Conrad James, Ph.D.
Visiting Associate Professor in World Cultures and Literatures

Conrad James received his Ph.D. in Latin American literature from the University of Cambridge. He has taught at the University of Durham and the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. He has also held visiting positions at the University of Maryland and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr James’s research focuses on Spanish Caribbean literature and visual culture and Afro-Hispanic cultural production. He is mainly interested in exploring what Caribbean and Afro-Hispanic sites of creativity reveal about race thinking, the politics of movement, diaspora transformations and the emergence of new world philosophies. He has published widely on Afro-Cuban writing of the late 20 ^th century and has also written on contemporary Dominican fiction. His current research includes a project on Cultural Transactions in Cuban Literature and Visual Culture and another on The Transnational Geographies of 21 ^st Century Caribbean Narratives .

Melody Yunzi Li
Assistant Professor of Chinese

Dr. Melody Yunzi Li holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Washington University in St. Louis, a MPhil degree in Translation Studies from the School of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong, and a BA in English/Translation Studies from Sun Yat-sen University, China. She taught at Transylvania University and Lenoir-Rhyne University before joining the University of Houston as an Assistant Professor in August 2018. Dr. Li also was a visiting scholar at Harvard University 2015-2016. Her research interests include Asian diaspora literature, modern Chinese literature and culture, migration studies, translation studies and cultural identities. Her current project focuses on Chinese diasporic literature from the 1960s to the present. She has published in various journals including  Pacific Coast Philology,  Telos and others. Besides her specialty in Chinese literature, Dr. Li is also a Chinese dancer and translator.