Michele Chinitz

Student Fellow

Michele Chinitz is a doctoral candidate in English at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She specializes in 20th- and 21st-century Anglophone literatures, particularly in the areas of postcolonial studies, the novel, media studies, critical theory, translation, and gender and sexuality. Her dissertation examines music and critiques of nationalism in modern fiction. It presents novels that position literature in debates about ethics and aesthetics through reference to music and that reshape the imagination of fascist and imperial histories in comparative ways. She has held courses on contemporary Anglophone writers, world literature, the history of the English novel, and composition at CUNY. She teaches for the Macaulay Honors College and the English Department of the City College of New York. She is a Fellow, in 2020-21, of the CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies, which enables nontraditional students to design their degrees and work closely with professors.

Participating Years

2020–2021

The Agrarian Question Today

In the context of what appears to be inexorable urbanization, it is just as clear that agrarian questions are deeply enmeshed in the political, social, economic, and cultural challenges of contemporary existence. How have newer regimes of capital, particularly those associated with agri-business and food conglomerates, both formed and fractured agricultural communities?