Open gallery

Dr. Sharon Lubkemann Allen on the coast at Etretat, France, August 2023

Sharon Lubkemann Allen, PHD

(She/Her/Hers)

Professor of Comparative Literature & Director of Graduate Studies

(585) 395-5828
slallen@brockport.edu
Office: Fannie Barrier Williams Bldg 244
Website
Office Hours:

Fall 2024: Tuesdays & Thursdays 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. & by appointment

Recipient of the Chancellor's Award for

Teaching

Education

PhD, in Comparative Literature, Princeton University, May 2004.
Graduate Research Fellow, École Normale Supérieure & Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, France, 2000–01.
MA in Comparative Literature, Princeton University, May 2000.
Graduate Research Fellow, Institute of Russian Literature - Pushkinskii Dom, Dostoevsky Museum, & Petersburg State University, Russia, 1998.
MA in English and Comparative Literature and Theory, University of Dallas, 1996.
BA in Soviet and East European Studies, minors in French & Art, Yale University, 1991.

Areas of Specialty

Comparative literature, literary theory, cultural semiotics
19th- through 21st-century Portuguese, Brazilian, & Luso-African, French, Slavic & East European, diasporic and transcultural fiction and film
Modernist narrative, modernisms in literature and art
Post-modernist, post-colonial literature, film, art
Urban contexts, urbane narrative constructs
Remapping, recasting, reconfiguration, reorientation of cultural memory
Women writers, filmmakers, artists, scholars
Intercultural, interdisciplinary dialogue
Decolonization of critical and creative discourses

Courses Taught

ENG 112: College Comp
HON 112: Border Crossings: Migrations & Moving Images, Story & History, Fiction & Documentary
ENL 165: Underground Conciousness
ENG 223: Modern World Literature
ENG 243: Immigration in World Fiction, Film, & Art
ENG 303: Intro. to Literary Analysis: Language, Landscape, Longing & Lies in modern Literature
ENG 314: Modern European Literature: Executions, Authorship & Authority
ENG 317: Slavic Literature: Wit & Witness in Modern Russian & East European Literature
ENG 319: Comparative Literature: Crossings
ENG 351: Urban Contexts & Urbane Consciousness in Modern Fiction & Film
ENG 363: Writing in Exile: Transposition, Translation, Translingualism & the Tasks of Literature
ENG364: Vision & Revision: (Post)Modernisms
ENG367/WMS367: Women in World Literature, Film, & Art: Reconfigurations of Cultural Memory
ENG 409: Postmodernism in World Literature: Theory of the Novel & the Novel’s Play with Theory
ENG/WMS42/542: Sex & the City: Contemporary Women Writers & Cosmopolitanism
ENG/WMS442/542: Women & Memoir: Re-membering (his)story in Art & Literature
ENL 448/548/ENG605: Idiots, Fools & Madmen: Dialogues with Dostoevsky in Fiction & Film
FLM458/558: Contemporary Global Film: Cinema, Self-Consciousness, & Cultural Memory
ENL/FLM 463/563: International Film: (Re)Visionary Soviet & Post-Soviet Filmmakers
ENG 472: Senior Seminar in Contemporary European Literature: Re-mapping Cultural Memory
ENL472/572: Critical Approaches, Intro to Literary Theory
ENL 478/578: Critical Approaches
ENG600: Intro to Graduate Studies in Literature: Dialogues and Discourses in the Discipline
ENG 604: World Modernisms
ENG605: Idiots, Fools, & Madmen: Dialogues with Dostoevsky in World Fiction & Film
ENG620: Writing in Exile
ENG 625: Tolstoy & Dostoevsky: Ethics & Aesthetics

Research Interests

Books & Interdisciplinary Projects in Progress:

