Mihaela P. Harper received her Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island (2012), where she completed her dissertation, “Literature in Anomie: Postcommunist, Postmodern, Postapocalyptic.” Her work focuses on the notion of lawlessness (anomie) and examines the ethical and political dimensions of contemporary literary texts. She has presented her work at various national and international conferences, including the Modern Language Association (MLA), the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA), and the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA).
Since 2005, she has taught introductory, genre, survey, core curriculum and upper-division literature, as well as writing and humanities courses. In all of them, she encourages students to engage in self-exploration through comparative analytical work, often in-between ancient and contemporary texts, at the crux of literature and philosophy.
Publications:
Edited Volumes
Bulgarian Literature as World Literature (co-edited with Dimitar Kambourov), Bloomsbury (2020).
Journal Articles
“Worlding in Georgi Gospodinov’s There, Where We Are Not,” Neohelicon, 50 (2023): 99–115.
“Breaking Up, Down and Out: Anomie in Georgi Gospodinov’s Natural Novel.” Slavonic and East European Review, 93.3 (2015): 429-450.
“‘Art Entices Us Upon Unknown and Deadly Paths’: An Interview with Bulgarian Writer Kalin Terziyski.” Modern Language Studies, 44.2 (Winter 2015): 32-49.
“Fabric Frontiers: Thread, Cloth, Body, Self in Latina Literature in Film.” Hispanic Review 81.2 (Spring 2013): 165-180.
“Turning To Debris: Ethics of Violence in Wilkomirski’s Fragments and Beigbeder’s Windows on the World.” Special issue of Symplokē 20.1-2 (2012): 231-244.
“Chaos as a Mode of Living in Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable.” Special issue of the Journal of Modern Literature 35.4 (Summer 2012): 151-162.
“‘An art that it takes a lifetime to learn’: Suicide and Souci de soi.” Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry 7.17 (Spring 2012): 60-69.
Book Chapters
“Female Body Language: Cutting, Scarring, and Becoming in HBO’s Sharp Objects.” In Female Agencies and Subjectivities in Film and Television. Eds. Digdem Sezen et al. Palgrave MacMillan, 2020. 145-163.
“‘In Agatha Christie’s Footsteps’: The Cursed Goblet and Contemporary Bulgarian Crime Fiction.” In Crime Fiction as World Literature. Eds. Louise Nilsson, David Damrosch, and Theo D’haen. Bloomsbury, 2017. 171-186.
“Drafting the Hyperreal: Ownership, Agency, Responsibility in Fantasy Sports,” co-written with Andrew J Ploeg. In Simulation in Media and Culture: Believing the Hype. Ed. Robin DeRosa. Lexington Books, 2011. 151-161.
Special Issue Editor
“Fantasy Sports” (co-edited with Andrew J Ploeg), Reconstruction 17.2 (June 2017).