Nancy El Gendy

Nancy El Gendy is an Assistant Professor of English and the current Writing Center Coordinator. She joined “Heidelberg family,” as she phrased it, in fall 2018. Nancy’s teaching and research interests include academic writing, contemporary multi-ethnic American literature, Arab American literature, American literature (Civil War-present), and postcolonial and global literature. Nancy’s manuscript in progress is Untangling the Spider's Web: The Muslim Female Body in Twenty-First-Century Arab and Arab American Women's Discourses. Her publications appear in Women: A Cultural Review, World Literature Today, and the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Currently, she has one scholarly article under review by The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS). Nancy has reviewed several articles for MELUS. This April, she is presenting a paper entitled “Reinventing the Past in Palestinian American Women’s Literature” at the MELUS meeting in New Orleans, a national conference El Gendy has presented, and chaired panels, at for the past 9 years. El Gendy has earned several prestigious awards, including Grangaard-Noss Faculty International Travel Award, World Literature Today's Puterbaugh and Neustadt Scholarships (2014; 2015), Annette Kolodny Graduate Student Travel Award (2014), and a 2015 summer scholarship through Cornell University’s School of Criticism and Theory.

Courses Taught

• LIT 232, Survey of American Literature II, a three-credit course that studies American Literature from 1860-present.

• LIT 330, Studies in the Novel, is a three-credit course; in it, I focused on 21st-century US immigrant novels.

• LIT 231, Survey of American Literature I, is a three-credit course that examines American Literature to 1860.

• LIT 306, African American Literature, is a three-credit course that introduces students to the development of African American literary and cultural politics and practices.

• LIT 360, Modern Literature, is a three-credit, theme-based course; in it, I focused on modern Arabic literature in translation.

• AIM HEI, a one-credit hour course that helps students transition from high school to college. Among the skills I focused on are time management, leadership, and community engagement. We practiced ways to apply for internships, read job ads, write resumes, and develop cover letters.

• LIT 206, Literature of the Modern World, is a three-credit course that introduces students to the humanist tradition from around the world from the 1900s to present.

• LIT 102, Literary Genre, is a three-credit course that introduces students to three literary genres: stories, poems, and plays.

• LIT 150, Literary Theme, is a three-credit, theme-based course; in it, I focused on the theme of home in world literature and multiethnic American literature.

• LIT 205, Literature of the Ancient World, is a three-credit course that examines biblical, classical and medieval works, studying the genres of the comedy, the epic, and the tragedy.

• LIT 355, Studies in American Literature, is a three-credit course that focuses on multiethnic American film and literature.

Expertise 

American Literature, Literary Theory, Cultural Studies, and English Composition

Research Interests 

Contemporary Multiethnic American Literature Arab American Literature, Culture, and Film American Literature (Civil War-present) Postcolonial and Global Literature World Literature Arabic Literature Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theory Cultural

Resume

El Gendy CV