Anna (Ania) Spyra

Program: English Ph.D.
Began program in 2000
Area of Study: 20th Century (Post)colonial
Office: 66 EPB
E-Mail: anna-spyra@uiowa.edu

I came to study at Iowa from the University of Silesia in Poland where in the department of English I wrote my Master's Thesis about liminality in the novels of J. M. Coetzee. I actually picked up my first (post)colonial book while studying for a semester at Stockholm University, and since then I have been reading it in its many incarnations (literature of exile, travel writing, 'ethnic' literatures in the US).

My interest in the theme of liminality has become even more profound here for all the border crossings and borderland dwellings that the Crossing Borders Fellowship has encouraged me to consider. I think and write about the problems of hybridity, migration, cosmopolitanism and multilingualism. I have taught courses in the interpretation of literature, women's literature and literatures of Latinos/as in the US; as well as acted as a Program Associate for the General Education Literature program.

Fascinated with areas of intense cultural blending, I have recently traveled to the Caribbean and to the American Southwest. I travel passionately, and in the last three years I have visited places as disparate as Fairbanks, Alaska and Bridgetown, Barbados; Prince Edward Island in Canada and Baja California. I am also interested in photography and usually document my voyages visually (you can see some of my photos from the Caribbean on the CDA website).