2025 PAMLA Election Nominee Statements
Dear PAMLA members,
The time has come for our annual elections for new officers of our PAMLA General Board. If you are current with your PAMLA membership, you will receive an emailed ballot link to vote for new officers.
The General Board is the body that makes major decisions regarding PAMLA. They help to plan the association’s future so that we may continue to serve our members’ needs. We require your assistance in choosing the best officers possible. Happily, the Nominating Committee, led by its chair Professor Peter Schulman, has come up with an impressive slate of potential officers and board members. Please take a moment to read through the candidates’ statements and then cast your vote. You can vote for one candidate out of the two nominees for Second Vice President, two candidates out of the four nominees for Board Member-at-large, and one candidate out of two for Graduate Student Representative. The Second Vice President moves up automatically to First Vice President and then to President in consecutive years. The two General Board Members-at-large nominees who receive the most votes will each serve three-year terms. And the Graduate Student Representative nominee who receives the most votes will serve a two-year term.
I’d like to thank and acknowledge the fine work of the Nominating Committee (Chair Peter Schulman and members Yolanda Doub and Juan Delgado). And our deep gratitude goes out to our candidates for their willingness to serve our association should they be elected. We know we are all busy, so thank you, candidates, for your dedication to service and to PAMLA! Now, let the voting commence.
Note: Please read all of the biographies and candidate statements before casting your ballot.
You may send any questions concerning the election to PAMLA Communications Director, David John Boyd: communications@pamla.org
And questions may also be directed to me, PAMLA Executive Director, Craig Svonkin: director@pamla.org
Happy voting,
Craig Svonkin, PAMLA Executive Director
Candidates for Second Vice President (please vote for one nominee):
Jerry Rafiki Jenkins has been an active member of PAMLA since 2009, when he presented his first conference paper, and he has served as a panelist, presiding officer, and panel chair of the African American standing session for several years. In addition to those roles, Rafiki has served as a board member (2022-2024) and as a reviewer for Pacific Coast Philology.
Rafiki is Assistant Director of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Georgia. Rafiki earned his doctorate in Literature from the University of California, San Diego; his research focuses on Black speculative fiction and film, with an emphasis on horror, science fiction, and future human studies. Rafiki is the author of Anti-Blackness and Human Monstrosity in Black American Horror Fiction (Ohio State UP, 2024) and The Paradox of Blackness in African American Vampire Fiction (Ohio State UP, 2019). He co-edited, with Martin Japtok, Human Contradictions in Octavia E. Butler’s Work (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and Authentic Blackness/Real Blackness: Essays on the Meaning of Blackness in Literature and Culture (Peter Lang, 2011). Rafiki has also authored several book chapters, and his peer-reviewed articles appear in Pacific Coast Philology, Screening Noir, African American Review, Journal of Children’s Literature, and Science Fiction Studies.
Jerry Rafiki Jenkins’ Candidate Statement: My growth as a scholar is largely due to my involvement in PAMLA; therefore, I was overjoyed when I was nominated for Second Vice President. Indeed, early versions of several of my articles and book chapters were presented at PAMLA conferences, and the idea for Human Contradictions in Octavia E. Butler’s Work, began after a PAMLA panel on Octavia Butler. Should I be elected to the office of PAMLA’s Second Vice President, I look forward to the opportunity to help maintain and expand what PAMLA has provided for me and others—an intellectual space where the goal of sharing and debating ideas is not one-upmanship but making meaningful contributions to the Humanities and, therefore, to human life. The ability to provide such a space, I believe, is one of the reasons why emerging and established scholars, artists, and teachers are drawn to PAMLA. Thus, if I am elected Second Vice President, I will work with others throughout PAMLA to seek out ways to expand the organization’s reach. I believe that emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of the Humanities is one approach to such expansion, which could include promoting PAMLA’s conferences and journals to non-Humanities departments and/or holding workshops that focus on the ways in which a degree in the Humanities could be useful in careers outside of the Humanities. With that goal guiding my service, I look forward to working with the board on developing a conference topic and a list of guest speakers that will encourage dialogue between Humanities and non-Humanities disciplines and maintain PAMLA’s commitment to scholarly inquiry, mentorship, professional growth, and diverse art, languages, and thought. I am excited about the opportunity to help guide PAMLA into the future during these uncertain times as it seeks to highlight the importance of Humanities scholarship.
