Kyle Wanberg is an Associate Professor in Global Liberal Studies at New York University and the author of Maps of Empire (University of Toronto, 2020). His Ph.D. was in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Irvine. Kyle’s research is in literary and cultural studies, focusing on imperialism and decoloniality. His current project explores representations of finance in literatures and cinemas of Africa.

Kyle Wanberg
Clinical Associate Professor
Ph.D. - University of California, Irvine
Cultural studies. Historiography of colonialism and imperialism. Film and literary studies. Decoloniality. He has published work in Research in African Literatures, The European Journal of English Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, and Journal of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature.
2022 Global Research Initiative, NYU Paris
2021 Distinguished Scholarship Award
2020 Arts and Science Teaching Innovation Award
2019 Faculty Research Challenge Award
Single-Author Book:
Wanberg, Kyle. Maps of Empire: A Topography of World Literature. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 2020.
Guest-Editorship:
“Special Issue: Decolonial Aesthetics.” In Papers on Language and Literature: A Journal for Scholars and Critics of Language and Literature. 55.3, Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Summer 2019.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles:
Wanberg, Kyle. “Tomorrow Will Once Be: Currency Devaluation in Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Le Franc” in Research in African Literatures 54.2, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2023.
Wanberg, Kyle. “Decentering Geographies: Literary Subversions in the Age of Globalism.” in Papers on Language and Literature: A Journal for Scholars and Critics of Language and Literature. 55.3, Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Summer 2019.
Wanberg, Kyle. “The Writer’s Inadequate Response: Elizabeth Costello and the Influence of Kafka and Hofmannsthal” in EJES: The European Journal of English Studies 20.2, London: Routledge, 2016 (152-165).
Wanberg, Kyle. “Secrecy, Lies, and the Exilic Imagination in The Pessoptimist” in Middle Eastern Literatures 18.2, London: Routledge, 2015 (184-201).
Wanberg, Kyle. “Disrupting the Center: Toward a Theory of Global Aesthetics” in Global Humanities: Studies in Histories, Cultures, and Societies 1.1, Berlin: Neofelis Verlag. January 2015 (170-185).
Wanberg, Kyle. “Ghostwriting History: Subverting the Reception of Le Regard du roi and Le Devoir de violence,” in Comparative Literature Studies 50.4, University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2013 (589-617).
Wanberg, Kyle. “Echoes of the Ant People: Vocal Traces and Writing Practices in a Translation of ‘O‘odham Orature,” in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/ Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 40.3, Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta Press, September 2013 (271-288).
Wanberg, Kyle. “Pedagogy Against the State: The Ban on Ethnic Studies in Arizona” in Journal of Pedagogy 4.1, Special Issue “Neoliberalism, Pedagogy and the Curriculum”: Trnava, Slovakia: Versita, 2013 (15-35).
Book Chapters:
Wanberg, Kyle. “Globalization: Everything in Chains—The Aesthetics of Global Capitalism” in Literature and Economics. Matthew Sebold and Michelle Chihara (Eds.). New York: Routledge (2018).
Wanberg, Kyle. “Everything in Chains: The Aesthetics of Globalization” in Literature and Economics. Matthew Sebold and Michelle Chihara (Eds.). New York: Routledge (forthcoming 2017).
Wanberg, Kyle. “Translations of Identity: Eschewing Authority in Narratives about White Colonials in Heart of Darkness and Le Regard du Roi” in At the Crossroads: Readings of the Postcolonial and the Global in African Literature and Visual Art. Ghirmai Negash et. al. (Ed.). Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2014 (71-83).
Wanberg, Kyle. “A Moving Pedagogy: Teaching Global Literature through Translation,” in Critical Pedagogy and Global Literature: Worldly Teaching, Masood Raja, et. al. (Ed.) New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013 (113-130).
Contact Information
Kyle Wanberg
Clinical Associate Professor kjw230@nyu.edu 726 Broadway, 6th FloorRoom 626