Annessa Ann Babic is a freelance writer, adjunct professor, and lecturer in New York. She specializes in women’s studies, American social and cultural history, public health narratives, and transnational studies, emphasizing the modern Middle East and US-Turkish relations. She is the author or co-editor of several books and has produced numerous book chapters, reference entries, book reviews, and journal articles. Her publications deal extensively with nationalism, women’s rights, women’s liberation, Turkish-US relations, transnational feminism, and travel literature. Her most recent book is America’s Changing Icons (FDU Press, 2018). She has also guest-edited a special edition of the Journal of American Studies in Turkey focusing on travel narratives; previously, she co-edited an issue of Food and Foodways (with Tanfer Emin Tunc). Recent book chapters on Chinese American takeaway dinners, one concerning travel narratives, war, and literary icons (i.e., Anne of Green Gables), and co-written pieces on food narratives and activism (with Tunc) have populated her publishing landscape.
She has also taught courses ranging from American History to Environmental History. Her passions reside in cultural products and conflicts concerning consumption, geopolitical politics, and gender issues. She has won teaching fellowships as well as writing and research accords.
Aside from discursive teaching and looking at the popular culture venues of food and food products, Dr. Babic has also published rather heartedly on the manifestation, evolution, and incorporation of modern cultural artifacts into our daily lives. Additionally, she has an active publishing career outside of academia, as she writes travel and lifestyle pieces alongside fiction, and she works as an activist for women’s and social causes. Currently, she is finishing a discursive project on travel literature and the perceptions of place and space (looking at Greece and Turkey) and working on a travel narrative book for the popular press.