My academic interests include adaptations, fairy tales and folklore, Disney, deep stories, nation-building and national myth-making, and cross-period approaches to narrative transmission across cultures and societies.
My dissertation at the University of Cambridge was titled Race and the Renaissance: The legacy of diversity in Disney fairy-tale and folkloresque film adaptations, which I defended in October 2020. Portions of this academic work have been published in various journals; more information can be found under Research, or on my profiles on ResearchGate and Academia.edu. All of my academic work is (and will be) published under the name Michelle Anya Anjirbag.
Previously, I completed my MSc at the University of Edinburgh from 2013-2014, in Literature and Society: Enlightenment, Romantic, Victorian. My Masters dissertation was titled Liminality, Transgression, and Moralizing in the Original Fairy Tales of George MacDonald, E. Nesbit, Angela Carter, and Neil Gaiman.
I earned my BA in English with a creative writing concentration and minors in anthropology and Native American and Indigenous studies at the University of Connecticut in 2012.
I have spent ten years working in BSA Learning for Life and Venture programing as a facilitator and experiential educator. this background seeps into my approach to academia and teaching, despite no longer working in the woods.
All of my post-BA work has been completed with the support of Rotary International, and my PhD also received additional financial support from the Vakhshoori Foundation, the Zoroastrian Charity Funds of Hong Kong, Canton, and Macao, and the World Zoroastrian Organization.
My full CV is available by request through the contact page.