New Navigators: Remapping & Recasting Portuguese Cultural Memory – (Re)Visionary Lusophone Writers & Artists (comparative monograph on contemporary literature & art developing out of recent presentations, publications, research fellowships)
Migrations or Pescadores/Pecadores: Dialogues with Contemporary Lusophone Literature & Art (interdisciplinary project including sketches and sculpture, documentary photography, and essays)
Paris Palimpsest: “Reading between Lines of Astonished Memory,” Writing on the Walls & the Execution of the Writer. (scholarly monograph in advanced stages of development, including maps, manuscript pages & illustrations)

Gulbenkian Visiting Scholar, February-March 2020.
Provost’s Post-tenure Research Fellowship, SUNY-Brockport, 2019.
Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, State University of New York, 2018.
Dawn & Jacques Lipson Special Opportunity Grant & Scholarly Incentive Award, SUNY-Brockport, 2016.
Provost’s Post-tenure Research Fellowship, SUNY Brockport, 2012-2013.
Fulbright Scholars Fellowship, University of Lisbon, 2009-2010.
Dr. Nuala McGann Drescher Leave, NY/United University Professions & SUNY-Brockport, spring 2010.
Scholarly Incentive Grants, Individual Development Grants, & Sponsored Program Incentive Awards in support of research and conference presentations, SUNY Brockport & UUP, 2005-2020.
Discretionary salary increases for exceptional scholarship, service, & teaching, SUNY Brockport.
Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 2004–2005.
Princeton University Fellowship, Department of Comparative Literature, 1997–2002.
Dean’s Fund for Scholarly Travel, 1998-2004.
Princeton Graduate School Summer Stipends for Dissertation Research, Paris and Lisbon, 2000, 2001.
Council on Regional Studies Grants & Mary Cross Fellowship, St. Petersburg & Lisbon, summers 1998, 1999.
University of Dallas Fellowship for Graduate Studies, 1994–1996.
Millersville University Fellowship for graduate courses in sculpture, 1992.
H. H. Rice Fellowship, Yale University, research and work in the fine arts, Ukraine & Russia, 1991–1992.

BOOK PROJECTS

EccentriCities: Writing in the Margins of Modernism, St. Petersburg to Rio. Manchester University Press, 2013. 384 pages, 40 maps, lithographs, paintings and photographs.

