Meet the Team – Summer 2021

Editor-in-Chief: Laila Zaitoun

Laila Zaitoun is a PhD candidate in the Comparative Literature program at Western University. Her research interests are post-war memoirs in modern Arabic Literature, narratives of displacement, and the discourses of ideology and conflict in translation practices. She obtained a Bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature from Kuwait University in Kuwait with a double minor in French Language and Translation Studies. Upon her graduation she worked as a certified translator at the National Council of Culture, Arts and Letters in Kuwait where she published a dozen of translations in their academic periodical World Culture. She also obtained a Master’s degree in English Language and Literature from University of Balamand in Lebanon where she worked as a teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL) at the English Language Centre, and she was a writer and reviewer in the Balamand students’ newspaper Highlights. As a separate interest, she completed a workshop on civil society at Le Centre International des Sciences de L’Homme (CISH) at the UNESCO in Byblos, Lebanon. In her free time, she enjoys playing with her rabbit and watching TV series.

Deputy Editor: Marziyeh Ghoreishi

Marziyeh Ghoreishi is a third year student in Comparative Literature at Western. She completed her MA in National and Transnational Studies at the University of Münster, Germany. She also has a BA and an MA in English Language and Literature from Iran. Having lived in three different countries has sparked her passion in travel writing and autobiography, moving her to focus on life writing during late-19th and early-20th century Iran, and 18th and 19th century Britain. She has been part of The Scattered Pelican since December 2019.

Reviews Editor: Abhimanyu Acharya

Abhimanyu Acharya is pursuing his PhD in Comparative Literature at Western University. He completed his Bachelors degree in English literature at St. Xavier’c College Ahmedabad, and Masters’ degree in English, with an interdisciplinary approach to Philosophy and Sociology, at Manipal University, Karnataka. He is currently working on political theatre from the margins in Western India. His research interests are theatre and performance, politics of language, South Asian studies, modernism, time and memory, translation and adaptation studies, as well as texts and spaces where disciplines like science and arts comfortably meet.

Copy Editor: Christian Ylagan

Christian Ylagan is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. His research looks at representations of queerness as monstrosity in literature and film in the aftermath of the Philippine postcolonial experience. He is a part-time faculty member of the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, and has previously taught courses on postcolonial queer literature, critical masculinity studies, and the Disney Dream Factory. He currently serves as the Vice President of the Northeast MLA Graduate Student Caucus.

Copy Editor: Ishrat Ismail

Ishrat Ismail is a PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature at Western University. He received his Bachelor (Hons) degree in English Literature from Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Bangladesh, and his first Master’s in English Literature from the same university. He received his second Master’s in English, Film, and Theatre from the University of Manitoba, Canada. His research interests include South Asian Partition Literature, Human Rights in Literature, Diaspora Studies, Postcolonial Literature, and Queer Studies. He is studying the representation of the 1947 Partition in Bangladeshi Literature. He enjoys watching movies and playing crickets and soccer.

Social Media Editor: Tarjanee Parmar