Faculty Profile
Sheela Jane Menon
(she/her/hers)Associate Professor of English (2016)
Contact Information
East College Room 414
717-254-8719
Bio
Sheela Jane’s research centers on questions of race and identity in Malaysian literature and culture, and is informed by her upbringing in Malaysia, Singapore, and Honolulu. Her current book project, Malaysian Multiculturalism: Reading Race in Contemporary Literature & Culture, analyzes a new cultural archive from Malaysia consisting of Indigenous (Orang Asal) oral histories and multimedia texts, as well as novels, films, and public performances by Malay, Chinese, and Indian artists. This project examines how cultural producers are reimagining multicultural citizenship across a diverse range of genres and contexts. Her work has been published in ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, The Diplomat, The Conversation, and New Mandala. In the classroom, Sheela Jane teaches Asian American, Postcolonial, and World Literature.
Education
- B.A., The University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, 2008
- M.A., The University of Texas at Austin, 2013
- Ph.D., 2016,
2024-2025 Academic Year
Spring 2025
ENGL 220 Intro to Literary Studies
In literary studies, we explore the work texts do in the world. This course examines several texts of different kinds (e.g., novel, poetry, film, comic book, play, etc.) to investigate how literary forms create meanings. It also puts texts in conversation with several of the critical theories and methodologies that shape the discipline of literary study today (e.g., Marxist theory, new historicism, formalism, gender theory, postcolonial theory, ecocriticism, etc.). This course helps students frame interpretive questions and develop their own critical practice. Prerequisite: 101. This course is the prerequisite for 300-level work in English.
ENGL 221 Multicult: Race/Rhet/Write
Multiculturalism is often celebrated as the ideal approach to managing racial, cultural, and religious differences within society. However, this concept has also been critiqued for the ways in which it masks systemic inequalities and deep-seated prejudices. Focusing on questions of race, power, and privilege, this course will examine narratives of multiculturalism in North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. Students will read and respond to a diverse range of sources including: poetry, fiction, scholarly essays, advertising campaigns, political speeches, and national laws. Our primary literary texts will include Tash Aw's The Face: Strangers on a Pier (2016), Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me (2015), and Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire (2017). This course aims to help students strengthen their analytical writing, critical thinking, and close reading skills, thereby enabling them to understand and critique how multiculturalism has shaped the lived experiences of communities around the world.
ENGL 331 Science Fiction
How have writers imagined alternative pasts and futures? More specifically, how have writers from around the world imagined these alternatives through science fiction? This course examines the genre of science fiction, focusing on work by a diverse range of authors including Octavia Butler, Nick Harkaway, Ursula Le Guin, Robert Heinlein, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemison, H. P. Lovecraft, Nnedi Okorafor, Chang-rae Lee, Vandana Singh, and Dan Simmons. We will consider how science fiction has developed as a genre and a writing community, and how these writers have reinforced, challenged, or reframed its evolving norms. Students will engage a range of scholarship on speculative fiction, as well as theories drawn from Genre, Postcolonial, Critical Race, and Gender and Sexuality Studies, as well as History of the Book. In using these theories as lenses through which to read science fiction, we will analyze how the genre reimagines systems of power tied to race, gender, class, sexuality, technology, business enterprise, and political organization.