Born in Geneva (Switzerland), Vartan P. Messier has taught Literature, Film, French and English in Europe and the U.S. as well as in Central America and the Caribbean. He is now a Doctoral Candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of California at Riverside. His research focuses on the critical discourses on modernity, modernism, and postmodernism in literature and the visual arts.
Nandita and Vartan have collaborated on two other essay collections: Transgression and Taboo (2005) and This Watery World: Humans and the Sea (2008).