Prof. Burke spent her formative years in the United Kingdom. Since immigrating to the United States, she earned her doctorate in comparative literature at the University of California, Riverside with a dissertation on ludic strategies for analyzing..
Prof. Burke spent her formative years in the United Kingdom. Since immigrating to the United States, she earned her doctorate in comparative literature at the University of California, Riverside with a dissertation on ludic strategies for analyzing postmodern texts. She has taught at California State University San Bernardino since 1989. In addition to her interest in language pedagogy, she pursues unitive studies in ancient and modern languages, psychology, aesthetics, postcolonial studies, and literary theory. Her current research focuses on so-called postcolonial narratives primarily by women writers, She analyzes the self-representation of fictional exiles and immigrants as they enter into dialogue and dispute with a culture where the nature of their very existence is ambiguous. Characters are plotted, for example, against the exploration and extension of Jungian archetypes. Such ludic juxtaposition uncovers an intriguing narrative cadence that easily moves from generative loci in London to Paris, and to Berlin. There, colonizer and colonized are foregrounded against the soil of the metropolis. There, each promotes, deconstructs, or challenges Empire.
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New Directions in the Humanities