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES

Re)Visionary Navigations of Cultural Memory – Angela Ferreira’s For Mozambique / Navegações Revisionistas e Visionárias da Memória Cultural – Para Moçambique, de Ângela Ferreira.” New Readings, New Perspectives - Calouste Gulbenkian Museum / Novas Leituras, Novos Olhares - Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, April 2020.
“New Navigators of Portuguese Cultural Memory”. MEMOIRS: FILHOS DE IMPÉRIO E PÓS-MEMÓRIAS EUROPEIAS/ CHILDREN OF EMPIRES AND EUROPEAN POSTMEMORIES – Newsletter, 70, 2019
“Recasting Literary Authorship and Critical Authority: Reflexive Works by Lispector and Lins, Petruševskaja and Pelevin,” Narrated Theory in the Novel, ed. Manfred Schmeling and Christianne Solte-Gresser, in the series “Saarbrüker Beiträge zu Vergleichenden Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft,” Königshausen und Neumann, 2016.
“Reimag(in)ing Story & History, Documentary & Fiction: (Re)visionary Images in Contemporary Novels.” Dedalus: Revista Portuguesa de Literatura Comparada 17, 2014.
“Recasting the Republic Past/Present: Liudmila Ulitskaia & Lídia Jorge,” Iberoslavica, 2012; Portuguese version, Letras com Vida 4, 2012.
“Dissent, Despair, & the Limits of Dialogue & Dialogism in Dos Passos’ Urban/e U.S.A.,” forthcoming from the Centro Cultural John Dos Passos, 2013.
“Postmodern Portuguese and Russian Re-Mappings of Cultural Memory: Intertextual, Transhistorical, Transcultural Dialogue,” Cumplicidades Comparatistas: Origens, Influencias, Resistencias/VI Congresso Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Literatura Comparada, December 2009.
“Chantal Akerman’s Cinematic Transgressions: Transhistorical and Transcultural Transpositions, Translingualism, and the Transgendering of the Cinematic Gaze.” Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Post World War II Cinema. Ed. Marcelline Block Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.
“Navigating Past/Present: Modes of Mapping Cultural Memory in Contemporary Russian and Luso-Brazilian Literature”/“Kартографические дислокации культурной памяти в современной русской, португальской, и бразильской литературе,” American Contribution to the 14th International Congress of Slavists, Ohrid, 2008. Vol. 2: Literature. Ed. David Bethea. Bloomington: Slavica, 2008. 1-24.
“Unorthodox Confession, Orthodox Conscience: Aesthetic Authority in the Underground,” Studies in East European Thought: Dostoevsky’s Significance for Philosophy and Theology, ed. Ed. R. Bird, 59: 1-2 (June 2007) 65-85.
“Makine’s Testament: Transnationalism, Translation, and the Transformation of the Novel,” Review of Literatures of the European Union, Traduzione Tradizione? Paths in the European Polysystem, 4 (July 2006) 167-186.
“From the Grotesque to the Sublime: Logos and the Purgatorial Landscape of Mertvie dushi and Master i Margarita,” Slavic and East European Journal, 47: 1 (Spring 2003) 45-76.
“Reflection/Refraction of the Dying Light: Narrative Vision in Nineteenth-century Russian and French Fiction,” Comparative Literature, 54: 1 (winter 2002) 2-22.
“Dispossessed Sons and Displaced Meaning in Faulkner’s Modern Cosmos,” Mississippi Quarterly, 50: 3 (Summer 1997) 427-443.

REVIEWS

Lotman’s World, dir. Adne Nelk, review essay forthcoming in Film and History, 2013.
Val Vinokur’s The Trace of Judaism: Dostoevsky, Babel, Mandelstam, Levinas, Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, 52: 3-4 (Sept.-Dec. 2010).
Sarah J. Young’s Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and the Ethical Foundations of Narrative: Reading, Narrating, Scripting. Slavic and East European Journal, 51: 1 (2007) 151-153.
Julian Graffy’s Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” Slavic and East European Journal, 46: 2 (Summer 2002) 392-394.
Françoise Genevray’s i, 30 (2003).
Michel Aucouturier’s Le Realisme socialiste, Slavic and East European Journal, 44 : 1 (Spring 2000) 140-142.

TRANSLATIONS

Natalie Ferrand, “Toward a Database of Novelistic Topoi,” The Novel: Volume 2: Forms and Themes, ed. Franco Moretti, Princeton University Press, 2006. 324-45.
Luiz Costa Lima, “The Novel and the Control of the Imagination,” The Novel: Volume 1. 37-68.
José Luiz Passos, “Macunaíma,” in The Novel: Volume 2. 896-905.
Roberto Schwarz, “Machado’s Turnabout: Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas,” in The Novel: Volume 1: Volume 1. 816-40.
Sylvie Thorel Cailleteau, “La poésie de la médiocrité” and “Vénus décomposée, lecture de Nana,” in The Novel: Volume 2. 64-94, 541-47.

