Rebecca Dyer advises Language and Literature minors and strives to share her passion for literature, film, and humanistic inquiry with all her students and advisees. She regularly teaches From Text to Screen: Film Adaptations, British Fiction and Film, Narratives of Travel and Migration, and Technical and Professional Communications (a junior-level requirement). While on leave from Rose-Hulman, she taught English majors and graduate students at the Université d’Orléans in France and was a Fulbright Scholar at Lebanese American University in Beirut. She helped design the International Studies Major and Certificate and is co-leading (with Dr. John Aidoo) a team exploring ways to encourage participation in international programs.
Dr. Dyer’s research focuses on British, transnational, and anticolonial authors’ and filmmakers’ depictions of class and power relations. She has published journal articles and book chapters analyzing works by Graham Greene, Sam Selvon, Harold Pinter, Joseph Losey, Mahmoud Darwish, Jean-Luc Godard, Hanif Kureishi, Stephen Frears, Zadie Smith, Rashid al-Daif, Hoda Barakat, and Danielle Arbid, among others. Her most recent publication (in 2026) focuses on first-meeting scenes in Joseph Losey’s The Servant, Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, and Steven Zaillian’s Ripley series.
Academic Degrees
- PhD, University of Texas at Austin, English, 2002
- MA, University of Tulsa, English, 1995
- BS, Oklahoma State University, Journalism, 1989
Teaching Interests
- Transnational and postcolonial literature and film
- 20th and 21st Century British literature
- Arabic literature in translation
- Academic writing, and textual analysis
Research Experiences
- Representations of servants and workers in contemporary literature and film
- Depictions of cities, memorials, and public spaces in transnational literature
- Migration narratives
Select Publications & Presentations
“Masters and Servants, Class, and the Colonies in Graham Greene’s 1940s Fiction,” in The 1940s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction, Bloomsbury, 2022, pp. 191-221.
“Class and Anticolonialism in Harold Pinter and Joseph Losey’s The Servant." Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 38, no. 4, 2015, pp. 147-67.
“Mahmoud Darwish in Film: Politics, Representation, and Translation in Jean-Luc Godard’s Ici et Ailleurs and Notre Musique.” co-authored with François Mulot, Cultural Politics, vol. 10, no. 1, 2014, pp. 70-91.
“Representations of the Migrant Domestic Worker in Hoda Barakat’s The Tiller of Waters and Danielle Arbid’s In the Battlefields.” Embargoed Literature: Arabic, special issue of College Literature, vol. 37, no. 1, 2010, pp. 11-37.
“Poetry of Politics and Mourning: Mahmoud Darwish’s Genre-Transforming Tribute to Edward W. Said." Remapping Genre, special issue of PMLA, vol. 122, no. 5, 2007, pp. 1447-62.
“Generations of Black Londoners: Echoes of Caribbean Migrants’ Voices in Victor Headley’s Yardie and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth.” Black British Literature, special issue of Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora, vol. 5, no. 2, 2004-05, pp. 81-102.
“Immigration, Postwar London, and the Politics of Everyday Life in Sam Selvon’s Fiction." Everyday Life, special issue of Cultural Critique, vol. 52, 2002, pp.108-44.
Awards & Honors
- Fulbright Traditional Scholars Award (teaching and conducting research) Lebanon, 2007-08
- Scholar of the Year Award, Humanities and Social Sciences Department, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, 2007