Friederike von Schwerin-High is professor of German at Pomona College, where she has been teaching for twenty years and served as department chair for six years. She grew up in Frankfurt, Germany and attended university in Heidelberg and Amherst. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is the author of a monograph entitled Shakespeare, Reception and Translation: Germany and Japan (Bloomsbury). Friederike’s research interests include the enlightenment and Age of Goethe; the history of blank verse in eighteenth-century German drama texts; the rhetoric of biography in works of fiction; narratives of friendship and otherness; and translation theory, history, and practice. Her journal articles and book chapters examine works by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Heinrich von Kleist, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Thomas Mann, Golo Mann, Christa Wolf, Doris Dörrie, Judith Hermann, and Jenny Erpenbeck. Her articles have appeared in Gegenwartsliteratur, Schriften der Internationalen Arnim-Gesellschaft, The European Legacy, and Text und Kritik, among others.
Friederike von Schwerin-High’s Candidate Statement: I joined PAMLA in 2005 after I had just moved to the West Coast and begun teaching at Pomona College. The first PAMLA conference I attended was at UC Riverside in 2006, where the broad range and high quality of the panels and the welcoming, collaborative spirit of the Association deeply impressed me. Together with Roswitha Burwick (Scripps College), I served as Pacific Coast Philology’s coeditor and an ex officio board member from 2010-2015. During that time, I also assisted in the transition to Penn State University Press as PCP’s publisher. Over the past twenty years, I have consistently attended annual PAMLA conferences, presenting papers and chairing both standing and special sessions. I admire the close collaboration between scholars — graduate students, lecturers, and young assistant professors as well as faculty in all phases of their career — from public universities, small liberal arts colleges, and community colleges. I also value the Association’s geographic and often thematic focus on the Pacific Rim and, at the same time, the ever-increasing, lively participation of members from other U.S. regions and from around the world. At a time when higher education in general and the humanities in particular face enormous challenges, PAMLA has been providing a close-knit community of established and emerging academics, artists, and independent scholars. Over the years, I have actively introduced a number of colleagues with various university and disciplinary affiliations to PAMLA because of the significant role PAMLA has played in my own trajectory as a faculty member and researcher. If elected, I would be very pleased to work again alongside a slate of dedicated board members and officers under the exceptional directorship of Craig Svonkin as PAMLA continues to develop regional, cross-regional, and international networks of scholars working toward our shared advocacy for the study of languages, literatures, and cultures in their particularity and interconnectedness.
Candidates for Member-at-Large Positions on the PAMLA General Board (please vote for up to two nominees):
Toshiaki Komura is Professor of English at Meiji Gakuin University, where he teaches American literature with a focus on modern and contemporary poetry. He received a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 2011; he also holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Cornell University and a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from Dartmouth College. His monograph, entitled Lost Loss in American Elegiac Poetry: Tracing Inaccessible Grief from Stevens to Post-9/11 (Lexington Books, 2020), was awarded the ALSJ Book Prize in 2021. He is currently co-authoring a book project on multiethnic comparative poetics, entitled Contemporary Japanese American and Mexican American Poets: Lyrical Solidarity (under contract with Routledge). His main research fields include modern and contemporary American poetry, elegy studies, grief studies, translation studies, and animal studies. His scholarly and poetic work has appeared in a number of academic and literary journals, including ELH, Bishop-Lowell Studies, and The Louisville Review.
