Recently Completed Dissertations

Alba F. Aragón (Spanish): The Rhetoric of Fashion in Latin America
Advisor: Doris Sommer [Diana Sorensen, Mariano Siskind]

Sonia Brighenti (Italian): La madre oscura. Trasgressione e letteratura nell' Italia e oggi
Advisor: Francesco Erspamer [Giuliana Minghelli, Stefania Lucamante (The Catholic University of America)]

Javier Carlos De Taboada Amat y León (Spanish): Cineastas y escritores europeos en Latinoamérica: un estudio del contexto de producción
Advisor: Diana Sorensen [Mariano Siskind and Doris Sommer]

Stefanie Anne Goyette (French): Indiscriminate Bodies: The Old French Fabliaux in Relation to Thirteenth-Century Medical and Religious Cultures
Advisor:Virginie Greene [Tom Conley, Steve Nichols (Johns Hopkins)]

Kyle Hall (Italian): Affecting Lives: The Politics of Biography in Modern Italy. Advisor: Francesco Erspamer [Giuliana Minghelli, Harald Hendrix, (University of Utrecht)]

Brenton Kirk Hobart (French): L'Imaginaire de la peste dans la littérature française de la Renaissance
Advisor: Tom Conley [Virginie Greene, Mary Gaylord, Frank Lestringant (Université Paris-Sorbonne)]

Melissa Machit (Spanish): Bad Habits: Family, Identity, and Gender Guillén de Castro's 1625 play, “La fuerza de la costumbre"Guillén de Castro's 1625 play, “La fuerza de la costumbre". Advisor: Mary Gaylord [Luis Girón-Negrón, Elizabeth Rhodes (Boston College)]

Nefer Muñoz Solano (Spanish): The Newsroom and a New Type of Literary Figure in Latin America. Advisor: Diana Sorensen, [Brad Epps, George Yudice (U. of Miami)]

Itziar Rodríguez de Rivera (Spanish): Mujeres de papel: figuras de la "lesbiana" en la literatura y cultura españolas, 1868-1936
Advisor: Brad Epps [Luis Fernández Cifuentes, Maite Zubiaurre (University of California, Los Angeles)]

 

Jessica Tanner (French): Paris, (Dis)oriented: Spaces of Prostitution in the French Novel, 1830-1914. Advisor: Janet Beizer [Tom Conley, Luis Fernández-Cifuentes]

 

Cara Takakjian (Italian): The Italian Graphic Novel: Reading the Individual, Reading History. Advisor: Giuliana Minghelli [Francesco Erspamer, Scott Bukatman (Stanford)]

 

Loren Wolfe (French): From Immunity to Mutiny: French Modernity and the Undoing of Self. Advisor: Janet Beizer [Alice Jardine, Christie McDonald]
 

 

Catherine Adoyo (Italian): The Order of All Things: Mimetic Craft in Dante’s Commedia
Advisor: Jeffrey Schnapp [Richard Thomas, Jan Ziolkowski, Lino Pertile]

Jean Eudes Biem (French): Globalization and the Cosmopolitan Reconfiguration of Modernity: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Politics
Advisor: Verena Conley

Eric Stickley Calderwood (Spanish): Writing the Hispano-Moroccan War of 1859-1860: Spanish and Moroccan Reflections on Spanish Colonialism in Morocco
Advisor: Bradley S. Epps [William Granara, Luis Giron Negron]

Luca Cottini (Italian): A Culture of Objects: Italy's Quest for Modernity (1878-1922)
Advisor: Guiliana Minghelli [Francesco Erspamer, Jeffrey Schnapp]

Elgin Eckert (Italian): Cultural Memory in Contemporary Narrative: Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano Series
Advisor: Francesco Erspamer [Giuliana Minghelli, Salvatore Nigro]

Eduardo Ledesma (Spanish): The Historic Avant-garde, the Neo-Avant- garde and the Digital Age: Experimental Visual-Textual Forms in the Luso-Hispanic World
Advisor: Brad Epps [Luis Fernandez-Cifuentes, Joaquim-Francisco Coelho, David Rodowick]

