Sarah Senk is Associate Professor of Culture and Communication at California State
University Maritime Academy. Before coming to Cal Maritime in 2016 she was an Assistant
Professor of English and Modern Languages at the University of Hartford. She studied
literature for most of her life (earning a B.A. in Literature at Yale, an M.St. in
English at the University of Oxford, and a PhD in Comparative Literature at Cornell)
with a focus on trauma and memory in global postcolonial literature. Her current research
focuses on representations of disaster in the digital age. She has published articles
in
The Canadian Review of American Studies,
Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics,
Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, Contemporaries,
The American Prospect, Slate, and
The Washington Post. At Cal Maritime she teaches introductory Gen Ed classes in Composition, Speech Communication,
and Critical Thinking, as well as upper-division Humanities courses like World Literature
of the Sea, Globalization of Culture, Literature and Psychology, Ethical Inquiry,
and has offered special topics courses on “9/11 in Cultural Memory” and “Going Viral:
From 9/11 to COVID-19.” She has been awarded Cal Maritime’s Outstanding Faculty award
in all three categories – teaching (2018), service (2019), and scholarship (2023).
She currently serves as Director of General Education and Vice Chair of the Faculty
Senate and was elected to serve as Senate Chair starting in August 2024. In addition
to her work at Cal Maritime, she is a member of the Board of Directors of the national
nonprofit, Marked By Covid, where she also serves as Strategic Advisor to the organization’s
co-founders.
Articles, Reviews, and Other Media
Interview: 99% Invisible Episode 568: “Don’t Forget to Remember” (January 30, 2024)
“The Trouble with Viewing 9/11 and the Pandemic Through a Wartime Lens,” The Washington Post (September 9, 2022) [co-authored with Lila Nordstrom]
"The Memory Exchange: Public Mourning at the National 9/11 Memorial Museum," Canadian Review of American Studies Vol. 48, No. 2 (2018), pp. 254-276
"Mourning's Spiral: Trauma, Time, and Memory in Derek Walcott's Omeros," Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics Vol. 16 (October 2016), pp. 35-51
"Insurgent Testimonies: Witnessing Colonial Trauma in Modern and Anglophone Literature
by Nicole Rizzuto (review)," Contemporary Literature Vol. 57, No. 3 (Fall 2016), pp. 453-461
"Attention to the Text: Delay and the ‘ADD Generation,'" Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, Vol. 25, No. 2, Teaching Disability (Winter 2016), pp. 78-95
"The Glass Bowl of Memory: Plotting 1993 and the National 9/11 Memorial Museum," Post 45: Contemporaries (June 2015)
"On this Day, Nothing Happened," Slate Magazine (June 15, 2015)
"Virtual Witnessing," Audio Podcast, The Wilson Centre, University of Aberdeen (November 5, 2014)
"No Man's Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable
Labor by Cindy Hahamovitch (roundtable review with Abigail Ward and Henrice Altink),
Journal of American Studies Vol. 48, No. 1 (February 2014), pp. 309-319
"Dying for Time: Proust, Woolf, Nabokov by Martin Hägglund (review)," MLN: Modern Language Notes Vol. 128, No. 5 (December 2013), pp. 1207-1211
"Lost in Space: Is it really possible to memorialize 9/11 in the heart of New York's
financial district?" The American Prospect (September 12, 2011)
