Faculty Profiles

Kim Anderson Sasser works on contemporary Anglophone fiction. Her publications have addressed topics including magical realism, postcolonial literature and theory, twentieth and twenty-first century West African writers, and literature and religion. At Wheaton, Sasser teaches courses on these topics as well as speculative fiction, British black and Asian literature, world/global literature, literature and the Christian imagination, and others. Sasser has been a research fellow at The University of Chicago’s Martin Marty Center and at The University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. When not working, Sasser enjoys spending time with her husband and three children, being outdoors, exercising, and vintage shopping. 

University of Edinburgh
Ph.D., English Literature, 2011

University of Texas at Arlington
M.A., English, 2006

Lamar University
B.A., English, 2003

Postdoctoral Work

• The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship
• The University of Edinburgh, Spring and Summer 2013
• The Institute for World Literature
• Peking University in Beijing, China, Summer 2011 - Director David Damrosch

Selected Teaching

Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, courses taught include Magical Realism, West African Literature, Modern Global Literature, and Research and Composition

Volunteer Work

• Life Church, college home group and children's church volunteer, 2013 - Present
• The Oaks Christian Fellowship, Fall 2003 – Spring 2013
• Journeyman, Inc. (youth arts program), Fall 2005 – Spring 2013
• New Life Opportunities and Haven of Love (drug addiction and prostitution intervention programs), Fall 2010 – Fall 2011
• Edinburgh Christian Postgraduate Fellowship, Fall 2009 - Fall 2010

• Contemporary fiction
• Postcolonial literature
• West African literature
• Magical realism

• Magical Realism
• Magical Realism and Religion
• West African Literature
• Achebe and Adichie
• Modern Global Literature
• Black British and British Asian Literature since 1939
• Literature and the Christian Imagination
• Speculative Fiction

Canadian Comparative Literature Association/l’Association Canadienne de Littérature Comparée (CCLA/ACLA)
"Complicating Magical Realism’s Origin Story: Polygenesis Instead of Latin American Monogenesis"

 The University of Chicago
“‘Both Are Real and True Together’: Magical Realism in Close Proximity to Religion”

Humanities Colloquium, Wheaton, IL
“In Search of the Global in Literary Studies”

Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Edinburgh, UK, June 2013
“Magical Realism, Corporeal Take-Overs, and Uncanny Subjectivity: Belonging in Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl”

Books:
Co-edited with Christopher Warnes. Critical Concepts: Magical Realism. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Magical Realism and Cosmopolitanism: Strategizing Belonging. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

 Selected Articles and Book Chapters:
“From the Inside of Belief: Magic and Religion.” Critical Concepts: Magical Realism, edited by Christopher Warnes and Kim Sasser, Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp. 241-61.

“West African Magical Realism among the Wonder Genres.” The Fairy Tale World, edited by Andrew Teverson, Routledge Worlds series, Routledge, 2019, pp. 144-57.