Professor Cayo Gamber


Assistant Professor of Writing
cayo1@gwu.edu | Rome 567 | 202.994.2087

 

Cayo Gamber grew up in the Philippines with many siblings, many pets, many languages, and many memories of living a languorous life. In her house there were two brothers, a sister, a step-brother, a step-sister, a half-brother, and a half-sister. Cats, dogs, monkeys, rabbits, turtles, parrots, and for a very short time a snake, also were members of her household. She studied Spanish, Tagolog, French, and Mandarin in school. Her favourite teacher was Mrs. Pratico who taught English and who gave her students sentences from Edgar Allan Poe to diagram on large pieces of construction paper.

Her life ambition was to read every book in the library at the International School of the Philippines. It was, all in all, a very small library. Her favourite activity was to curl up in a chair in the library, under a slowly rotating fan, immersed in a book while others sweated playing sports in the late afternoon.

Currently she is working on a book-length study of the culture of memorializing and commemorating warfare. In particular, she is interested in how specific narratives of war and commemorations to remember those who died have come to inform our national, institutional, social, cultural, political, popular, and personal understandings of the wages of war in modern times.

 

EDUCATION
Ed. S., Education Specialist, Higher Education Administration, The George Washington University
Ph.D., English, The George Washington University
M.Phil, The George Washington University
B.A., English and Spanish, The College of William and Mary, The University of Barcelona, and The Normal University of Taiwan

 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
"In a Napping House." Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 5.2 (Fall/Winter 2003).

 

Review of Literary Legacies, Folklore Foundations: Selfhood and Cultural Tradition in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature, Karen E. Beardslee, in Women's Studies International Forum, Volume 26, Issue 5, September-October 2003.

 

with Walter A. Brown,"Cost Containment in Higher Education: Issues and Recommendations. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report: Volume 29, Number 5. Jossey-Bass, 2002.

 

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITES
MEMBERSHIPS:
--Modern Language Association
--American Studies Association
--National Council of Teachers of English

 

RESEARCH INTERESTS
the place of witnessing in depictions of the Holocaust; the "cultural work" of the Barbie doll; representations of lesbian parenting; the language of atomic warfare; reading Nancy Drew mystery stories; the role of advertising in the diet industry; representations of the female breast in popular culture; and the university as an ideal and within the marketplace.