Kucukalic, Lejla
Adjunct, Assistant Professor
Humanities 207
Tel: 310.825.4173
Fax: 310.267.4339
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Education

Ph.D. University of Delaware, B.A. Manchester College

Fields of Specialty
Contemporary American literature, Weltliteratur, philosophy and literature, digital culture, science fiction, (bio)semiotics, critical theory.

Publications

“Apocalyptic Fiction.” Jones, Brian, ed. Encyclopedia of the Environment in American Literature. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, In press.
“Cotton Mather ” Encyclopedia of the Environment in American Literature. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, In press.
“Mapping Literature Courses With Google Docs and ‘the GRID’” English Language Notes. 47.1, Spring/Summer 2009
Philip. K. Dick, Canonical Writer of the Digital Age. New York: Routledge, December 2008.

Representative courses

“Science Fiction Literature and Film,” “New Literary Histories,” “Liminal Realism.”

Additional Information

Before UCLA, Lejla Kucukalic taught contemporary American and world literature and Literature Humanities at Columbia University. The focus of her current research is “liminal realism” in contemporary American novels by David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, Ruth Ozeki, William Gibson, Jonathan Lethem and others. These writers depict the world as a semiotic realm: the universe broadly conceived as a stream of language, sometimes contained in cultural icons and objects, sometimes found within the language of new media, the "zero-oneness" of computer language, and in the language of biological processes. Drawing on her European background and American academic training, Kucukalic offers her students a double perspective on American literature and culture. Her other research interests include environmental literature, new media, contemporary visual arts, women in techno-culture, and Romani culture.