Ayşe Lahur Kırtunç received her BA and MA degrees from Hacettepe University, Department of English Language and Literature and her PhD from Ankara University, Department of American Culture and Literature. She has worked at Middle East Technical University, Dokuz Eylul University and Ege University where she was the head of the Department of American Culture and Literature between 2000 and 2007. She was a Fulbright Research Grant recipient during the years 1975-76 (University of San Francisco) and 1996-97 (University of Texas at Austin). Her areas of interest are gender studies, popular culture and cultural theory. She was the editor of Journal of American Studies of Turkey between 2002-2007. Also, she was the founder and organizer for many years of Ege University Cultural Studies Symposium.

Ana Mª Manzanas is professor of American Literature and Culture at the University de Salamanca, Spain. Her publications include Hospitality in American Literature and Culture: Spaces, Bodies, Borders (Routledge 2016), Occupying Space in American Literature and Culture: Social Movements, Occupation, and Empowerment (Routledge 2014), Cities, Borders, and Spaces in Intercultural American Literature and Film (Routledge 2011), Uncertain Mirrors: Magical Realism in US Ethnic Literatures (Rodopi 2009), and Intercultural Mediations: Mimesis and Hybridity in American Literatures (LIT Verlag 2003), all of them coauthored with J. Benito. She has edited and coedited collections of essays, such as Literature and Ethnicity in the Cultural Borderlands (Rodopi 2002), and Border Transits: Literature and Culture across the Line (Rodopi 2007). With J. Benito she is general editor of the Rodopi Series “Critical Approaches to Ethnic American Literature.”

Dr. Srebren Dizdar (1955, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a Full Professor of English Literature, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo, who had studied English and French literature at the University of Sarajevo (BA, 1978), and continued postgraduate studies in literature at University of Belgrade (1978-1979) and University of Leicester (Great Britain, MA in Modern English and American literature, 1981), and Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Sarajevo, 1989. As a Fulbright fellow, he attended Doctoral studies in Literature at University of Southern California, 1987-1988Los Angeles, as well as post-doctoral studies at University of California San Diego, 2000-2001. He taught a number of courses on various study levels within the University of Sarajevo, and was a visiting professor in different universities in Europe and USA, held a number of public and academic offices during his career, including the position of Permanent Secretary in the Ministry for Education, Science, Culture and Sports in the government of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, president of the National Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina for UNESCO, President of the Film Fund Sarajevo, and Dean of Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo. He is an international expert on higher education and has been actively involved in a number of projects related to the introduction of the Bologna process in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Currently, he is the Head of Doctoral Studies of Literature at the University of Sarajevo. So, far, Prof. Dizdar had published nine (9) monograph books, which dealt with English Romantic Poetry and American and Postcolonial Literature in English, and Academic Writing; whereas the others happened to be major studies on Higher Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He translated 22 books and many other different legal, political, historical, media, sociological and related business or economics texts from Bosnian into English and vice versa. He has published more than 150 scholarly and professional articles on English, American and postcolonial literature, respectively, as well as on education, history, politics, economics, and media; and translates essays, poetry and fiction of diverse writers from English into Bosnian and vice versa. He has participated in more than 80 academic and professional gatherings in Bosnia and Herzegovina and across the region of Southeastern Europe, as well as in Europe, Asia and USA. He speaks English & French fluently, has a fair knowledge of Spanish and Italian.