Victor Kennedy, Slovenia

Curriculum Vitae

Professor Victor Kennedy is currently a professor of English Language and Literature at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Maribor, Slovenia. Previously, he was an assistant professor at Humber College in Toronto, and a teaching assistant at the University of Toronto and Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Victor Kennedy is currently working on a long-term project entitled Words and Music which has resulted in three conferences so far, as well as one monograph, three published collections of essays and several articles in scholarly journals. He has also participated in the Joint Lecture Hall project, which is a collaboration between the English and American Studies Department of the University of Maribor and the English and American Studies departments at Karl-Franzens University in Graz.

Reflection

I had a very pleasant and constructive stay in Graz, and was kindly given access to the library and the study materials at the Center for Inter-American Studies.
I participated in a CEEPUS conference hosted by the Center for Inter American Studies, where I met some old academic acquaintances, and made some new ones. Unfortunately my time there was cut short as a result of illness, but the Head of the Center, Professor Roberta Maierhofer, kindly invited me to come back for a guest lecture, which I presented in December, 2017.
My research plan was to build on my understanding of a field which I have studied and published on for about twenty years, literary and cultural analysis of songs and song lyrics. In Graz I began to research and explore a field which is new to me, the Latin American Influence on American and Canadian Music and Culture. Since I have only a very basic understanding of Spanish, I was very happy to meet Mag. Xaver Hergenrother, who is a staff member of the Center for Inter American Studies and is fluent in Spanish, and who offered to collaborate with me in my research and in preparing future publications. With his assistance I believe I will be able to beyond my initial expectations for this research project.