Sami Atassi

Learn more about Sami Atassi

Get To Know Sami Atassi

What in your life drew you to your current field of study?

I have always been fascinated by people and what they say, do, and create.

What do you hope your students gain from studying or working with you?

I hope my students develop a stronger sensitivity toward rhetoric, critical inquiry, and all kinds of art. More generally, I hope we can grasp a clearer sense of how languages possess the power to inform/reform ourselves and our world.

What are you passionate about in your personal life?

Families, friends, non-human animals, books, film/TV, video games, art, weird collectibles, anything 19th century.

Education

Ph.D. English Literature, Indiana University, 2023
M.A. English and American Literature, University of Houston, 2014
B.A. Arts and Humanities, University of Texas at Dallas, 2012

Licenses and Certificates:

• Certified Master Tutor by the College Reading & Learning Association
• Graduate Certificate in Empire Studies, Department of English, University of Houston

Courses Taught

ENGL104 Composition & Rhetoric 

Publications

• “Poe’s Arabesque Manner: Making Space for Satirical Reflection.” Poe Spaces, collection of scholarly essays edited by Philip Edward Phillips, Lehigh University Press, forthcoming.
  
• “Remediating Antebellum Laughter: Sheppard Lee, Bert Williams, and the Subversion of Blackface in Get Out.” “Fifth Issue,” open access special section of Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 62, no. 5, Summer 2023.
  
• “‘My Heart Laid Bare’: A Deep Rereading of Daniel Hoffman’s Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe.” “Critical Reassessments,” feature in The Edgar Allan Poe Review 24, no. 1, Spring 2023.
  
• “Teaching in Tumultuous Times: The Case of Edgar Allan Poe.” “Teaching Crime Fiction After BLM,” teaching forum in Clues: A Journal of Detection 40, no. 2, 2022, pp. 113-115.
  
• “Playing with the Sovereign’s Plague in ‘King Pest’: A Summoning of Poe’s Necromantic Humor in War-Torn Syria.” Studies in American Humor 5, no. 2, 2019, pp. 351-371.
  
• “Mapping Representations of the Queen of Mystery’s Middle East: Adaptations, Anxieties, and Geopolitics of Agatha Christie’s Appointment with Death.” “Postcolonial Crime Fiction,” special issue of The Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies 4, no. 1, 2016, pp. 23-40.
  
• “Social Media, Revolution, and Postcolonialism: Visualizing the Syrian Revolution via Social Media.” Postcolonial Interventions: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Studies 1, no. 1, 2016, pp. 97-122.
  
• “Syria’s Elegies (@SyriasElegies): Socio-Political Poetics of the World Wide Web.” Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 5, no. 2, 2015, pp. 45-52.
• “Diaspora and Transnational Identities: Table Talk Construction of Syrian-American Identities in Times of Civil War.” Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 4, no. 2, 2014, pp. 1-15.
  
• “Delusory Decolonization in a Syrian-American’s Mind.” Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 4, no. 1, 2013, pp. 97-114. 

Presentations

• “Bird’s Sheppard Lee: The Tragicomic Story of Jacksonian Capital.” Re: Telling and Re: Form, English Graduate Conference, Indiana University Bloomington, 2022.
• “Poe at the Boston Lyceum: Performing His Satirical Arabesque.” Fifth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference, Poe Studies Association, Omni Parker House, 2022.
• “Poe’s Satirical Arabesque: Cracking Up at Progress, Modern Optics, and the Sovereign Self.” Comedy/Humor, American Humor Studies Association Conference, University of Texas Austin, 2021.
• “Teaching the Horror and Comedy of Blackface in Benito Cereno.” Teaching With Difficulty Colloquium, Indiana University Bloomington, 2021.
• “Reforming Antebellum Terror: Functions of Satire from Stowe to Poe.” American Comparative Literature Association Conference, Georgetown University, 2019.
• “The Game is Afoot: Learning to Play the Life of the Mind,” co-presented with Phillip Choong. Computers and Writing Conference, George Mason University, 2018.
• “Resurrecting Antebellum Laughter in Jordan Peele’s Get Out.” American Comparative Literature Association Conference, University of California, Los Angeles, 2018.
• “Summoning and Testing Poe’s Sense of Humor: The (Im)possibility of Laughter in Contemporary Syria.” South Central Modern Language Association Conference, Sheraton Dallas Hotel, 2016.
• “Visualizing the Syrian Crisis: Syrians’ Revolution of Images Before ISIS’s War of Images.” American Comparative Literature Association Conference, Harvard University, 2016.
• “Melville’s Shark: The Hungry Queer of the Sea.” Digesting Discourses: Taste, Appetite, and Consumption, English Graduate Conference, Indiana University Bloomington, 2016.
• “Syria’s Elegies (@SyriasElegies): Socio-Political Poetics of the World Wide Web.” Conference of College Teachers of English, College of the Mainland, 2015.
• “Delusory Decolonization in a Syrian-American’s Mind.” Energies: Through the Material, Theoretical, and Textual, English Graduate Conference, University of Southern California, 2014.
• “Diaspora and Transnational Identities: Table Talk Construction of Syrian-American Identities in Times of Civil War.” Coastal Plains Graduate Conference, University of Houston, 2014. 

Grants and Fellowships

• Albert Wertheim Fellowship, awarded by the Department of English at Indiana University Bloomington. For advanced dissertation research on theatre, dramatic literature, and performance studies, Fall 2022-Spring 2023.
• Sanders-Weber Fellowship, awarded by the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington. For dissertation research and writing, Spring 2022.
• Teaching Fellowship, awarded by the Department of English at Indiana University Bloomington. For teaching an online section of ENG L204 Intro to Fiction, Fall 2021.
• Dr. William Slaymaker Graduate Fellowship, awarded by the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington. For exemplary research in the fields of American performance and postcolonial studies, Summer 2021.
• Susan D. Gubar Summer Dissertation Research Fellowship, awarded by the Department of English at Indiana University Bloomington. For research in the field of American studies, Summer 2020.
• Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, awarded by the Islamic Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington. For study of Arabic IV and Islamic art, culture, and history, Fall 2019-Spring 2020.
• Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, awarded by the African Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington. For study of Arabic I, Summer 2016.

Awards & Recognition

• J. Albert Robbins Prize in American Literature, awarded by the Department of English at Indiana University Bloomington. Awarded to the best PhD candidate studying American literature, Fall 2022-Spring 2023.
• Lawlis-Duchovnay Award, awarded by the Department of English at Indiana University Bloomington. For participation in the Poe Studies Association’s Fifth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference, Omni Parker House, 2022.
• Constance Rourke Prize for Graduate Students, awarded by the American Humor Studies Association. Amount: For participation in annual conference, Comedy/Humor, University of Texas Austin, 2020.
• Culbertson Chair in Writing Award, awarded by the English Department at Indiana University Bloomington. For participation in the Computers and Writing Conference, George Mason University, 2018.
• Carnegie Travel Award, awarded by the Department of English at Indiana University Bloomington. For participation in the American Comparative Literature Association Conference, University of California Los Angeles, 2018.
• Carnegie Travel Award, awarded by the English Department at Indiana University Bloomington. For participation in the South Central Modern Language Association Conference, Sheraton Dallas Hotel, 2016.