Emma Zachurski Headshot

Emma Zachurski

Assistant Professor

RIT Kosovo

Office Hours
Monday and Wednesday, 12- 3 pm or Tuesday and Thursday afternoon by appointment
Office Location
-306

Emma Zachurski

Assistant Professor

RIT Kosovo

Bio

Emma received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University in March, 2021. Her studies and dissertation examined the relationship between the Visual Arts, Film, and Literature through the topics of spatial representation and techniques of formal innovation. As a scholar, her research focuses on works written in English, French, Polish, Russian, and Italian from all over the world and from various experimental literary and artistic movements of the 20th Century (ex. Situationist International, Oulipo, Fluxus).


Her teaching experience has covered an array of material in the Humanities. During her Graduate Studies at Harvard, she taught student sections in courses on Existentialist Literature and Philosophy, the History of Rock and Roll, Mass Media and Popular Culture, and Technology and Early Visual Culture. Additionally, she worked as a tutor with Harvard’s Comparative Literature Tutorial Board to individually mentor students in the study of Literature, Foreign Languages, and Essay Writing. Following the completion of her PhD, she was a Lecturer at Princeton University’s English Department where she taught for a course on the International History of Children’s Literature.


At RIT Kosovo, Emma is teaching courses in the First Year Writing program. She is dedicated to making the classroom an imaginative and informative space for developing reading and writing skills through activities, discussions, and assignments that engage each student in creative, critical, and analytical thought. As a life-long learner of Foreign Languages (now learning Japanese as a sixth language), she is also understanding of the challenges and joys of multilingualism and looks forward to supporting students in developing their English fluency and encouraging them onwards in their college writing. 

Currently Teaching

ENGL-210
3 Credits
In this course, students will study literature, movements, and writers within their cultural contexts and in relation to modes of literary production and circulation. Students will hone their skills as attentive readers and will engage with literary analysis and cultural criticism. The class will incorporate various literary, cultural, and interdisciplinary theories--such as psychoanalytic theory, feminist and queer theories, critical race studies, and postcolonial theory. Using these theoretical frameworks in order to study texts, students will gain a strong foundation for analyzing the ways literary language functions and exploring the interrelations among literature, culture, and history. In doing so, they will engage issues involving culture, identity, language, ethics, race, gender, class, and globalism, among many others.
ENGL-375
3 Credits
This course introduces the basic elements of narrative, reflecting on key concepts in narrative theory such as – story and plot, narration and focalization, characterization, storyspace, and worldmaking – to enhance your understanding of how stories work and your ability to understand how such storytelling strategies convey their meaning and themes. After an initial exploration of storytelling traditions emerging from oral myth and short stories in print, we expand our inquiries into what a narrative is and what it can do by considering what happens to storytelling in graphic novels, digital games, and in recent electronic literature. Reflecting on competing definitions and varieties of narrative, the course raises the overarching question of why how we access, read, write, and circulate stories as a culture matters. Expect to read stories in a variety of media, to review basic concepts and conversations drawn from narrative theory, and to creatively experiment with the storytelling strategies we are analyzing in class. No familiarity with specific print, digital, or visual media necessary, though a willingness to read and reflect on stories in various media and to analyze their cultural significance will be essential.
UWRT-150
3 Credits
Writing Seminar is a three-credit course limited to 19 students per section. The course is designed to develop first-year students’ proficiency in analytical and rhetorical reading and writing, and critical thinking. Students will read, understand, and interpret a variety of non-fiction texts representing different cultural perspectives and/or academic disciplines. These texts are designed to challenge students intellectually and to stimulate their writing for a variety of contexts and purposes. Through inquiry-based assignment sequences, students will develop academic research and literacy practices that will be further strengthened throughout their academic careers. Particular attention will be given to the writing process, including an emphasis on teacher-student conferencing, critical self-assessment, class discussion, peer review, formal and informal writing, research, and revision. Small class size promotes frequent student-instructor and student-student interaction. The course also emphasizes the principles of intellectual property and academic integrity for both current academic and future professional writing.