Visiting Assistant Professor, Gender and Women's Studies
Ph.D., Literature, University of California, San Diego

Office: 1222 UH (MC 360)
Phone: 312.355.4368
E-mail: akulvin@uic.edu

I consider it a pleasure to do research on the literary and filmic cultures of immigrant and minority groups in the United States. It is my understanding that students of the next generation have experiences that require instructors to be versed in transnational realities. In teaching students about transnational feminisms, I have found that they desire to not only learn about global issues, but also to be aware of how global cultures intersect with their current experiences in the U.S. It is only with this fuller understanding of global contexts that students learn how to engage race, gender and sexuality not as artifacts, but as dynamic and changing realities. As a scholar of US Ethnic Literature and Transnational Film Cultures, an intersectional and transnational approach has allowed me to research feminist alternatives to multiple nationalisms. In my work, I am interested in challenging the construction of traditional gender roles by showing the vast history of progressive gender representation in minority cultures.

My dissertation is called “Assimilation and its Counter-Narratives: Twentieth-Century European and South Asian Immigrant Narratives to the United States.” This dissertation is not a comprehensive study of all immigrant assimilation, but a focused comparative study of the cultural and literary forms developed by two twentieth century immigrant groups in the United States: Southern/Eastern Europeans in the early 20th century and South Asians in the late 20th century. In this dissertation, I study both narratives that valorize assimilation and counter-narratives that challenge the overtly assimilationist tendencies of much immigrant writing. I wrote this dissertation about these two groups and phases of immigration because I wanted to show that assimilation has always been formulated as a relational concept between groups intended to solicit particular kinds of nationalist identifications with the United States. These nationalist identifications often suppress differences in terms of gender, class and sexuality amongst citizens and non-citizens. Also, the earlier narrative of European American assimilation is often used to discipline non-white immigrants into a relationship with U.S. citizenship discourses in a way that does not reflect the changes wrought by globalization. My interest is in showing that the two phases of immigration I describe have much to learn from each other’s historical and cultural constructions of citizenship. My argument throughout the dissertation is that while assimilation discourses have often demanded the abandonment of religious traditions, immigrant groups have also found ways to transform religious ideologies into progressive gender and labor politics. I am currently working on revising my dissertation into a book which will examine comparative assimilation discourses in U.S. minority communities.

In Fall 2009, I have had the joy of teaching Comparative Social Movements and Gender and Human Rights. In Spring 2010, I will teach GWS 102: Global Perspectives on Women and Gender, GWS 292: History & Theories of Feminism and GWS 472 Women and Film.  Additionally, I will be coordinating Local Knowledge, Global Vision: A Model World Conference on Women's and Girls' Rights. This is a day long conference at UIC attended by Chicago high school students who receive training from UIC graduate students in human rights issues as they pertain to women across the world.