Toshiaki Komura’s Candidate Statement: I have participated in PAMLA’s annual conference every year since 2017. I’ve served the organization in various capacities during this time period, including as a presiding officer, a presenter, an auxiliary council member, and a peer reviewer. I have also had the pleasure of serving on PAMLA’s international scholarship committee, as well as presiding over the Poetry and Poetics standing session. Over the past several years as the presiding officer of the Animal Studies special sessions, I worked with the PAMLA board and fellow session participants to create a permanent standing session on Animal Studies at PAMLA’s annual meetings—an effort that came to fruition this year. These opportunities to interact with PAMLA members have afforded me an inside view of how PAMLA cultivates its collegial and supportive community for all members; if elected, I will do my part to maintain and promote this environment. Also, as a U.S. trained scholar-writer who has an interdisciplinary research profile and is currently stationed overseas, I will work toward reinforcing PAMLA’s international presence, as well as its commitment to fostering inclusivity and dialogue across disciplines, languages, and regions.
Lissa Paul, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a Professor in the Department of English, Faculty of Humanities at Brock University in the Niagara region of Ontario, Canada. Her attention to the small and the overlooked has resulted in high-impact projects in multiple disciplines including poetry for children, the foundational scholarly apparatus for studies in children’s literature, the recovery of histories of 19th century Barbadian fugitive enslaved people, and the transnational life and letters of forgotten 18th century British author and teacher Eliza Fenwick (1764-1840). Thanks to generous funding from the Social Sciences and Research Council (SSHRC), the first two books of Lissa’s Fenwick quartet have been published: The Children’s Book Business (2011) and a biography, Eliza Fenwick: Early Modern Feminist (2019). Her two-volume The Fenwick Letters 1797-1840: A Transnational Feminist Life Reconstructed will be published by the University of Delaware Press in 2026. Lissa’s contributions to studies in children’s literature include her work as an Associate General Editor of The Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature (2005) and as a co-editor of Keywords for Children’s Literature (2011, 2021). In the context of Caribbean studies, Lissa’s major contribution is in instigating (and then serving as a co-applicant) on a British Library Endangered Archives Programme Grant to digitize a Barbadian colonial newspaper, The Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette. That work and her work towards the digitization of a second newspaper, the Barbadian, spawned several “decolonization” projects—including a crowd-sourcing research project, “Agents of Enslavement” and a daily series of broadcasts/podcasts, “Today in Bajan History,”—built on those newly digitized materials.
Lissa Paul’s Candidate Statement: Even though I live and work in the landlocked center of Canada, the allure of PAMLA’s west-coast, Pacific-focused, multidisciplinary call has been irresistible for years. If elected, I hope I might be able to help PAMLA grow its Canadian presence. Over the years I’ve been attracted by the breadth of possibilities offered at PAMLA conferences, especially as they align with my own varied research interests. At my first PAMLA conference in Hawaii in 2017, I spoke to my work on 18th century British author, Eliza Fenwick; in 2019 in San Diego, to my interests in children’s poetry and scholarly publishing in children’s literature; and in 2024 in Palm Springs to my interests in Canadian studies and moves towards decolonialization. If elected, I would work towards building more opportunities for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary work, especially those engaging expanded definitions of “language,” including, for instance, the “language” of architecture, the “language” of politics, and the “language” of AI. I’d also work towards further developing PAMLA’s existing—always intriguing— “conversations” between ancient and modern; relations between medieval sagas, for instance, and their impact/influence on current discussions of colonial encounters seem especially relevant. And as a Canadian with research interests in the Caribbean, I would be especially interested in working towards increasing connections with Canadian, Caribbean, and Latin American scholars. It would be a privilege to bring my organizational and editorial expertise to the PAMLA Board and to contribute to the development of the organization’s future.