Severine Meunier (French): Que reste-t-il de Proust? À la Recherche du Temps Perdu comme Laboratoire de la Modernité Littéraire
Advisor: Susan R. Suleiman [Christie McDonald, Tom Conley]

Lauren Ravalico (French): Resonant Silence: Staël, Sand, and the Poetics of Listening
Advisor: Janet Beizer [Christie McDonald, Tom Conley]

Esmeralda Ulloa (Spanish): Fashioning Sovereignty in Latin American Narrative
Advisor: Doris Sommer [Mariano Siskind and Regina Root (College of William and Mary)]

Stephanie Wooler (French): Performance Anxiety: Hysteria and the Actress in French Literature 1880-1910
Advisor: Janet Beizer [Alice Jardine, Patrice Higonnet]

Adriana Chimu Harley (French): Nerval, la parole à double tranchant. Le théâtre et le temple, ou l’ironie du littéraire 
Advisor: Tom Conley [Janet Beizer, Evelyne Ender (Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center)]

Stacy Giufre (Italian): Speaking Back: Women in the Works of Cesare Pavese 
Advisor: Giuliana Minghelli, [Francesco Erspamer, Lino Pertile]

Martin Gaspar (Spanish): La condición traductora. Sobre los nuevos protagonistas de la literatura latinoamericana
Advisor: Diana Sorensen (advisor) [Doris Sommer, Gonzalo Aguilar (Universidad de Buenos Aires)]

Christopher Lewis (Portuguese): When the Glass Slips: Building Bridges to Transmodern Identity in the Novels of Santiago Nazarian and Chico Buarque 
Advisor: Nicolau Sevcenko [Joaquim-Francisco Coelho]

Daniel Turello (Italian): Facing and Interfacing: Technology in Jacopone, Dante, Cellini, Vico
Advisor: Lino Pertile [Francesco Erspamer, Verena Conley]

Alexandra Vega-Merino (Spanish): Sara: chispazos reflexivos en la cinematografia de Tacabo Morales
Advisor: Doris Sommer [Tom Conley, José Rivera]

Daniel Aguirre Oteiza (Spanish): Descripción de la mentira: contradicciones del testimonio en la poesía de Antonio Gamoneda
Advisor: Luis Fernández Cifuentes [Mary Gaylord, Christopher Maurer]

José Falconi (Spanish): SECOND NATURE: An essay on the nature of landscape in Latin America
Advisor: Doris Sommer [Thomas Cummins, Nicolau Sevcenko]

Caterina Mongiat Farina (Italian): La questione della lingua e i massimi sistemi della cultura
Advisor: Francesco Erspamer [Lino Pertile, Diego Zancani]

Manolo Núñez-Negrón (Spanish): Políticas del humor en América Latina
Advisor: Diana Sorensen [Doris Sommer, Joaquim F. Coelho]

François Proulx (French): Victims of the Book: Reading Anxieties in the French Novel of Formation, 1880-1914
Advisor: Susan R. Suleiman [Christie McDonald, Judith Surkis]

Juan de Dios Vázquez (Spanish): Between Sentences: A Cultural History ofEl Palacio de Lecumberri from Penitentiary to Mexico’s National Archive
Advisor: Diana Sorensen [Doris Sommer, Hugo Hiriart]

Bruno Carvalho (Portuguese): New City in a New World: Literary Spaces of an Afro-Jewish Brazilian Neighborhood
Advisor: Nicolau Sevcenko [Joaquim-Francisco Coelho, Tom Conley]

Christian Claesson (Spanish): The Role of the Author in Juan Carlos Onetti and Juan José Saer
Advisor: Diana Sorensen [Brad Epps, Mariano Siskind, Julio Premat]

Sara Kippur (French): The Translingual Self: Life-Writing across Languages in the Works of Hector Bianciotti, Jorge Semprun, and Raymond Federman
Advisor: Susan Suleiman [Diana Sorensen, Christie McDonald]

Jimmy McMenamin (Italian): The Sequence 'beginning-middle-end', Dante and Petrarch
Advisor: Lino Pertile [Luis Girón-Negrón and Jan Ziolkowski]

Antonio Morena (Italian): 1932
Advisor: Lino Pertile [Francesco Erspamer, Ruth Ben-Ghiat (NYU)]