PEER-REVIEWED CONFERENCE PAPERS & SESSIONS

“Revisionary Imag(in)ing of Scarred and Stigmatized Bodies: Reconfigurations of Luso-Angolan Cultural Memory in Works by Agualusa and Miranda,” in “Literary and Cultural Representations of Stigma” organized by the American Portuguese Studies Association (APSA), for the Modern Language Association (MLA), Seattle, WA, January 2020.
“Refusados, Revoltados, Retornados, Refugiados, Relembrados: Reconfigurations of Cultural Memory by ReVisionary Lusophone Authors & Artists,” Lusophone Studies Association, Univ. of Évora, Portugal, June 2019.
“The ‘Extreme Edge’ of Comparative Inquiry—from Lotman to Lins,” 21st World Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA/AILC), University of Vienna, Austria, July 2016.
“Recasting Contentious Past, Reorienting Critical Present in Contemporary Portuguese Fiction,” ICLA/AILC, University of Vienna, Austria, July 2016.
“The Scarred and Sutured Map: Re-mapping Cultural Memory/Re-membering the Map in Lusophone Literature and Art; Critical and Creative Reflections”, seminar on “Mapping Spaces, Moving Bodies: Control, Resistance, and Disorientations,” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), NYU, March 2014.

“Comparative Verbal and Visual Cartographies: Re-mappings of Cultural Memory in Contemporary Lusophone Literature and Art by Antunes, Agualusa, Jorge, Vieira da Silva, Geiger and Varejão,” atelier: “Géocritique, littérature comparée et au-delà,” International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA/AILC), Paris, July 2013
“Recasting Authorship and Authority: Refractory Writers in Reflexive Russian and Lusophone Works,” atelier: “Raconter la théorie dans le roman,” ICLA/AILC, Sorbonne, Paris, July 2013.
“Daughters: Gendered and Generic Reconfigurations in Petrushevskaia and Jorge (Comparative Notes on Doubling, Dispossession, Deviance, Dissembling, Dialogue and Dialogism),” International conference on Iberian and Slavonic Cultures in Contact and Comparison: Interfaces within Gender Studies, University of Lisbon, Portugal, May 2013.
“Re-routing Cultural Memory in the Paris Metro,” seminar on “Mapping the City: Minority Narratives and the Multiethnic Metropolis,” ACLA, Toronto, April 2
(Re)visionary Reflections: Khrzhanovsky’s A Room & a Half and Nelk’s Lotman’s World”/“Animated Film in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union,” MLA, Boston, Jan.
“Reimagining Story & History: Photographic Images in Post-modern Novels,” 7th International Conference of the Portuguese Comparative Literature Association (APLC), Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal, 2012.
Invited discussant, “(Wo)manning the Can(n)on: Creation, Procreation, and Destruction,” Association for the Study of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), Washington, DC, November
“Re-casting Russian Writers: Geographical Relocations, Generic Reconfigurations: Tarkovsky, Khrzhanovsky,” American Asso of Teachers of Slavic & East European Languages (AATSEEL), Los Angeles, January 2011.
“Tightropes: Transcultural Renegotiations of Portuguese Cultural Identity in Contemporary Literature,” upcoming presentation at the 7th International Conference of the American Portuguese Studies Association (APSA): Trans-Atlantic Exchanges, Brown University, October
“Recasting the Republic Past/Present: Liudmila Ulitskaia & Lídia Jorge,” COMPARES: 4th Intnt’l Conference of Iberian & Slavonic Cultures in Contact & Comparison: ResPublica(s), Un of Lisbon, May 2010.
“Estar é Ser: Pessoa, Place, & Plural Authorsh” Invited response to Richard Zenith. Conference: Whose Words: Alternate Theories of Authorship in Portuguese and American Poetry in the 20th Century. Univ. of Lisbon, May 2010.
“Transnational Reconfigurations of Cultural Memory in Contemporary American Literature,” Encontros do Instituto de Cultura Americana, Un of Lisbon, March 2010.
“Dissent, Despair, & the Limits of Dialogue & Dialogism in Dos Passos’ Urban/e U.S.A.,” III Symposium John Dos Passos: Modernity and Intercultural Dialogues, Madeira, January
“Transnational Cinema: Relocation, Re-casting, Reimag(in)ing of Cultural Memory,” seminar organizer & chair, American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Harvard Un, Cambridge, March 2009.
“Post-exilic Returns & Post-modern Revisions of E. Europe: Kieslowski, Akerman, Kogut,” ACLA, 2009.
“Postmodern Portuguese and Russian Re-mappings of Cultural Memory,”APLC, Univ. do Minho, Portugal, No 2008.
“Navigating Past/Present: Modes of Mapping Cultural Memory in Contemporary Russian and Luso-Brazilian Literature,” International Slavist’s Association, Ohrid, Macedonia, 2
“Petrushevskaia and Ulitskaia: The Refusal of Nostalgia and Rewriting of History in Contemporary Russian Women’s Writing,” Modern Language Association (MLA), Chicago, December 2
“EccentriCities: Writing in the Margins of Modern St. Petersburg’s and Rio de Janeiro’s Scribblers,” International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA), Rio de Janeiro, July 2007.

