Directory
Maureen E. Ruprecht (Fadem) completed her PhD in 2012 under the mentorship of Wayne Koestenbaum. Maureen is now a Professor of English at KCC CUNY and a postcolonial, partition, and political justice scholar. She’s a widely published literary critic, appearing in interview and organizing and participating in conferences; recently Maureen completed a two-year term on the MLA committee on Academic Freedom (CAFPRR). This January, she’ll give two papers at the MLA Convention: “Coalition, Colloquy, and Commune: The Longue Durée of Unjust Enrichment and the Indispensability of Abolition Solidarities” to be presented on the TC Philosophy and Literature session: “Moral Agency in a Nonmoral World”; and, “Where is the CC Classroom? Seeking Social Justice, Finding Social Agency” is to be given on the session hosted by MLA’s Higher Education Practices Board for Two-Year Colleges: “Community College Strengths.”
Maureen’s research on literatures of Ireland, of the African diaspora, and of the global literatures of partition looks at the poetics of conflict, trauma, and silence in verse and narrative, at race and gender justice, and at social and political justice with a special focus on reparations. Recent peer reviewed journal articles include “‘A thing breaks beyond naming’: A Review Article on David Lloyd’s 2022 Books, Counterpoetics of Modernity and The Harm Fields” (ISR 2023) and “Architecting the Carceral State: The Fragment in Medbh McGuckian’s Diaries and Walter Benjamin’s ‘Theses’” (RISE 2021). Accepted for publication and soon out is “Deconstructing Modernity, Decommodifying Capitalism: The [Post]Pandemic World According to Emily St. John Mandel” (Apocalyptica, special issue: “Critical Theory at the Endgame,” 2025). Her first foray into apocalyptic literature, it uses a cross-section of theory—Benjamin, Lukács, Bloch, Jameson—to argue that the novel de-auratizes and de-commodifies modern objects and institutions and uses them as (new) materialist objects in a searing critique of capitalism.
Maureen has four scholarly monographs in print, two based on material that was originally developed as part of her dissertation: The Literature of Northern Ireland: Spectral Borderlands (Palgrave 2015) and Silence and Articulacy in the Poetry of Medbh McGuckian (Rowman & Littlefield, now Bloomsbury, 2020). In 2021, Routledge brought out two additional books: Objects and Intertexts in Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’: The Case for Reparations, and the co-edited collection The Economics of Empire. She’s at work now on two new scholarly collections, both in contract, that develop themes and theories of the recent books: Imperial Debt: Colonial Theft, Postcolonial Reparations (Liverpool UP 2025) and The (New) Routledge Research Companion to Toni Morrison (2026). The prospectus for a new single-author monograph was also submitted to Routledge, and is in review: The Case for Reparations for Empire: Four Rocks and a Geological Tropology of Imperial Debt. This book is a thoroughgoing, historicized treatment of the question of repair for the (legal) damages of modern era imperialism; it takes up histories of (colonial) partition, case studies on Ireland, South Asia, Sudan, and Palestine-and-Israel, as critical evidentiary material for the central argument. Maureen lives in Kew Gardens, Queens.
Courses
Maureen is a member of the Honors faculty and often teaches Writing Intensive and Civic Engagement designated courses. She most often teaches college composition: English 24 and 93, most recently, and English 12 numerous times in past years. Professor Fadem also teaches various literature courses, including English 30, Introduction to Literature; English 32, World Literature; English 40, The Short Story; and English 77, The Roots of Black Literature. Starting in Spring 2015, Maureen will begin teaching courses in the Early College Program at Leon M. Goldstein High School.
Education
2012: PhD in English Literature, The Graduate Center, CUNY – PhD Program in English
Selected Publications and/or Other Resources
The Literature of Northern Ireland: Spectral Borderlands. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
“Provincializing the Nation-State: The Meaning of Partition.” In Synthesis, Special issue on “Living through the Interregnum." Volume 8, Fall 2014.
“Self-Contradiction in a Small Place: Anne Devlin’s ‘Other at the Edge of Life.’” Affecting Irishness: Negotiating Cultural Identity Within and Beyond the Nation. Eds. James P. Byrne, Padraig Kirwan and Michael O’Sullivan. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. 291 - 312.
Review Article: “’Poetry is Not a Luxury’: Meena Alexander’s Raw Silk.” Semicerchio, XXXII – XXXIII (September 2005): 129 – 131.
“The Interval.” Word. On Being a [Woman] Writer. Ed. Jocelyn Burrell. New York: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2004: 180 – 201.
Review: Yann Martel, Life of Pi. South Asian Review, 24 (December 2003): 231 – 233.
"Sparrows and Hawks: Class, Gender and the Politics of Decolonization in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India.” South Asian Review, 23.2 (2002): 12 – 13.
“Translation, An Art of Negativity: A Conversation with Meena Alexander.” Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, 45.2 (Spring/Summer 2002): 102 – 110.
Research Interests
Maureen's research is on Postcolonial Literature (especially that of Ireland, South Asia, Israel and Palestine), Partition Studies, Gender & Women's Studies, and Literary Theory.
Institutional Affiliations / Professional Societies
Current Memberships: the Modern Language Association (MLA); the American Conference
for Irish Studies (ACIS).
Executive Committee Member for 1-year term, South Asian Literary Association, 2000
– 2001.