Welcome, Dr. Crystal Lie !!

Comparative World Literature is excited to welcome Dr. Crystal Yin Lie to the faculty. Dr. Lie’s specialization in disability studies and health humanities will complement our program’s strengths in cultural studies and critical theory. She will be overseeing CWL’s exciting new Minor in Health Humanities that will be offered starting Fall 2021. In Fall 2021 Dr. Lie will be teaching CWL 315 Literature and Medicine, and CWL 115 Intro to Health Humanities.

Crystal Yin Lie recently received her Ph.D. in English Language & Literature with a graduate certificate in Science, Technology and Society from the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. Her research and teaching are animated by interdisciplinary interests in literary and life writing studies, disability studies, health humanities, and visual culture. Crystal is a co-founder of the University of Michigan Disability Studies Group, a campus-wide interdisciplinary workshop, and has also organized numerous events for the University of Michigan Initiative on Disability Studies. She is a former Rackham Humanities Research Fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute Scholar for College and University Teachers, and Outward Bound non-profit outdoor educator. Her most recent scholarship can be found in The Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Graphic Medicine.org, Disability Experiences, and Age, Culture, Humanities. Currently, she is co-editing a manuscript on the legacy of late disability studies scholar (and former mentor) Tobin Siebers, and working on two articles: one on temporality, chronic illness, and comics, and another on Alzheimer’s and the Armenian Genocide in a graphic memoir by Dana Walrath, which will appear in Biography’s special issue on “Graphic Medicine.” Crystal’s research presentation draws from her dissertation, titled Entangled Stories: Reimagining Dementia, History, and Narrative in Contemporary Literature and Life Writing, which was recently nominated for a ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award.