Daniela Kukrechtova

Daniela Kukrechtova received her Ph.D. in English with a specialization in modern and contemporary American poetry. Her research and teaching interests are in modern and contemporary American literature, modern European literature, and the literature of exile.

Most of Kukrechtova's work focuses on poetry (especially modern American poetry of the city and its relation to urban planning and modernist discourses). She has been able to present her scholarly work at annual conferences of Modern Language Association and American Literature Association. Her scholarly article, "The Death and Life of the Mecca Building of Chicago: Gwendolyn Brooks' 'In the Mecca,'" was published in African American Review in 2009 and it received the 2011 Joe Weixlmann Award for best essay on 20th- and 21st- century literature. She currently works on a book manuscript entitled Unplanned Cities: Lyrical Challenges to Urban Symbolism and Utopian Planning in Modern American Poetry.

Kukrechtova also writes and translates poetry. She published her creative work in Circumference: Poetry in Translation and in The Hollins Critic.