Staff profile

My primary research areas include postcolonial studies, environmental humanities (including food studies and energy humanities), and feminism/SRT within Latin American, Caribbean and Comparative American studies. I have written on Gothic and sci-fi literary and filmic aesthetics within this context, focussing on the work of writers and filmmakers from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the United States. My work has been published in leading academic journals, including Atlantic Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Green Letters　and　Latin American Research Review.

I regularly teach on a range of cultural and literary topics within the Latin American and Caribbean studies context, including Frida Kahlo and muralism, Cuban cinema, postcolonial and ecocritical debates in a Caribbean context, and literary interventions into debates around gender and sexuality.

I am the co-editor, with Michael Niblett (Warwick), of　Perspectives on the Other America: Comparative Approaches to Latin American and Caribbean Culture (2009). With Chris Campbell (Exeter) and Michael Niblett, I am co-editor of Literary and Cultural Production, World-Ecology and Global Food System　(forthcoming in 2021 with Palgrave). Currently, I am also co-editing, with Dr Sharae Deckard (UCD) and Dr Treasa de Loughry (UCD), the　Routledge Companion to Literature and the Environment　(under contract). My single-authored　Ecology of the Zombie　is forthcoming with Liverpool University Press.

At Durham, I have led research groups and events on the environmental humanities for many years. In 2014, I co-organised (with Michael Niblett and Chris Campbell) the seminar "Plotting the Crisis" (https://plottingthecrisis.wordpress.com/). In 2014, I established the "Ecologies and the Arts" research group, running regular seminars and talks. From 2015, I co-directed the group with Dr Laura Chuhan Campbell, who brought a focus on medieval literatures to it. In 2016, I organised the symposium "Aesthetics of Crisis: Ecology, Disaster and Representation"(https://aestheticsofcrisis.wordpress.com/about/). In 2016, I also co-organised the second annual conference of the World-Ecology Network, "World-Ecology, World-Culture, World-Economy: Crisis, Slump, Revolution?", which took place at Durham (https://worldecology2016.wordpress.com/). Since January 2020, I have been the Director of the　Centre for Culture and Ecology, and am coordinating the talk series on ‘Capitalism, Nature and Climate Change’.

• Environmental Humanities (Eco-criticism and World-Ecology Studies)
• Caribbean Studies and Latin American Studies
• Feminism, Gender Studies and Social Reproduction Theory
• Postcolonial Studies and Eco-materialism
• Energy Humanities
• Gothic and Speculative Fiction

• Ecology - Convenor

Book review

• (2016). Masculinity after Trujillo: The Politics of Gender in Dominican Literature. By Maja Horn. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 2014. 891-892.
• Oloff, Kerstin. (2015). Narratives of Migration and Displacement in Dominican Literature, by Danny Méndez. Bulletin of Spanish Studies XCII(6).
• Oloff, Kerstin (2012). Elusive Origins: The Enlightenment in the Modern Caribbean Historical Imagination. 2010. x + 230 pp. NWIG 86(3 & 4).
• (2007). (Review article) Private Topographies: Space,Subjectivity, and Political Change in Latin America by Marzena Grezegorczyk. Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 31(2): 378-380.

