Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem (she/her) completed a Ph.D. in English at The Graduate Center-CUNY under the mentorship of Wayne Koestenbaum. She is Professor of English at Kingsborough-CUNY and a postcolonial and gender studies scholar who publishes (chiefly) on historical literatures of Ireland and African America. She specializes in literary texts that represent partition and other imperial borders. Her research broadly concerns political justice, particularly reparations; social justice of race and gender; and the poetics of conflict, trauma, and silence in both poetry and narrative. Maureen publishes widely, including the monograph Silence and Articulacy in the Poetry of Medbh McGuckian which came out in 2019. In 2020, Routledge published two books authored by Maureen: the monograph Objects and Intertexts in Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’: The Case for Reparations as well as the collection she co-edited with Michael O’Sullivan, The Economics of Empire. She has two recent short pieces: the scholarly article “Architecting the Carceral State: The Fragment in Medbh McGuckian’s Diaries and Walter Benjamin’s ‘Theses,’” which appeared in Review of Irish Studies in Europe (12/2021), and an opinion piece called “‘Going Public’ with the Humanities in a Fake News World,” published in Inside Higher Ed (4/2022). Maureen is working on a number of new projects: the edited collection Imperial Debt on reparations for empire which is under review; she was commissioned to edit The Routledge Research Companion to Toni Morrison, also under review; and, she’s writing a comparative book chapter on James Joyce’s “The Dead” and other instances of postcolonial fiction (Pamuk, Naipaul, Coetzee) that use Joyce’s triptych—snow, silence, and sleep—as chief allegorical conceit. She frequently presents at conferences as well; this year, she’ll chair and introduce a session she organized for the MLA Convention: “Political Threats to Academic Freedom: A Call for Antiracist Advocacy.” Maureen is now serving a three-year term on the MLA Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities (CAFPRR). Before entering academia, she worked in the corporate world while raising her children on her own, Dr. Cynthia Fadem and Brooklyn restaurateur Mike Fadem. She lives in Brooklyn

Courses

Maureen is a member of the Honors faculty and often teaches Writing Intensive and Civic Engagement designated courses. She most often teaches college composition: English 24 and 93, most recently, and English 12 numerous times in past years. Professor Fadem also teaches various literature courses, including English 30, Introduction to Literature; English 32, World Literature; English 40, The Short Story; and English 77, The Roots of Black Literature. Starting in Spring 2015, Maureen will begin teaching courses in the Early College Program at Leon M. Goldstein High School.

Education

2012: PhD in English Literature, The Graduate Center, CUNY – PhD Program in English

Selected Publications and/or Other Resources

The Literature of Northern Ireland: Spectral Borderlands. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.　

“Provincializing the Nation-State: The Meaning of Partition.” In Synthesis, Special issue on “Living through the Interregnum." Volume 8, Fall 2014. 

“Self-Contradiction in a Small Place: Anne Devlin’s ‘Other at the Edge of Life.’” Affecting Irishness: Negotiating Cultural Identity Within and Beyond the Nation. Eds. James P. Byrne, Padraig Kirwan and Michael O’Sullivan. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. 291 - 312.

Review Article: “’Poetry is Not a Luxury’: Meena Alexander’s Raw Silk.” Semicerchio, XXXII – XXXIII (September 2005): 129 – 131.

“’bringing me into the world’: Brossard’s Lovhers and the Domain of Linguistic Survival.” How2, 2.3 (April 2005).

“The Interval.” Word. On Being a [Woman] Writer. Ed. Jocelyn Burrell. New York: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2004: 180 – 201.

Review: Yann Martel, Life of Pi. South Asian Review, 24 (December 2003): 231 – 233.

Review Article: “Illiterate Heart: The Movement Toward Self Definition.” JOUVERT: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Special Issue: Colonial Posts, 7.2 (Spring 2003).

"Sparrows and Hawks: Class, Gender and the Politics of Decolonization in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India.” South Asian Review, 23.2 (2002): 12 – 13.

“Translation, An Art of Negativity: A Conversation with Meena Alexander.” Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, 45.2 (Spring/Summer 2002): 102 – 110.

Research Interests

Maureen's research is on Postcolonial Literature (especially that of Ireland, South Asia, Israel and Palestine), Partition Studies, Gender & Women's Studies, and Literary Theory.

Institutional Affiliations / Professional Societies

Current Memberships: the Modern Language Association (MLA); the American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS). •Executive Committee Member for 1-year term, South Asian Literary Association, 2000 – 2001.