Julieta Victoria Muñoz Alvarado (Spanish): La poética de la amistad enLos seis libros de la Galatea
Advisor: Mary Gaylord [Luis Girón-Negrón, Luce López-Baralt]

María Ospina (Spanish): Evocar y convocar: Violencia y representación en la narrativa
Advisor: Doris Sommer [Diana Sorensen, Francisco Ortega (Universidad Nacional de Colombia)]

Jerónimo Pizarro Jaramillo (Spanish): La mediación editorial Sobre la vida póstuma de lo escrito: Editorial Agency. On the Posthumous Life of the Written Word
Advisor: Diana Sorensen [Doris Sommer, Onésimo Almeida (Brown University)]

Felisa Vergara Reynolds (French): Literary Cannibalism: Almost the Same, but Not Quite/Almost the Same, but not White
Advisor: Tom Conley [Abiola Irele, Odile Cazenave (Boston University), Maryse Condé (Columbia University)]

Joaquin Terrones (Spanish): American Baroques: The Ethics of Excess in Borges, Stevens, Lezama Lima, Gorostiza and Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1935-1940)
Advisor: Doris Sommer [Luis Girón, Arnaldo Cruz-Malave (Fordham University)]

Victoria G. Tillson (Italian): From Myth to Borgata: Rome in Postwar Italian Narrative
Advisor: Francesco Erspamer [Giuliana Minghelli, and Antonio Vitti (Indiana University, Bloomington)]

Lia Brozgal (French): Reading Albert Memmi: Authorship, Identity and the Francophone Postcolonial
Advisor: Susan Suleiman [Tom Conley, Abiola Irele]

Greg Cohen (Spanish): Cinema, Spatial Thought, and the Ends of Modernity. Argentina and Brazil in the Sixties
Advisor: Diana Sorensen [Doris Sommer, Tom Conley]

Antonio Cordoba (Spanish): "Las relacioné inmediatamente con la literatura": De la maravilla a la biblioteca en la ciencia ficción latinoamericana contemporánea
Advisor: Doris Sommer [Diana Sorensen, Mariano Siskind]

Margarita del Rosario (Spanish): El mudejarismo en la obra de donn Juan Maneul
Advisor: Francisco Marquez Villanueva [Luis Giron, James Monroe]

Dana Lindaman (French): Mapping the Geographies of French Identity: 1871-1914
Advisor: Janet Beizer [Tom Conley, Patrice Higonnet]

Natalia Santamaría (Spanish): El Retono de la Carabelas: Ideales Regeneracionistas Espanoles y Latin Americanos
Advisor: Luis Fernandez Cifuentes [Brad Epps, Doris Sommer]

Carmen Oquendo (Spanish): Chile 1973: el golpe mediático
Advisor: Luis Cárcamo-Huechante [Doris Sommer, Tom Conley, Diana Taylor (NYU)]

Juan Pablo Rivera (Spanish): Sexuality, Multilingualism, and the Latin American Diaspora
Advisor: Doris Sommer [Diana Sorensen,Rubén Ríos Ávila (UPR)]

Patricia Vieira (Portuguese): Seeing Politics Otherwise. Representations of Vision in Iberian and Latin American Political Fiction
Advisor: Joaquim-Francisco Coelho [Doris Sommer, Nicolau Sevcenko]

Joe Bender (French; Secondary Field Visual and Environmental Studies).
Mapping the Paris Suburbs On Screen, 1958-2012
Verena Conley [Tom Conley, Robb Moss (VES), Réda Bensmaïa (Brown).]

*ELIZABETH CARTER HANRAHAN (French)
Taming the Gypsy: How French Romanitcs Recaptured a Past"
Janet Beizer, [Verena Conley,Anne McCall (SUNY Binghamton)]

Laura Connor (Spanish)
Frameworks: The Limits of Perception and Representation in Spanish Narrative
and Painting, 1880-1920
Brad Epps [Luis Fernández Cifuentes, Jordana Mendelson (NYU)]

Paola de Santo (Italian)
(Ne) Habeas corpus: The Body and the Body Politic in the,figures of the Ambassador and the Courtesan in Renaissance Italy
Giuliana Minghelli, [Francesco Erspamer, Katharina Piechocki]

Mary Disalvo (Italian)
Redirecting Neorealism: Italian Auteur-Actress Collaborations of the 1950s and 1960s.
Giuliana Minghelli, [Francesco Erspamer and Millicent Marcus (Yale U.)]

