See all Profiles
headshot from Bedlam
Faculty
Faculty

Emily MN Kugler (She/They)

Associate Professor

  • English, Associate Professors
  • College of Arts & Sciences
  • Certified WAC Instructor

Biography

Office: Locke Hall, 218

To schedule an appointment, please see her Calendly calendar

 

Summer 2023 Courses:

         *Games as Narrative: What does it mean to read or write about games as narratives? In addition exploring the scholarship, journalism, and fan cultures around games, we will also play a variety ranging from independent video games  to tabletop role playing games (including actual plays) to deck-based and board games. Students will apply put our class material into practice both as makers and as critics. No prior technical experience or console/specific platform is required.

         *Traveling Texts & Digital Spaces: This class asks how the mediums we use to read and write shape the stories we tell and what limits our ideas of the possible. Through a mix of scholarship, literature, and digital approaches , this class will explore:

                  *travel and futuristic writing of Black Atlantic Writers from the 17th century to present day

                  *utopian, particularly solarpunk, genres

                  *the role of social media, digital art, and augmented reality in art/activism

                  *the role of museums and similar spaces in shaping how we view the past and what we think is possible in the future

Fall 2023 Courses:

         *Intro to Black LGBTQ+ Studies

         *British Romantic Sensibilities

Biography

Emily MN Kugler is an Associate Professor in the English Department of Howard University. She earned her B.A. from Scripps Women's College and her Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego.

Her work touches on histories of enslavement, empire, literary/print networks, digital humanities, and gender studies. She has published on a range of eighteenth-century subjects from representations of the Sultana Roxelana/Hürrem Sultan to the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano. Her first book, Sway of the Ottoman Empire on English Identity in the Long Eighteenth Century, was published by Brill in 2012. She also co-edited and contributed to the edited volume Ottoman Empire And European Theatre. Vol. III: Images Of The Harem In Literature And Theatre, part of the Don Juan Archiv in Vienna's Ottomania series. 

Recent publications include: a pedagogical chapter on women's participation in British abolition in Robin Runia's (Xavier University of Lousiana) The Future of Feminist Eighteenth-Century Scholarship: Beyond Recovery (Routledge 2017); and a Special Issue of ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830 on Camp in the 18th Century 9.1 (2019) co-edited with Dr. Ula Klein (University of Wisconsin-Osh Kosh).

I work with Dr. Emily Friedman (Auburn University) on projects involving game studies, with a focus on representations of race, gender, and sexuality in tabletop and video games set in the long eighteenth century, including a JASNA article and talks on our YouTube channel, Critical Prof. Here is a playlist some of our public talks.

 

Current projects include: 

         *book project dealing with women, empire, and race, as well as digital and public humanities projects focused on British Atlantic histories of enslavement and abolition; 

         *an ever-expanding examination of Mary Prince’s role within transatlantic abolitionist networks;  

         *a collaborative multi-platform project focused on game studies with Dr. Emily Friedman (Auburn University)

 

Education & Expertise

Education

Literature

Ph.D
University of California, San Diego

Literatures in English

M.A.
University of California, San Diego

English with Honors and Asian American Studies Minor

B.A.
Scripps College

Academics

Academics

Undergraduate

  • Introduction to Black LGBTQ+ Studies (Cross-Listed with Interdisciplinary Studies) 
  • Sophomore Seminar II: Theories of Interpretation (Introduction to Literary Theory) 
  • British Foundations (Survey of British Literature, Medieval to Present Day) 
  • Jane Austen: Love, Money, Fame (Major Author Course) 
  • Texts, Technologies and Telling Tales (Digital Humanities and Narratology) 
  • British Romantic Sensibilities (Culture and Politics in the Anglophone Atlantic 1770-1830) 

 

Summer Session I: Games as Narrative

Topics in Lit and Writing - 52591 - ENGL 284 - 70

12:10-2:30pm Eastern

MTW in person, R online

What does it mean to read or write about games as narratives? In addition exploring the scholarship, journalism, and fan cultures around games, we will also play a variety ranging from independent video games to tabletop role playing games (including actual plays) to deck-based and board games. Students will apply put our class material into practice both as makers and as critics.

No prior technical experience or console/specific platform is required.