Enrico Vettore is the chair of the Graziadio Center for Italian Studies and Professor of Italian Studies at California State University, Long Beach. Born in Padua, Italy, he earned his BA in Contemporary Italian Literature from the University of Padua and a diploma in classical guitar from the Pollini Music Conservatory in Padua. Enrico was awarded his MA in Italian and his PhD in Romance Languages at the University of Oregon, Eugene. After serving as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Italian at Kenyon College (Gambier, OH), he was hired at California State University, Long Beach, in 2007. His research interests are: Italian Literature, Italian Studies, Zen Philosophy and Literature, Ethics and Literature, Jungian and Post-Jungian Literary Criticism, Ecocriticism, and Ecopsychology. Enrico has published articles on Petrarch and Schopenhauer, Roberto Rossellini, Sciascia and Manzoni, Schopenhauer’s concept of “eternal justice” in Borges and Sciascia, a Jungian reading of Pasolini’s Medea, two Zen interpretations of Pirandello, and the chapter “Lose Your Self: Gianni Celati and the Art of Being One with the World.” He is currently working on an ecopsychological reading of Antonioni’s trilogy, and a book project on Gianni Celati and ecocriticism.
Enrico Vettore’s Candidate Statement: I have been a member of PAMLA since 2012, and I have organized, chaired, or presented (and sometimes all three) at all editions of the PAMLA conference. Each time, no matter the location, it has been a wonderful experience. I have had the opportunity to listen to very interesting, thought provoking, and sometimes inspiring presentations, and to exchange ideas with like-minded scholars. Spending time with peers in a relaxed but intellectually stimulating environment feels like entering a little oasis that helps me to regroup before the end of the semester: it is a recharging experience that improves my teaching performance. Moreover, the exchange of ideas does not stop there, for the interaction with colleagues usually marks the beginning of fruitful collaborations, or of a beautiful intellectual exchange that many of us long for, especially when the administrative requirements of our jobs seem to do their best to kill the joy of teaching and researching. PAMLA has done that for me every time I have presented a paper or organized and chaired a panel. In the summer of 2022, I was invited to be a member of the Sedenquist International Scholarship committee. And I am currently serving out the final year of Satoko Kakihara’s member-at-large term, being asked to do so since she had to step down to become PAMLA’s Second VP. These more administrative PAMLA experiences have been as pleasant as my academic ones, proving that collaboration with PAMLA colleagues works, whatever the task at hand. The mutual respect, the desire to serve, and the synergy among members during our meetings has been highly effective and heartwarming.
I am honored to have been asked to run for the position of member at large of the PAMLA Board. Should I be elected, I look forward to playing a more active role contributing to the well-being and growth of this organization. Doing so would be very rewarding, especially in times such as these when academic discourse is targeted. I look forward to doing my best to keep PAMLA a lively hub where we can grow together, both intellectually and as human beings.
Lisa Weston is Professor of English at California State University – Fresno, where she teaches a wide range of courses in Medieval and Early Modern literature. She has written and presented primarily on Old English and Anglo-Latin texts viewed through feminist and queer theoretical lenses. Her publications have engaged with (to mention a few topics) female monastic literary production, the queerness of virginity in hagiographic narrative, the poetics of wyrd, and the subversive potential of the “obsolete” Old English dual pronoun, with further forays into the materiality of medieval literacy practices and artifacts, Old English metrical charms, and later Medieval image magic. Lisa has also served as Department Chair and as (by turns) Treasurer and President of the campus chapter of the California Faculty Association.
Lisa Weston’s Candidate Statement: What convinces many of us to support and engage with PAMLA—and especially keeps us returning to its conferences year after year—is the way it encourages and embodies the best practices of creative, interdisciplinary scholarship. PAMLA is noteworthy, moreover, for its history of bringing into solidarity and productive collaboration scholars and artists of all ranks and stations: student and teacher; junior and senior faculty; tenured and tenure-track professors and lecturers; and those outside as well as inside the academy. Particularly in times when our profession can seem so threatened by disinterest, trivialization and marginalization, and even (increasingly) overt and open attacks on academic freedom and integrity, we need to remember that history and redouble our efforts to collaborate in the definition and expression of the cultural (and political) necessity of intellectual exploration, discovery, and critique. If you entrust me with your vote to serve you as member-at-large, I pledge to bring both my experience and my passion to the work of supporting PAMLA in its mission to provide an inclusive space for scholarly collaboration and solidarity.
