Vivian Nun Halloran is a scholar of Caribbean literature, food studies, ethnic American literature, postmodernism, and popular culture. She was born and raised in Puerto Rico, but finished high school in Colorado where she earned a B.A. in English and Spanish from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA in 2002 and has been at IU Bloomington since then.
Dr. Halloran is a Latina who is deeply invested in social justice. As Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion, she is committed to help the College of Arts and Sciences continue making progress towards becoming increasingly inclusive, diverse, and anti-racist. To that end, her goals are to promote open and respectful dialogue between and among faculty, staff, students, and administrators. She is a feminist who supports LGBT rights. She wants to promote greater awareness of first-generation IU Hoosiers and be more purposeful in reaching out to them as valuable members of our community.
Dr. Halloran is a professor of English and also serves as Associate Director for Curriculum for the Liberal Arts and Management Program. She is actively involved with the Center for Excellence for Women and Technology (CEWIT), where she was Faculty Director of the SSHAPE group—Social Science, Humanities, Arts, the Professions, and Education. She previously served as Director of the Asian American Studies Program for four years, and she was also Interim Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Collins Living Learning Center. She is an affiliate member of the Center for Research in Race and Ethnicity in Society (CRRES) and has a longstanding affiliation as one of the core faculty members of the Human Biology Program.
Dr. Halloran is the author of The Immigrant Kitchen: Food, Ethnicity, and Diaspora (2016) from Ohio State University Press and Exhibiting Slavery: The Caribbean Postmodern Novel as Museum (2009) from University of Virginia Press. She is currently at work on a third monograph, entitled Caribbean American Belonging. Beyond her primary areas of research other publications include work on African American foodways, African American film, and book chapters on both the James Bond and John Wick franchises.
