University of Basel

Department of
Languages and Literatures

Anglophone Linguistics and Literary Studies

Profile Tamara Dima Imboden

Tamara Dima Imboden is a doctoral researcher at the University of Basel and an assistant at the chair for North American and General Literature. Her dissertation, titled “Re-Signifying Space: Narrating Identity in Urban Fiction” focuses on the ways that images of the city in contemporary literature mediate marginalized experiences to readers, exploring the interplay of structures of the city, structures of the narrative and structures of experience. By reading works such as Teju Cole’s Open City, Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears and Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, she explores how urban motifs reflect and shape experiences of trauma, memory, migration and identity. 

Tamara Dima Imboden (“Tammy”) has taught, among other things, the proseminar III courses “Reconstructing the Past: Memory and Literature” and "Postcolonial Urbanities," and the proseminar II course “Introduction: Literary Theory.” Her research interests includepostcolonial studies, gender studies, intersectionality, 20th and 21st century world literature, migration narratives, literary spaces, cultural memory, trauma. She organized an interdisciplinary symposium titled “Decolonial Imaginaries in Literary and Urban Studies” in collaboration with Andreea Midvighi, which brought together scholars from Urban and Literary studies in an open, exploratory conversation about ongoing colonialities of power in urban fiction and contemporary cities (see link to website below).

Current projects and courses:

  • Dissertation: “Re-Signifying Space: Narrating Identity in Urban Fiction”
  • Teaching: Introduction I: Literary Studies
  • Co-organiser of the 29th Annual EARS Meeting on "Literary Ecologies," 6 Dec 2024

Past projects and courses:

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