Candidates for Graduate Student Representative on the PAMLA General Board (please vote for one nominee):
Nathan Bonar is a fourth year PhD student at Claremont Graduate University, a lecturer at Pacific States University, and co-editor and co-founder of Em-Dash Literary Journal (https://www.emdashjournal.com/), as well as a conference organizer for the Institute for Post-Modern Development of China. His research focuses on Western esoterica, the history of science, and the history of the book. He is particularly interested in the functions angels play in religion, culture, and magic. Nathan pursues a degree in literature, but his research spills over into the fields of history, religion, archival research, art history, and politics. Moreover, he pursues research in Latin, French, German, and soon Greek. Nathan has attended PAMLA since 2022. He has since maintained involvement with chairing panels and presenting his research. For 2025, he will be presenting “Voices from Beyond: Angelic Conversations and Esoteric Practice in Early Modern Europe.” His publications include multiple poems and an inaugural essay for Em-Dash Graduate Journal, and a forthcoming book review titled “East Meets West: New Contexts for Comparative Study of the Ancient World. A Book Review for Pan Yue’s Ancient China and Rome Under the Alien Rule.” Recently, Nathan was awarded the title of graduate affiliate at the Early Modern Studies Institute at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and he won a travel fellowship to the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois.
Nathan Bonar’s Candidate Statement: I began my journey with PAMLA in 2022 at the Luskin Center on UCLA’s campus, where I read my work on Milton’s Paradise Lost. For me, it was a beautiful academic setting I had not really been privy to growing up in rural Tennessee. However, I had dreamed of such an environment while reading in my bucolic country home. PAMLA was a wonderful moment of “fitting-in” that I needed to experience. After my first year, I have been hooked, and I have been back each year. While my energetic colleagues at Claremont Graduate University hardly need the reminder, I encourage all my cohorts at CGU to submit papers or volunteer to chair panels. As comes with frequent PAMLA attendance, I have found numerous new colleagues and friendships, with whom I keep in frequent contact and share in each other’s research pursuits. As a hopeful for graduate representative, I would bring my administrative organizational skills to assist in being a liaison between the association and graduate students as well as advocating for my fellow graduate students. I wish to provide support, offer advice, or provide guidance regarding the conference to anyone who needs it. I would aspire to be an open-minded and flexible event planner to boot. I can only hope to fill Alexa Barger’s shoes as incoming graduate representative by learning as much from her and fellow board members as possible.
Graciela Sierra-Moreno is a PhD student in the Department of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She focuses on Chicanx, or Mexican/American, literature and cultural productions. Her dissertation research aims to understand how affect is portrayed in Chicanx media and if affect is/can be culturally specific, while exploring the acceptability of negative emotions in the public sphere. In addition to her research, Graciela strives to aid students, particularly first-generation students, as a Graduate Student Program Coordinator at UCSC’s American Indian Resource Center (AIRC). Graciela is from the Central Valley in California.
Graciela Sierra-Moreno’s Candidate Statement: My first PAMLA conference was the 2019 conference in San Diego. I had the opportunity to present as an undergraduate student on a panel called “Beyond Binaries.” I presented a paper, “Adelitas, Chicanas, y Cholas: The Radical and the Ride or Die,” on the alternative feminist community building in Allison Anders’ film Mi Vida Loca. As an undergraduate at my first professional panel, I was very nervous. That feeling quickly passed; PAMLA has always felt like a very welcoming and supportive space in which I could freely share ideas in conversation with others. I have since attended and presented in the 2021 and 2022 conferences and am happy to be doing so again this year. Connecting with other students during PAMLA’s conference has also created a model for how to foster spaces for community building in other academic spaces. If given the opportunity, it would be a pleasure to continue to work to provide a welcoming environment for graduate students within PAMLA. I believe that with my experience at the AIRC, I could enter this role and assist with the established support network that creates a positive environment for students to thrive in as academics. I believe that a supportive community is essential for the progression of our studies and will focus on creating spaces that feel safe and comforting for all students when assisting with any events.