Chapter in book

• Oloff, Kerstin (Submitted). Alimentary Gothic: Horror, Puerto Rico, and the World-Food-System. In Literary and Cultural Production, World-ecology, and the Global Food System. Oloff Kerstin, Niblett,Michael & Campbell, Chris Palgrave McMillan.
• Oloff, Kerstin (2021). From the novela de la cana to Junot Diaz's 'cake-eater': World-Literature, the World Food System and the Dominican Republic. In The world-literary system and the Atlantic. Gunne, Sorcha. & Lazarus, Neil. Routledge.
• Oloff, Kerstin (2019). From "Section 936" to "Junk": Neoliberalism, Ecology and Puerto Rican Literature. In World Literature, Neoliberalism, and the Culture of Discontent. Deckard, Sharae & Shapiro, Stephen Palgrave Macmillan. 69-91.
• Oloff, Kerstin (2017). Marie Vieux Chauvet's World-Gothic: Commodity Frontiers, "Cheap Natures" and the Monstrous-Feminine. In Latin American Gothic in Literature and Culture: Transposition, Hybridization, Tropicalization. Casanova-Vizcaíno, S. & Ordiz, I. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
• Oloff, Kerstin (2016). The 'Monstrous Head' and the 'Mouth of Hell': The Gothic Ecologies of the 'Mexican Miracle'. In Ecological Crisis and Cultural Representation in Latin America. Anderson, Mark & Bora, Zelia Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
• Oloff, Kerstin (2016). Zombies, Gender, and World-Ecology: Gothic Narrative in the Work of Ana Lydia Vega and Mayra Montero. In The Caribbean: Aesthetics, World-ecology, Politics. Campbell, Chris & Niblett, Michael Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 46-62.
• Oloff, Kerstin (2014). Towards the World-Zombie: The Monstrous, the 'Human' and the Dominican-Haitian Frontier in Malas Hierbas and 'Monstro'. In Re-thinking Identities: Cultural Articulations of Alterity and Resistance in the New Millenium. Fouz-Hernández, Santiago & Cairns, Lucille Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien: Peter Lang. 189-212.
• Oloff, Kerstin. (2012). ¿‘El hábito hace al monje’?: Cross-dressing, Gender and Sexuality in Benitez-Rojo’s Mujer en traje de batalla. In The Cross-dressed Caribbean: Sexual Politics after Binarism. Fumagalli, Maria Cristina. & Ledent, Bénedicte. University of Virginia Press.
• Oloff, Kerstin (2011). "La muerte de Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes.". In The Literary Encyclopedia. Blanco, Maria del Pilar, Bollig, Ben & Levey, Cara The Literary Dictionary Company.
• Oloff, Kerstin. (2009). Wilson Harris and Postcolonial Theory. In Perspectives on the “Other America'. Oloff, Kerstin. & Niblett, Michael. Rodopi.
• Oloff, Kerstin. (2007). Entries for “Literature: Representations of Blacks in British Literature” and “Vanity Fair.”. In Oxford Companion to Black British History. Dabydeen, David. Gilmore, John. & Jones, Cecily. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 260-263; 499.

Edited book

• Oloff, Kerstin, Niblett, Michael & Campbell, Chris (2021). Literary and Cultural Production, World-Ecology and the Global Food System. Palgrave McMillan.
• Oloff, K.D. & Niblett, Michael. (2009). Perspectives on the 'other America': comparative approaches to Caribbean and Latin American culture. Textxet. Studies in Comparative Literature 60. Rodopi.

Journal Article

• Oloff, Kerstin & Deckard, Sharae (2020). “The One Who Comes from the Sea” Marine Crisis and the New Oceanic Weird in Rita Indiana’s La mucama de Omicunlé (2015). Humanities 9(3): 86.
• Oloff, K. (2019). From the novela de la caña to Junot Díaz's 'cake-eater': World-Literature, the World Food System and the Dominican Republic. Atlantic Studies 16(1): 90-107.
• Oloff, Kerstin (2017). From Sugar to Oil: The Ecology of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). Journal of Postcolonial Writing 53(3): 316-328.
• Oloff, Kerstin (2012). 'Greening the zombie': Caribbean Gothic, World-Ecology and Socio-ecological Degradation. Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism 16: 31-45.
• Oloff, Kerstin. (2011). Representation and Rupture in the Age of Globalization: Narrative Strategies in Manlio Argueta's Cuzcatlán donde bate la mar del sur and the Debate on Subalternity. Revista Hispánica Moderna 64(2): 149-165.
• Oloff, Kerstin (2011). Terra Nostra and the Rewriting of the Modern Subject: Archetypes, Myth, and Selfhood. Latin American Research Review 46(3): 3-20.

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Oloff, Kerstin & Cabiya, Pedro (2012). “Lo humano es una historia, un cuento de hadas” entrevista a Pedro Cabiya. La Habana elegante

Translated Book

• Oloff, Kerstin. (trans.) (2010). Rodríguez, N. E., Divergent Dictions: Contemporary Dominican Literature (Escrituras de desencuentro en la República Dominicana.). Caribbean Studies Press