Professor of English and Department Chair for Language and Literature
Phone: (239)590-7182
E-Mail: mendible@fgcu.edu
Office: RH - 212

Professor of English and Interdisciplinary Studies

Ph.D., University of Miami, 1993

Research and Teaching Interests: Politics and literature, media culture, ethnicity and gender

Profile
Myra Mendible is Professor and Chair of the Languages and Literature Department at FGCU. She joined Florida Gulf Coast University as founding faculty in 1994, serving as co-founder of the English program and then as English Program Leader between 1998 and 2000. Dr. Mendible’s scholarship and teaching engage a range of theoretical, disciplinary, and cultural perspectives, with primary interests in politics and literature, media culture, ethnicity and gender. She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals; presented her research in regional, national, and international conferences; and is the Editor of a collection of essays on representations of the Latina body in US popular culture (From Bananas to Buttocks: The Latina Body in Popular Film and Culture, University of Texas Press) and co-editor of a forthcoming collection, Succotash: Critical Reflections on the 2008 U.S. Presidential Campaign. Dr. Mendible’s book-in-progress, Putdowns and Showdowns: American Culture and the Politics of Humiliation, explores humiliation as theme and metaphor in a variety of American cultural and political narratives, analyzing its strategic function in the nation’s myth-making, entertainment, and foreign policy.
 
Work-in-progress
Literature as Politics: Reading Between the Lines: An anthology of short stories by international writers whose works are shaped by political events, activism, and/or themes.

Putdowns and Showdowns: American Culture and the Politics of Humiliation.
 
Selected Publications
“Post Vietnam Syndrome: National Identity, War, and the Politics of Humiliation.” Radical Psychology: A Journal of Psychology and Politics v 7 (Fall 2008). Online archive: http://www.radicalpsychology.org/vol7-1/mendible.html

“The New Sexual Aesthetic.” American Sexuality (National Sexuality Research Center, San Francisco State University). (January 6, 2009).

From Bananas to Buttocks: The Latina Body in Popular Culture, Myra Mendible, Editor. University of Texas Press (2007).

“Stories of Loss and Longing: Politics, Exile, and Cuban American Identity” in Telling Stories to Change the World: Voices on Building Community and Claiming Social Justice. Ed. Rickie Solinger (Routledge, 2008).

“Sexy Señoritas and other Imperial Fantasies: US Foreign Policy, Domestic Fictions, and the Latina Body.” Screening the Past: An International Journal of Media and History 22 (December 2006).

“Chica Flicks: Postfeminism and the Latina American Dream.” Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies. Eds. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. Routledge, 2008.

“Dominance and Submission in Postmodern War Imagery.” Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice 17.1 (2006).
 
“Visualizing Abjection: Gender, Power, and the Culture of Humiliation.” Gender Forum v11 (2005).
          
“The Latina Body in US Films.”  Latino/as in the United States, Eds. Suzanne Oboler and Deena Gonzalez, Oxford University Press (2005).
 
“Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV.” Feminist Media Studies 4.3 (2004).
 
“Between Borders: Exile, Ethnicity, and ‘Homelessness’ in Julia Alvarez, Margarita Engle, and Edwidge Dandicat.” Florida English Vol 2 (2004).
 
“Against the Grain: Teaching Multicultural Literature to Middle-Class Values.” Academic Exchange Extra (November 2003).
 
“Paradise Lost, Paradise Found: Oral Histories and the Formation of Cuban Identities.” University of Florida Law Review v 55 (2003).
 
“Dictators, Martyrs, and Movie Stars:  Political Spectacle in Hagedorn’s Dogeaters.” Genders v36 (2002).
 
“The Politics and Poetics of Festival in Ninotchka Rosca’s State of War.”  International Fiction Review v 29.1-2 (2002).
 
“Desiring Images: Representation and Power in Hagedorn's Dogeaters.”  Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction v 43 (2002).
 
Awards/Distinctions
Association of University Women Postdoctoral Fellow, 2005-6
NEH Summer Fellowship (Vietnam: America’s Longest War), 2005
Oxford Round Table; Women’s Leadership Forum, Oxford University, England, 2004
Professional Development Grant, 2005,2004, 2003
Marquis Who’s Who of American Women, 2007
Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers, 2003-4 and 2004-5)