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English Department

Ellizibeth Nastacia Schmoll

Ellizibeth Nastacia Schmoll, M.A.

  • Teaching and Research Assistant in English Literature
  • Assistant Prof. Dr. Barbara Straumann
Phone
+41 44 634 36 66
Room number
PET-2

Portrait

Nastacia Schmoll holds a BA in English and a BA in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Santa Barbara as well as an MA in Literary Studies from the University of Zurich and is currently a doctoral student and a teaching and research assistant for Professor Barbara Straumann at the University of Zurich English Department.

She is interested in the potential of speculative fiction to challenge and provide possible alternatives to heteropatriarchal and euro- and anthropocentric structures and worldviews. As part of this, her research interrogates preconceived notions of genre, authorship, and readership. Her current PhD research examines depictions of spaces in science fiction texts, focusing primarily on the changing approaches to these speculative spaces in recent SF that provide new paradigms for thinking about the complex environmental and social challenges of the moment.

She is additionally interested in feminist and economic criticism, and her MA thesis explored depictions of female beauty as a precarious form or capital in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country, and Tina Fey’s Mean Girls

Teaching and Supervision

FS22 - FS25 Textual Analysis

B.A. Seminar, required module

FS22 - FS24 Supervision of BA theses B.A. required module
FS22 - FS24 Examiner and invigilator for Reading List oral exams B.A. required module
FS24 Frankenstein Reimagined

B.A. Seminar, core elective module –

Literary and Cultural Analysis: Texts and Their Afterlives

HS23 American Ecofiction

B.A. Seminar, core elective module –

Literary Histories: Cultural Contexts

FS23 (Post)Colonial Science Fiction

B.A. Seminar, core elective module –

Literary and Cultural Analysis: (Post-)Colonial Studies

HS22 19th-Century (Proto)Science Fiction

B.A. Seminar, core elective module –

Literary Histories: The Long Nineteenth Century

Students searching for a supervisor for a B.A. thesis on a topic related to Nastacia's seminars or other research interests are encouraged to contact her directly via email at nastacia.schmoll@es.uzh.ch

Research Interests

  • Speculative Fiction
  • Ecofiction
  • Gender and Sexuality
  • Race and Ethnicity
  • Space/Spatiality
  • Economic criticism

Conference Papers and Presentations

"Connecting People and Places for New Paradigms of Healing in Vandana Singh's 'Entanglement.'" Panel presentation at the Gesellschaft für Anglophone Postkoloniale Studien (Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Sudies) Annual Conference. Zurich, CH. May 2024.

"Recognizing the Self in the Other in Singh and Miévelle's Superimposed Cities." Panel presentation at the Gesellschaft für Anglophone Postkoloniale Studien (Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Sudies) Annual Conference. Konstanz, DE. May 2023.

"Reevaluating the 'Science' in Science Fiction." Panel presentation at the British Society for Literature and Science Annual Conference. Edinburgh, UK. April 2023.

"Indigiqueer Reimaginings of Science Fiction." Panel presentation at the Swiss Association for North American Studies Biennial Conference. Fribourg, CH. November 2022.

"Environmental Reckonings and the 'Collapse' of Mankind in the Southern Reach Trilogy." Panel presentation at the Cultural Studies Association Annual Conference. Chicago, IL, USA. June 2022.

"Female Beauty as Precarious Capital Across the Long 19th Century: Pride and Prejudice & The Custom of the Country." Poster presentation at the Women, Money and Markets (1600-1900) Conference. Online. June 2021.

"Writing the Lives of Working College Students." (with Erika Carlos and Chelsea Brandwein). Poster presentation at the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Portland, OR, USA. March 2017.

"Russia's 'Gay Propoganda' Ban: Proviking the voice of dissent in an attempt at silence." Panel presentation at the Annual University of California Conference on Slavic and East/Central European Studies. Los Angeles, CA, USA. April 2013.

Publications

"Indigiqueer Reimaginings of Science Fiction." SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature, vol. 42, 2023, pp. 175-193.

"Review of Vulgar Beauty: Acting Chinese in the Global Sensorium by Mila Zuo (Duke UP)." Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, vol. 76, no. 2, 2023.

"Getting to Graduation." (with Chelsea Brandwein, Erika Carlos, and Heather Steffen). Blog Los Angeles Review of Books, 2017.

Lectures and Talks

"From the Mental to the Interdimensional: Exploring 'Otherspace' in Science Fiction." Lecture for the Lecture Series on English Literature: Space, University of Zurich, April 2023.

"Strategies for Improving International Student Writing Skills." Invited presentation for the Office of International Students and Scholars Glogal Skills Seminar, University of Califirnia, Santa Barbara, February 2018.

"From Russia to Kosovo, We Gro When Walls Go." Invited presentation for the Dobro Slovo Honors Society Induction, University of California, Santa Barbara, June 2017.

Organization

"'Good Hunting': A Conversation with Ken Liu." As part of the seminar "We 'Other Victorians': Neo-Victorian Literature and Culture" at the University of Zurich English Seminar, January 2022.