Academic Positions

Professor of Comparative Literature, SUNY Brockport, 2019-present; Associate Professor, 2011-2019; Assistant Professor, 2005-2011.
Fulbright Fellow, Programa em Teoria da Literatura & Departamento de Estudos Anglísticos, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, 2009-2010.
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania, 2004–2005.
Lecturer/AI, Departments of Comparative Literature, Humanities, Romance Languages and Literature, Slavic Languages & Literature, Visual Arts, & Princeton Writing Program, Princeton University, 1999-2004.
Lecturer, Portuguese & Brazilian Literature, Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures, Rutgers University, Newark, 2003.

Academic Service

Director of Graduate Studies, English Department, SUNY-Brockport, 2023-2025.
English Department APT Committee, SUNY-Brockport, 2019-2020. Chair, 2020-2021.
English Ad Hoc Committee on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, 2020-2021. Chair 2021-2022.
Interim Director of Film Studies, English Department, SUNY-Brockport, 2019.
English Department Curriculum Committee, SUNY-Brockport, 2006–2009, 2010-2011, 2013-2018; Chair 2013-2015, 2016-2018, 2022-2024.
English Department Executive Committee, SUNY-Brockport, 2013-2015, 2016-2024.

University Shared Governance Committee, 2017-2019, 2020-2024.
College Senate President, SUNY-College at Brockport, 2016-2017.
College Senate Executive Committee, SUNY-College at Brockport, 2015-2018.
President’s Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Committee, SUNY-College at Brockport, 2015-2018.
Provost Search Committee, SUNY-College at Brockport, 2017-2018.
College Council, 2016-2017.
Brockport Foundation Board, 2016-2017.
President’s Extended Cabinet, 2016-2017.
President’s Strategic Planning Committee, SUNY-College at Brockport, 2015-2017.
Strategic Planning Community Subcommittee, Co-chair, SUNY-College at Brockport, 2016-2017.
President’s Budget & Resource Committee, 2016-2017.
Provost’s Senior Advisory Group, SUNY-College at Brockport, 2016-2021.
Academic Convocation Committee, SUNY-College at Brockport, 2013-2015.
Women and Gender Studies Advisory Board, SUNY-Brockport, 2008-2024.
Women and Gender Studies APT Committee, 2019-2024.
Visual Studies Workshop, Guest Reviewer, 2018, 2020.
Ad-hoc Modern Languages and Cultures APT Review committees, 2010-2017.
Faculty Learning Community on Integrative Learning & Global Perspectives, 2013-2014
Suny Teacher Education Network (S-TEN/C-TEN), 2013-2014.

International Association of Slavists (IAS), member of the Commission for Iberian-Slavonic Comparative Research, 2010-2018.
Centro de Literaturas e Culturas Lusófonas e Europeias (CLEPUL), Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa, research affiliate, 2010-2018.
External Reviewer for dissertations in comparative literature, University of Lisbon.
Peer Reviewer for various journals of comparative literature.

LANGUAGES

Native Portuguese & English
Professional fluency in French & Russian
Reading proficiency in Spanish

VISUAL ARTS

Drawings (oil, watercolor, pencil, charcoal), sculpture (bronze cast & multimedia), photography. www.lubkemannallen.net