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Ryan James Kernan, Ph. D.
Contact Information:
rjkernan@rci.rutgers.edu
Dissertation
Lost and Found in Black Translation: Langston Hughes's Translations of French- and Spanish-Language Poetry, his Hispanic and Francophone Translators, and the Fashioning of Radical Black Subjectivities, July 1, 2007, Efraín Kristal and Richard Yarborough

Highest Earned Degree
Ph.D., UCLA, Comparative Literature, 2007
Other Earned Degrees
A.B., Princeton University, English Literature and Theater, 1998
Linguistic Ability
English Spanish French Reading knowledge of Portuguese and Russian
Honors and Awards Fellowships
2000-2001 University of California Graduate Opportunity Fellowship 2001-2003 UCLA Eugene Cota Robles Fellowship 2006-2007 University of California President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship 2011-2012 Faculty Fellow, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Professional Awards and Honors
1998 Phi Beta Kappa; Summa Cum Laude, Princeton University (1998) 2004 UCLA Graduate Research Mentorship, with Professor Michelle Clayton (2004) 2006 UCLA Graduate Research Mentorship, with Professor Michael Heim (2005-2006) 2012 Faculty Fellow, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Research Interests Professional Identification
I am an African Americanist, comparativist, literary theorist and critic, focusing on Translation Studies, Africana, and literature of the Americas.
Description of Research and Scholarly or Creative Objectives
My comparativist approach to the literary production of the African Diaspora builds on the work of scholars who have been developing the field of African American Studies and Diasporic Studies within modern academia since the late 1960s. In the broadest sense of the term American, I aspire to contextualize and to treat African American literature with the care, respect, and depth accorded other “national” and “transnational” literatures. In pursuing this objective my principal intellectual foci have led me to a multi-disciplinary approach as African Americanist, comparativist, literary theorist and critic, focusing on Translation Studies, diaspora studies, and Literature of the Americas. My manuscript, New World Maker: Radical Poetics, Black Internationalism and the Translations of Langston Hughes, employs this multidisciplinary approach to elucidate the key role that translation played in Langston Hughes’s creative processes and in the fomentation of literary black left internationalism from 1930 to 1967.
Employment History Academic Positions
2007-2009 Lecturer, Department of Comparative Literature, and Program in African American Studies,University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
2009-ongoing Assistant Professor, Department of English Literature, Rutgers University 2011-2012 page1image5869920Faculty Fellow, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Professional Experience
2011-2012 Faculty Fellow, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Publications
Edited Books, Anthologies, Collections, Bibliographies
Work in Progress
Justice in Time: Critical Afrofuturism and the Struggle for Black Freedom. eds., Ryan Kernan and Elizabeth Reich (Under Contract)
Articles in Non-refereed or General Journals
“How it Feels to be Mulatto Me,” Phati’tude, Vol. 2 No. 4 (Winter 2011): 12, 20-23.
Reviews
Letters from Langston: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and Beyond, eds. Evelyn Louise Crawford and Mary Louise Patterson (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 434 pp. ALH Online Review, Series X https://academic.oup.com/DocumentLibrary/ALH/Online% 20Review%20Series%2010/Ryan%20 James%20Kernan%20Online%20Review%20X.PDF
Books
New World Maker: Radical Poetics, Black Internationalism and the Translations of Langston Hughes (Under Contract)
Chapters in Books or Monographs
Bibliography and Index (with Kelly Austin) for The Cambridge companion to the Latin American novel, edited by Efraín Kristal, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, (2005).
“Author,” The Encyclopedia of the Novel, edited by Peter Logan, Wiley Blackwell: Oxford (2010)
“Story and Discourse,” The Encyclopedia of the Novel, edited by Peter Logan, Wiley Blackwell: Oxford (2010)
Articles in Refereed Journals
“Langston Hughes’s Cuban Contacts: Translation, Complementary Conversation, and Inter-American Dialogue” Langston Hughes Review 24.25 (Fall/ Winter 2010/2011)
“The Coup of Langston Hughes’s Picasso Period: Excavating Mayakovsky in Langston Hughes’s Verse” Comparative Literature, (Winter 2014) 2007 Casona, Alejandro.
