Speakers

Literary Re/Membrances

Graduate English Society (GES) Conference

Conron Hall, UC 3110
Saturday 25 April 2026

Panel 1: Re/Membering Ruptured Time

Hanna Protasova

Hanna Protasova is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature in the Department of Languages and Cultures at Western University (London, Canada). She holds two MA degrees: one in Slavic Studies (University of Victoria, Canada) and another in Theory and History of Literature (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine). Her research interests include Contemporary and 20^th Century Ukrainian literature, fictional and filmic representations of traumatic events including the Holocaust and World War II, commemorative practices in post-Soviet countries, and Ukrainian-Canadian diaspora literature. She is currently working on her doctoral thesis entitled The Holocaust on the Margins: Holocaust Representation and Memory in Ukrainian and Ukrainian Canadian Fiction, 1945 – 2022.

Mohammad Muneeb Ur Rehman

Muhammad Muneeb Ur Rehman is a PhD student and researcher whose work bridges the sociology of sport, postcolonial theory, and critical race studies. Drawing on a professional background in media, marketing, and sports management, his current project focuses on mediated representations of Muhammad Ali, Islamophobia, and resistance in sporting cultures.

Dakota Jabbour

Dakota Jabbour is a Lebanese-Canadian second-year PhD student at the University of Western Ontario with a background in contemporary Canadian ecopoetry and an MA in English and BSc in Biological Sciences from the University of Windsor. His Master’s thesis, "Crisis and Calamity," investigated how ecopoets depict anthropogenic climate change and human-nonhuman relationships in the Anthropocene.

Yijing Li

Yijing Li is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art and Visual Culture at Western University. She previously earned both her Honours Bachelor and Master degrees from the University of Toronto. During her graduate studies, she has engaged with case studies from the Family Camera Network archive at the Royal Ontario Museum, focusing on the cultural, social, and technological aspects of family photography. She has published her research essay "Family Portraits: The Reconstruction of 'Family Time' Through Generations."

Panel 2: Authorial Agency and Narrative Re/Membrance

Max Soucie

Max Soucie is currently a second-year Ph.D. candidate at Western University with a specialisation in early American literature. His scholarly interests range from settler colonialism and puritan thought to hauntings and cannibalism. Identity, liminality and the limitations of both form his current research interests.

Sammy Hacker

Sammy Hacker is completing an MA in Yiddish Studies. His research examines twentieth century Yiddish literature in translation with a focus on communicating non-textual elements of poetry (e.g. orality, intonation, melody). Other interests include narratology, late-Victorian pagan revivalism, the evolution of the English ghost story, theories of reception, the anthology as a literary genre, and Algernon Blackwood.

Nathan Hoar

Nathan Hoar is an MA Candidate at Western University, with a BA from King’s University College, and a research specialization in affect theory. His paper, "You Rebuild Me with Such Questions: Trauma, Memory and Affect in Maus" will explore the affective and somatic elements of traumatic memory and its transmission.

Amy Skodak

Amy Skodak (she/her) is a PhD student in Art and Visual Culture. She holds a B.Ed. from the University of Ottawa and taught secondary school English and Visual Arts before starting her doctoral studies. Her research explores intersections of visual arts and literature, temporality, and community arts initiatives.

Panel 3: Re/Membering Colonial Narratives

Mara González González

Mara González González is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Theory and Criticism at Western University. She graduated with honors from Universidad de Monterrey (UDEM) with a Bachelor’s in Philosophy in 2020. In April 2025, her paper "Feminicide in Mexico as an event: A Trauma Studies perspective” was chosen as the Honorable Mention for the category of “Best Submission by a Graduate Student" at the 63rd Meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. In November 2021, a sample of her poems was published by Los Libros del Perro in the anthology Novísimas II: Reunión de poetas mexicanas.

Michaela Maxey

Michaela Maxey (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate at Western University who received her B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from the University of Windsor. Her research interrogates how silence is culturally imposed on characters in Young Adult Literature.

Tatiana Jahromi

Tatiana Jahromi (she/they) is a third-year PhD candidate at Western University. They completed their Master of Arts in English at Queen’s University in 2023, and their Bachelor of Arts in English, with a double minor in Women’s Studies and Philosophy, from the University of Northern British Columbia in 2021.

Rania Saleh

Rania Saleh is a doctoral candidate in French-language literature. Her research focuses on analyzing utopian identity discourse in the works of Franco-Palestinian writer Elias Sanbar and Quebecois-Palestinian novelist Yara El-Ghadban, through the ecolinguistic perspective of Arran Stibbe. Her forthcoming publications include "Une perspective écosophique du discours identitaire dans l’utopie africaine de Rouge Impératrice (2019) de Léonora Miano,” or, in English, “An Ecosophical Perspective on Utopian Francophone Literature of Resistance."