Dr. Bavjola Gami (Shatro) is an instructor in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric.
Biography
Dr. Gami earned her PhD in Literature from the Institute of Linguistics and Literature, in the Academy of Sciences, Albania. She completed her M.A. in Literature and the B.A. in Linguistics and Literature with Honors in the University of Tirana.
Dr. Gami Shatro's research interests focus on literature (Albanian literature and world literature), poetry studies, life writing, memory studies, totalitarianism and authoritarian regimes, rhetorical mechanisms of oppression and the relationship between literature, philosophy, politics and culture.
She is an internationally published author having published in the United States and in Europe four monographs, some thirty peer-reviewed articles, numerous contributions in literary periodicals and eight chapters in volumes of selected studies.
Dr. Gami Shatro is co-author of two monographs on literature, culture and society published in Albania and co-editor of a book on challenges in Anglo-American languages and literatures (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017).
She has co-edited the special issue Women's Life Writing in Eastern and Southeastern Europe in the literary journal Dacoromania Litteraria 10/2023 (Sextil Pușcariu Institute of Linguistics and Literary History, Romania).
Dr. Gami Shatro has presented her work in some forty-seven conferences, conventions and symposiums in several universities and research institutes in the United States and in Europe.
Some of her recent publications include:
Monographs:
1. Essays on the Awareness of Loss in Contemporary Albanian Literature; Voices that come from the Abyss. Lexington Books, 2024. Recipient of the Honorary Mention by the Society for Albanian Studies in the U.S. in 2024.
2. Between(s) and Beyond(s) in Contemporary Albanian Literature, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016.
3. Fjala dhe ontologjia në poezinë bashkëkohore (Word and Ontology in Contemporary Poetry), Dita 2000, 2012.
4. Analizë dhe interpretim (Analysis and Interpretation; Classics of Albanian literature and World Literature), Dita 2000, 2010.
Chapters:
1. "Epic of Gilgamesh", in Religion and World Civilizations: How Faith Shaped Societies from Antiquity to the Present. Ed. Andrew Holt. Bloomsbury, 2023.
2. "Politics, Memory and Grief in Contemporary Albanian Literature; Live to Tell, a True Story of Religious Persecution in Communist Albania, by Fr Zef Pllumi", In Grief, identity and the Arts; A Multidisciplinary Perspective on the Expression of Grief. Ed. by Bram Lambrecht and Miriam Wendling, Brill, 2022, pp. 152–168.
Articles:
1. Forthcoming: Discovering the self in the negative space: Re-visiting the Past under Communism in Luljeta
Lleshanaku’s Poem Negative Space. Mediterranean Studies (2025), Penn State University Press.
2. (Re)Discovering the Poetry of the (Un)Known: Silence and Loss in the Poetry of Eqrem Basha. Balkanistica
38, 2025, pp.161- 193.
Book reviews
1. “Bożena Karwowska, The Witness and the Body in Auschwitz: Early Literary Accounts of the Camp Experience”.
Slavic and East European Journal (SEEJ), Vol. 68. Issue 4, 2024.
2. “Ludmila Miklashevskaya, Gender and Survival in Soviet Russia: A Life in the Shadow of Stalin’s Terror. Slavic
and East European Journal (SEEJ), Vol.68, Issue 3, 2024.
Courses Taught
- Writ 101 First-Year Writing 1
Education
B.A. Linguistics and Literature, University of Tirana (2005)
M.A. Literature, University of Tirana (2007)
Ph.D. Literature, University of Tirana (2011)