, Research School, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
- 2012 – present - Member of the American Teachers Association (ATA)
- 2011-2014 - Member of the American Translators Association (ATA)
Recognitions
- 2014 - MassArt Foundation Fellowship, Project Transnational Feminism as Artistic and Pedagogic Practice
- 2011- Emilia Galla Struppa Fellowship, Research in South Atlantic Studies, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Virginia
- 2003 - Research Grant, University of London Central Fund, Research at the University of Havana, Cuba and to the University of the Antilles and Guyana (UAG), Martinique
- 2002-2006 - Graduate Scholarship, University of London Research School
- 2001-2002 - Università di Salerno Grant, MA in Gender and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London
- 1997-1998 - Erasmus Scholarship (EU Exchange Program), University of Kent at Canterbury, UK
Additional
- Creative Counterpoints: Trans*: Representing the Transgender Body on Screen - March 19, 2019
- Creative Counterpoints: Artists Translate Difference - March 15, 2018
- Creative Counterpoints: Women, Difference and the Arts Symposium and Student Exhibition - March 18, 2016
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