Andrew Gray (Spanish)
Makers and Creators: Human and Divine Artistry in Calderón
Mary Gaylord [Luis Girón Negrón, Christopher Johnson, Ricardo Padrón.]

Rebeca Hey Colon (Spanish)
Sea-ing Words: An Exploration of the Maritime in Contemporary Caribbean and
Latino/a Literature
Doris Sommer [Mariano Siskind, Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé (Fordham U.)]

Rosario Hubert (Dual Track Spanish and Portuguese)
Disorientations. Latin American Fictions of East Asia
Mariano Siskind [David Damrosch, Nicolau Sevcenko, Diana Sorensen]

Nicole Legnani (Spanish)
Love Interest: Figures and Fictions of Venture Capital and the Law in Conquista
Mary Gaylord, [Luis Girón Negron, Luis Cárcamo Huechante (U. Texas-Austin).]

Adam Muri-Rosenthal (Italian)
Residual Visions: Rubbish, Refuse and Marginalia in Italian Cinema from Neorealism
to the Present
Giuliana Minghelli [Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Jeffrey Schnapp]

Maria Piedad Quevedo Alvarado (Spanish)
Epistemología criolla, práctica poética y soberanía simbólica en la Nueva Granada:
El desierto prodigioso y prodigio del desierto de Pedro de Solís y Valenzuela.
José Rabasa [Luis Girón Negrón, Luis Fernando Restrepo (University of Arkansas).]

Paul Politte (Spanish)
Contrapunteo: The Question of “National” Theater in Turn-of-the-Century Argentina
and Mexico
Doris Sommer [Mariano Siskind, Patricia Ybarra (Brown University)]

Natalie Potok Saaris (French)
Refashioning the Novel in the Age of Image Media
Alice Jardine, [Judith Ryan (Comp Lit), Jimena Canales (History of Science)].

Kathryn Rose (French)
Digesting Modernism: Representations of Food and Incorporation in Nineteenth
and Twentieth-Century French Fiction
Janet Beizer [Susan Suleiman, Christie McDonald],

Andres Sanin (Spanish)
Reír o no reír: (meta)humorismo y violencia en la literatura contemporánea de
Colombia y México
Doris Sommer, [Sergio Delgado, Héctor Hoyos (Stanford University).]

Cinthya Torrs Nunez (Dual Track Spanish and Portuguese)
Mapping the Amazon: Territory, Identity, and Modernity in the Literatures of
Peru and Brazil (1900-1930)
Nicolau Sevcenko, [Doris Sommer, José Rabasa]

FRANCESCO MARCO ARESU (Italian)
The Author as Scribe. Materiality and Textuality in the Trecento
Advisor: Jeffrey Schnapp, [Francesco Erspamer, Beatrice Arduini (University of Washington)]
 
SARAH LUEHRMAN AXELROD (Italian)
Umorismo and critical reading in Boccaccio’s vernacular and Latin opere ‘minori’
Advisor: Jeffrey Schnapp [Virginie Greene, Francesco Erspamer]
 
ANGELA BOSCOLO BERTO (Italian)
L'invenzione della montagna. Significati e valori dello spazio nel fascismo e nella Resistenza
Advisor: Francesco Erspamer; [Jeffrey Schnapp, Giuliana Minghelli ]
 
LOTTE BERNARDA BUITING (Spanish, Secondary field with film studies)
Echoes of the Child in Latin American Literature and Film
Advisor: Mariano Siskind [Brad Epps, Sergio Delgado, Haden Guest, Gonzalo M. Aguilar (University of Buenos Aires)]
 
PLÍNIO TADEU deGÓES (Portuguese)
The 1824 Confederation of the Equator and Cultural Production in Brazil
Advisor: Josiah Blackmore [Tamar Herzog, Luis Girón Negrón]
 
VINCENT GELINAS-LEMAIRE (French) [November 2015]
La représentation de l’espace dans le récit
Advisor: Susan R. Suleiman, [Virginie Greene, Michel Collot (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3)]

