I teach literature and cultural studies across secondary and higher education, guided by a core conviction: that literature shapes how we understand ourselves, others, and the world we share. In my BA and MA courses, I work to expand what we study and how. I bring underrepresented voices and marginalised traditions into dialogue with established frameworks, so that students gain the critical tools to situate literature within wider histories of cultural production and resistance.

I welcome supervision in areas related to my research. I can be reached at rachel.bolle-debessay@univie.ac.at.


Courses    
2025 - 2026
Son, performance, texte : décloisonner nos manières de créer et penser (invited), BA Theory Seminar | University of Arts, Lausanne

DIY: Alternative Modes of Cultural Production in Modern and Contemporary Anglophone Literatures (co-initiator), Circle U, MA Literary and Cultural Studies | University of Vienna

Black Atlantic Thinkers: Literature and the Struggle for New Worldviews, BA Literary and Cultural Studies | University of Vienna
2024 - 2025
The Power of Sound: Listening to Global Stories, VK Seminar | University of Vienna

Biografication: Life Narratives across Genres, BA/MA Literary & Cultural Studies | University of Vienna

Poetry off the Page, VK Seminar, Literature and Language Education | University of Vienna 
2018 - 2019
Graduate Teaching Assistant in Comparative Literature | King’s College London

Guest Teaching
2026
The Rebel Generation: Black British Writing, BA/MA Literary and Cultural Studies | University of Vienna.
2025
Relationalité en basses fréquences: enjeux de la poésie-performance, Littérature française contemporaine | University of Lausanne

The Rebel Generation: Black British Writing, BA/MA Literary and Cultural Studies | University of Vienna

One Riddim, Many Homes: Dub Poetry and the Sonic Poetics of Home, MA Popular and Media Cultures | University of Vienna

Slave Narratives and the Reader, MA English Literature and Culture | University of Innsbruck
2020
The Black Atlantic and Sound, MA Ethnomusicology | University of Geneva