No Suicide in Spring, Translated by Ryan Kernan, play produced by the East Los Angeles College Theater Department
Teaching Activities Special Courses Taught
2010 Rutgers English Diversity Institute: Instructor for the Drama Component under Elin Diamond
2011 Rutgers English Diversity Institute: Instructor for the Drama Component with Elin Diamond
2014 Rutgers English Diversity Institute: Instructor for the Drama Component
Other Publications
Courses Taught
UCLA 2006-2009 Department of Comparative Literature Undergraduate Courses
“Survey of Literature from the Middle Ages to the 17th Century” “Foundational Fictions of World Citizens: Narrative, Geography, and Identity" "The Foundational Fictions of World Citizens: Performativity, Sexuality, and the Post-Colonial Subject” Graduate Courses “The Harlem Renaissance and the African Diaspora"
Rutgers University Department of English 2009-Current
Undergraduate Courses “Black Literature from 1930 to the Present “African American Literary Theory” “African American Literature and Its International Influence” “The History of Black Drama” “The Harlem Renaissance” “African American Literary Theory” “The History of Black Drama” “Introduction to Literary Theory: Great Works of Literary Theory” “The Lost Generation: Joyce, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald” Graduate Courses “The Role of Translation in the Fomentation of Post-Colonial Discourse and Literary Black Radicalism" "African American Literature and the Left"
Conference Presentations, Lectures, Demonstrations Invited Addresses
“El hermano oscuro/The Darker Brother: José Antonio Fernández de Castro’s translation of Langston Hughes,” Translation in Colonial and Ethnic Studies: An Interdisciplinary Symposium moderated by Brent Hayes Edwards, University of Chicago, February 15, 2006
American Studies in 3D: Space, Time, Language,” Round-table, Susan Gilman presiding, American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington DC, November 2013,
“American Literature in 3D: Space, Time and Language” Roundtable, Susan Gilman and Caroline Evander Presiding, MLA, Chicago, January 9-12.
“Translation As Origin: Untranslatability and The Myth of Sikán: ” American Literatures: Translation Dimensions,” MLA, January, Philadelphia, January, 5-8. 2017
Papers, Abstracts, and Lectures
“Subjects Born in Captivity,” ACLA, San Juan, Puerto Rico, April 11-14, 2002
“The Influence of Jorge Luis Borges on the Theatre of August Wilson,” ACLA, San Diego, April 4-6, 2003
“The Blue of Noon in Pantagruel's Mouth: Reading Bataille through Auerbach”, ACLA, Ann Arbor, University Michigan, April 16-18, 2004
“Don’t Call Me Yanqui White Man: Nícolas Guillén’s Harlem Renaissance/ Langston Hughes’s Poesía Negra,” ACLA, March 11-13, 2005
“Tom-Toms Turned the Tide: Langston Hughes’s Drum Circle Translations of Nicolás Guillén and Jacques Roumain,” Northeastern Modern Language Association, Panel: Modernists Citizens, Boston, MA., March 31-April 2., 2005
“El hermano oscuro/The Darker Brother: José Antonio Fernández de Castro’s translation of Langston Hughes,” Translation in Colonial and Ethnic Studies: An Interdisciplinary Symposium moderated by Brent Hayes Edwards, University of Chicago, February 15, 2006
“Re-contextualizing Aesthetic Regimes: Langston Hughes’s Picasso Period,” ACLA, Puebla, Mexico, April 19-22, 2006
“Langston Hughes’s Latin American Debut,” ACLA, Princeton University, March 23-26, 2007
“Considering Still More Coldly: Franco Moretti’s Conjectures,” paper for Where is American Literary Studies Now, (Co-convener and Presenter) Rutgers University, November, New Brunswick, November 12, 2010
"Considering Still More Coldy: Franco Moretti’s Conjectures,” paper for Where American Literary Studies Now, Rutgers University, November 12, 2010
“Cosmopolitan Authorship: Translation and the Discursive Strategies of the Harlem International,” (Panel: Co-convener and Presenter) ACLA, April, Toronto, March 29-April 23. (2013)
