Emanuela Kucik (English and Africana Studies) Fosters Close Reading
Associate Professor Kucik views literature as a powerful agent for social change and the classroom as a space to build community.
When Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies Emanuela Kucik was growing up outside Washington, D.C., she loved reading books and the newspaper. Her late father started buying her books that related to current events, and they eventually developed a father-daughter book club. She could pick the books each month; one had to be written by an author outside the U.S., and one had to be related to something in the news or a human rights issue.
“A lot of the books my dad and I read together, I read with students now,” says Kucik, who teaches courses that examine the intersections of race, genocide and human rights violations through the study of 20th century and contemporary literature. “The main thread that runs through all the work I do is looking at how reading stories about some of the worst things that have happened to humanity can help us try and combat those horrors in the present, stop them from happening in the future and have fully empathetic responses when addressing atrocities.”
“The main thread that runs through all the work I do is looking at how reading stories about some of the worst things that have happened to humanity can help us try and combat those horrors in the present, stop them from happening in the future and have fully empathetic responses when addressing atrocities.”
Drawn by Muhlenberg’s small liberal arts college environment, Kucik came to the College in 2018 after completing a Ph.D. in English at Princeton University. On the job market, she worried her work would be viewed as not literary enough for an English position and too literary for an Africana studies position: “Muhlenberg told me in my interviews that the interdisciplinary aspect of my work was exactly what they wanted,” says Kucik, who also directs the Africana Studies Program and teaches courses that are part of the Jewish Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies Programs. Her upcoming book, The Black Blood of Genocide: Tracing Genocide in Post-Holocaust African Diasporic Literature (Columbia University Press), exemplifies the multifaceted nature of her work.
“I look at how Black authors around the world have used the concept of genocide, following its emergence in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention and following the Holocaust, and incorporated the concept of genocide into their literature to try and end anti-Black violence around the world,” she says. As she revises the book, which will be released next year, she’s focused on “making sure that I feel good about how I’m representing the work of these authors I admire so much because the book is a tribute to them. They’re sort of unsung heroes in so many ways, and I would like them to be sung heroes.”
These authors are among those her students read in her classes, though she updates her syllabi each time she teaches a course and sometimes even midway through the semester. Because she teaches contemporary literature, there’s a constant stream of new works she could potentially incorporate into her classes. The courses she teaches — which include Literature of Genocide; Literature and Human Rights; and Literature, Social Justice and Current Events — often require her to pivot as national and international news develops.
She’s also intentionally flexible to respond to student needs and interests: “I really enjoy making my classroom as interactive and student-centered as possible,” she says. Halfway through every semester, she surveys students to find out what’s working well for them and, within reason, will adjust the course accordingly. For example, a recent group of students said they really enjoyed watching author interviews and would like to do that for every author, so Kucik built that into the remainder of the course. “Their input is important to me, and I think it creates a level of trust as well with the students. They feel that their voices are being heard and that their suggestions are being implemented.”
“I really enjoy making my classroom as interactive and student-centered as possible. Their input is important to me, and I think it creates a level of trust as well with the students.”
Kucik carries her areas of academic interest and her commitment to students beyond the classroom in a variety of ways. She established the Africana Studies Book Club, which meets over Zoom, in early 2020. That’s also the year she and Associate Professor of Biology Giancarlo Cuadra began to formalize the mentoring they’d already been doing into the Graduate School Preparatory Program, which helps students from underrepresented groups apply to grad school. Kucik serves as advisor to the Black Students Association and as the College’s inaugural faculty fellow for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. And, alongside Associate Professor of Art History Elena FitzPatrick Sifford, she co-orchestrates two event series, one focused on interracial and intercultural solidarity in the United States and the other on current events related to Black communities around the world, that each bring a speaker to campus once a year.
Kucik, who received the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Distinguished Teaching Award in May, has built a significant presence in her six years at Muhlenberg, especially with the students she’s connected with both inside and outside the classroom. The community she builds with her students means she is someone they seek out for guidance, whether that’s on where to begin when considering grad school or how to talk to people with differing views on hot-button issues. “It means a lot to me that they trust me to have those conversations,” Kucik says.