Piia Mustamaki

Lecturer of Writing Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Education: BA Hunter College of CUNY; MA Bristol University; PhD Rutgers University

pjm9@nyu.edu

Research Areas: travel narratives; gender, cultural and performance studies; Global South urbanism; cities as performance

Piia Mustamäki is a scholar of travel narratives, cities as a site of performance, and gender, cultural and performance studies. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for graduate study in the US and earned a PhD from Rutgers University’s Department of Literature in English. Her articles have been published in Neohelicon, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and Nordic Theater Studies.

Before joining NYU Abu Dhabi, Piia taught writing at NYU Shanghai and in New York at NYU’s Liberal Studies. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Drama at Oberlin College and has taught numerous classes at Barnard College’s Theater Department and a class at Columbia University’s MFA program in theater.

Originally from Finland, Piia has lived in 6 other countries and has traveled to more than 100. Her essays and travel writing have been published in, for example, Meridian: APWT Drunken Boat Anthology of New Writing, Literary Traveler, and Culture-ist. Her NYU Abu Dhabi First-year Writing Seminars concentrate on travel narratives, theories of cultural encounters, and urban centers as sites of gender and cultural performance, often through the lens of postcolonial theory.