Presented By: Department of English Language and Literature
Critical Conversations: Method(ologies)
Flash talks from faculty members and graduate students about their current work as related to a rotating theme
Adela Pinch (Chair)
Hadji Bakara | Jen Buckley | Meg Sweeney
Please RSVP here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeZ6Ioq0AQFu7YeMBTViQMrWBoMYo3-m2RT7U83fy1Y9a1Vxw/viewform
“On Archival Time”
Hadji Bakara is Assistant Professor of English. His research focuses on 20th and 21st century global, Anglophone, and American literatures, especially in their relation to histories of war, empire, migration, and human rights. He is the author of Writing for Dark Times: A Literary History of Human Rights (forthcoming University of Chicago Press 2026) and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook to Literature and Migration (forthcoming Oxford University Press 2026). This flash talk is drawn from his teaching and research on the question of archival methods in literary studies.
"My body became a face": Jean-Louis Barrault's 1935 adaptation of As I Lay Dying
Jen Buckley is Associate Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies in this department, where she will soon teach her first Michigan course on modern drama. Her research encompasses 19th-21st century drama, theatre, and performance, with a focus on modernism. This flash talk gave her the nudge she needed to actually start writing a chapter of her book-in-progress, Act Without Words: Speechless Performance on Modern Stages.
"Make the Road by Walking: A Meditation on Methods"
Megan Sweeney is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of English, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her publications include an award-winning monograph, Reading Is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons (2010); an edited collection, The Story Within Us: Women Prisoners Reflect on Reading (2012); a creative nonfiction book titled Mendings (2023); lyric essays; and numerous articles about African American literature, reading, incarceration, and autotheory. Sweeney is a recipient of fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan, the Ford Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Deeply committed to teaching and mentoring, she has received the Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award (2010), an Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship (2014), the John H. D'Arms Award for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring in the Humanities (2021), and a Faculty Recognition Award (2025).
Each session of Critical Conversations, a monthly luncheon series organized by the English Department Associate Chair’s Office, features flash talks from faculty members and graduate students about their current work as related to a rotating theme. The goal of these sessions is to share and learn about each other's work and serve as an important hub for timely conversations with relevance across the humanities.
Hadji Bakara | Jen Buckley | Meg Sweeney
Please RSVP here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeZ6Ioq0AQFu7YeMBTViQMrWBoMYo3-m2RT7U83fy1Y9a1Vxw/viewform
“On Archival Time”
Hadji Bakara is Assistant Professor of English. His research focuses on 20th and 21st century global, Anglophone, and American literatures, especially in their relation to histories of war, empire, migration, and human rights. He is the author of Writing for Dark Times: A Literary History of Human Rights (forthcoming University of Chicago Press 2026) and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook to Literature and Migration (forthcoming Oxford University Press 2026). This flash talk is drawn from his teaching and research on the question of archival methods in literary studies.
"My body became a face": Jean-Louis Barrault's 1935 adaptation of As I Lay Dying
Jen Buckley is Associate Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies in this department, where she will soon teach her first Michigan course on modern drama. Her research encompasses 19th-21st century drama, theatre, and performance, with a focus on modernism. This flash talk gave her the nudge she needed to actually start writing a chapter of her book-in-progress, Act Without Words: Speechless Performance on Modern Stages.
"Make the Road by Walking: A Meditation on Methods"
Megan Sweeney is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of English, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her publications include an award-winning monograph, Reading Is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons (2010); an edited collection, The Story Within Us: Women Prisoners Reflect on Reading (2012); a creative nonfiction book titled Mendings (2023); lyric essays; and numerous articles about African American literature, reading, incarceration, and autotheory. Sweeney is a recipient of fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan, the Ford Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Deeply committed to teaching and mentoring, she has received the Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award (2010), an Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship (2014), the John H. D'Arms Award for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring in the Humanities (2021), and a Faculty Recognition Award (2025).
Each session of Critical Conversations, a monthly luncheon series organized by the English Department Associate Chair’s Office, features flash talks from faculty members and graduate students about their current work as related to a rotating theme. The goal of these sessions is to share and learn about each other's work and serve as an important hub for timely conversations with relevance across the humanities.
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