"From Chateaubriand’s Wilderness to Lanusse’s Wasteland: Excavating the Transformation of French Romanticism in Les Cenelles, America’s First Book of Indigenous Poetry,” Co-convener and Presenter) MLA, Boston, January 3-6, 2013
“Importing-Exporting Racism Ivanov-Vano’s: Black and White: Importing US Minstrelsy as a Means to Export International CommunismPanel, ACLA, Seattle, Washington, March 26-29. 2015
“Seminar: Big Bangs: Race and Radicalism in its Gaseous State,” ACLA, Cambridge, Harvard University (Convener and Presenter), Cambridge, March 17-20. 2016
“There’s a Haitian Vévé in my French Romanticism: The Discursivity of Home as Fugitivity in Les Cenelles” Traversing the (Un) Home-Space: Blackness in New American Frontiers, ASA, Denver, November 7-12. 2016
Organizing and Chairing Activities
Participation in Organizing or Chairing Conferences, Workshops, and Organizations
2003-2006 Co-Founder and President of the Babel Study Group for Translation Studies at UCLA
Convener of the UCLA International Conference for Graduate Student Literary Translators, UCLA, Jan 23-25 01/04
Seminar co-chair “The Typesetter’s Handmaiden: Visual and Literary Cultures in Contact,” ACLA Conference: “Trans, Pan, Intra: Cultures in Contact,” Puebla, Mexico, April 19-22
Seminar co-Chair “Ports of Call,” ACLA Conference: “Arrivals and Departures,” Long Beach, California, April 24-27
Co-Organizer for the conference Where is American Literary Studies Now, Rutgers University, November 12.
Seminar Co-Convener with Esther Lezra “Old World Mirrors, New World Faces: Imagining Transatlantic Selfhood through Literature of the Americas” MLA, Boston, January 3-6.
Panel Co-Convener with Shane Graham “Cosmopolitan Authorship: Translation and the Discursive Strategies of the Harlem International,” ACLA, April, Toronto, March 29-April 23.
Seminar Convener: "Big Bangs: Race and Radicalism in its Gaseous State,” ACLA, Cambridge, Harvard University Cambridge, March 17-20.
Memberships
Membership/Offices Held in Scholarly and Professional Societies
Modern Language Association American Comparative Literature Association American Studies Association
Service Service to Rutgers University
2010 Rutgers English Diversity Institute: Instructor for the Drama Component with Elin Diamond
2010 Member of the Rutgers English Department Graduate Education Council
2010 Member of the Graduate Admissions Committee
Co-Organizer for the conference Where is American Literary Studies Now, Rutgers University, November 12, 2010
2010-ongoing Affiliate Faculty Member in the Program in Comparative Literature
2011 Rutgers English Diversity Institute: Instructor for the Drama Component with Elin Diamond.
2011-2012 Orals Committee, Vince Vaughn, Program in Comparative Literature
2013-2014 Dissertation Committee, Vince Vaughn, Program in Comparative Literature
2013-2014 English Department Graduate Placement Council
2014 Rutgers English Diversity Institute: Instructor for the Drama Component.

2015-2016 Member of the Rutgers English Department Committee for Bias Protection and Awareness
09/2016-12/2016 Junior Faculty Liaison to English Department Committee for Bias Protection and Awareness, Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Artistic Works
Artistic Original Works
2001 Nubian World Order, one-act play written by Ryan Kernan 2002 Valley Dogged, one-woman show written by Ryan Kernan 2002 The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, play written by Ryan Kernan 2007 Casona, Alejandro. No Suicide in Spring, Translated by Ryan Kernan

Artistic Performances
2002 Valley Dogged, one-woman show written by Ryan Kernan, staged reading featuring Laurel Olstein, produced by the UCLA Theater Department
2001 Nubian World Order, one-act play written by Ryan Kernan, staged reading Produced by the UCLA Theater Department
06/2002 The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, play written by Ryan Kernan, Directed By Rodney Lloyd Scott, produced in UCLA's 2002 TheaterFest (UCLA Theater Department)
12/2007 Casona, Alejandro. No Suicide in Spring, Translated by Ryan Kernan, produced by the East Los Angeles College Theater Department