Summer Session II: Traveling Texts & Digital Spaces

Topics in Lit and Writing - 52592- ENGL 284 - 80

12:10-2:30pm Eastern

MTW in person, R online

This class asks how the mediums we use to read and write shape the stories we tell and what limits our ideas of the possible. Through a mix of scholarship, literature, and digital approaches , this class will explore:

  • travel and futuristic writing of Black Atlantic Writers from the 17th century to present day
  • utopian, particularly solarpunk, genres
  • the role of social media, digital art, and augmented reality in art/activism
  • the role of museums and similar spaces in shaping how we view the past and what we think is possible in the future

Accomplishments

Accomplishments

Selected Awards and Grants 

 

2021           American Council of Learned Societies (ACLA) Digital Extension Grant for Hidden Archives: Race, Gender, and Religion in UCSB’s Ballitore Collection, with Dr. Rachael Scarborough King (PI, U.C. Santa Barbara) and Dr. Danielle Spratt (California State University, Northridge) 

2020-2021, 2018-2019 UC-HBCU Initiative, partnered with Dr. Rachael Scarborough King (U.C. Santa Barbara)  

2020 Funding for "Empathy, Storytelling, and Film in Engineering”: Collaboration  with Virginia Tech University’s Bright C.S. (co-taught STEAM program for BIPOC middle school girls) and Arlington Public School District  

2015-2019 Reginald Lewis Endowment Travel Fund, Howard University 

2016-2017 Junior Faculty Writing and Creative Works Summer Academy. Howard University 

2016-2017 Junior Faculty Research Fund, English Department, Howard University 

2016 DGSI: Seshat: A Digital Humanities Initiative, Howard University  

2014-2015 Scholar Travel Grant, Modern Language Association 

Related Articles

Editing 

 

Klein, Ula Lukszo and Emily MN Kugler, co-editors. “Special Issue: Eighteenth-Century CampABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830 9.1 (2019) 

· This is based on a panel/workshop we organized at a past meeting of ASECS.  

 

Hüttler, Michael, Emily MN Kugler, and H. E. Weidinger, Co-Editors. Ottoman Empire and European Theatre Vol. III – Images of the Harem in Literature and Theatre. A Commemoration of the Bicentenary of Lord Byron's Sojourn in the Ottoman Capital (1810). Don Juan Archiv. Ottomania 5. Vienna: Hollitzer, 2015. (Publisher book and series pages) 

 

Single-Author Book Chapters and Articles 

 

Kugler, Emily MN. “Fantasies of Emancipation: Collaborations and Contestations in The History of Mary Prince.” The Future of Feminist Eighteenth-Century Scholarship: Beyond Recovery (publisher book page). Ed. Robin Runia (Xavier University). Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature. Routledge 2018. 

  • Review. Culley, Amy. Eighteenth-Century Fiction 32.4 (2020): 641–643 

 

Kugler, Emily MN. “Playing the Sultana: Erotic Capital and Commerce in Defoe’s Roxana.” In Ottoman Empire and European Theatre Vol. III – Images of the Harem in Literature and Theatre. A Commemoration of the Bicentenary of Lord Byron's Sojourn in the Ottoman Capital (1810). Don Juan Archiv. Ottomania 5. Vienna: Hollitzer, 2015. (Publisher book and series pages) 

 

Kugler, Emily MN (Invited). “Loving the Unstable Text and Times of Equiano’s Narrative: Using Carretta’s Biography in the Classroom. (Project Muse, paywall)” In Teaching Olaudah Equiano's Narrative: Pedagogical Strategies and New Perspectives. Edited by Eric D. Lamore. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012: 119-136.  

 

Co-Authored Book Chapters and Articles 

 

Friedman, Emily C and Emily MN Kugler, Co-Authors. “’Avoiding’ Racism: Race and Representation in Austen-Inspired Games.” Persuasions. (Summer 2021) 

Klein, Ula Lukszo and Emily MN Kugler, Co-Authors.  “Eighteenth-Century Camp Introduction.” “Special Issue: Eighteenth-Century CampABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830 9.1 (2019) 

 

Hüttler, Michael, Emily MN Kugler, and H. E. Weidinger, Co-Authors.  “Editorial/Introduction.” In Ottoman Empire and European Theatre Vol. III – Images of the Harem in Literature and Theatre. A Commemoration of the Bicentenary of Lord Byron's Sojourn in the Ottoman Capital (1810). Don Juan Archiv. Ottomania 5. Vienna: Hollitzer, 2015. (Publisher book and series pages) 

 

 

Additional Scholarly Contributions 

 

Encyclopedia entry on The Kinsman of Mahomet; or, Memoirs of a French Slave During his Eight Years Captivity in Constantinople (1774) for Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660-1820. Edited by April London. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (In Press, 2020)