Nastacia Schmoll is a doctoral student and a teaching and research assistant for Professor Barbara Straumann.

She holds a BA in English and a BA in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Santa Barbara as well as an MA in Literary Studies from the University of Zurich.

Her MA thesis explored depictions of female beauty as a precarious form or capital in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country, and Tina Fey’s Mean Girls.

Her current PhD research examines depictions of spaces in science fiction texts, focusing primarily on how these depictions are changing and the ways in which newer SF texts are using their speculative spaces to reflect on and suggest possible approaches to current cultural and ecological crises.

I am happy to supervise B.A. theses in topics related to my seminars or other research interests! Please contact me directly if you have have an idea for a topic that would be suitable.

• Speculative Fiction
• Ecofiction
• Gender and Sexuality
• Race and Ethnicity
• Space/Spatiality