JEREMIE CHARLES KORTA (French)
The Aesthetics of Discovery: Text, Image, and the Performance of Knowledge in the Early-Modern Book
Advisor: Tom Conley, [Henri Zerner (HAA), Sylvaine Guyot]
 
SERGI RIVERO NAVARRO (Dual track with Spanish, Portuguese)
Epifanía, trance, arrebato y otras iluminaciones: Manifestaciones extáticas en la cultura Ibero-Americana  contemporánea (Epiphany, Ecstasy, and other States of Grace: Mystical Manifestations in the Contemporary Iberian-American Culture )
Advisor: Brad Epps, [ Tom Conley, Román Gubern]

CARLOS VARÓN GONZÁLEZ (Spanish)
Malos tiempos para la lírica: Poesía y cancelación del espacio público [Bad Times for Lyric: Poetry and the Annulment of the Public Realm]
Advisor: Luis Fernández-Cifuentes [Brad Epps, Anthony Geist (University of Washington)]
 

ANTONIO JOSÉ ARRAIZA RIVERA (Spanish)
“Impresas ansias”: poéticas de la escritura en Villamediana, Sor Juana y Melo
Advisor: Mary Gaylord, [Luis Girón Negrón, Josiah Blackmore, Christopher Maurer (Boston University)]

ANGELA BOSCOLO BERTO (Italian)
L'invenzione della montagna. Significati e valori dello  spazio nel fascismo e nella Resistenza
Advisor: Francesco Erspamer, [Jeffrey Schnapp, Giuliana Minghelli (McGill University)]

MONA EL KHOURY (French)
Remnants of the Franco-Algerian Fracture: The Struggle  with Postcolonial Minority Identity in Contemporary Francophone Literature
Advisor: Susan Suleiman, Verena Conley, Reda Bensmaia (Brown University)

DAVID STEWART FRANCIS (Spanish)
Moving Sensibility: Sex Work and Economies of Desire in Latin American Literature and Visual Cultures
Advisor: Brad Epps (University of Cambridge), [Doris Sommer, Sergio Delgado, Mark Jordan]

VINCENT GÉLINAS-LEMAIRE (French)
La représentation de l’espace dans le récit
Advisor: Susan Suleiman [ Virginie Greene, Michel Collot (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3)]

GORETTI GONZALEZ (Spanish)
Translating Spanishness: Courtiers, Pícaros, and Gypsies at  the crossroads of Spain and Italy ca 1528-1622
Advisor: Mary Gaylord, [Luis Giron-Negron, Laura Bass (Brown University)]

EUGENIO LANZAS (Spanish)
Posguerra, literatura y política: una lectura en clave contractual
Advisor: Doris Sommer, [Mariano Siskind, Alejandra Ortiz Wallner (Freie Universität Berlin)

SANAM NADER-ESFAHANI (Dual Track French/Italian)
Knowledge and Representation  through Baroque Eyes: Literature and Optics in France and Italy ca. 1600-1640
Advisor: Tom Conley, Christie McDonald, Eileen Reeves (Princeton University)

HUMBERTO DELGADO VELÁZQUEZ (Spanish)    
Advisor: Lorgia García Peña [Mariano Siskind, Bradley S. Epps (University of Cambridge)]
El centro del Centro: Ficción e ilusión en el Zócalo de la Ciudad de México

ELIZABETH LAGRESA GONZALEZ (Spanish)
Advisor: Mary Gaylord [Luis Girón-Negrón, Antonio Cortijo Ocaña (University of California)]
Counterfeiting Women: Economics of Gender and Genre in Cervantes’ Romance Novellas

CAROLINE LAURENT (French)
Advisor: Susan R. Suleiman [Amaleena Damle (Cambridge)]
The Words of Others: Remembering and Writing Genocide as an Indirect Witness

OBED OMAR LIRA (Spanish)    
Advisor: Mary Gaylord [José Rabasa (Professor Emeritus UC Berkeley), Luis Girón-Negrón]
Bartolomé de las Casas and the Passions of Language

LUIS LÓPEZ GONZÁLEZ (Spanish)    
Advisor: Luis M. Girón Negrón [Mary M. Gaylord, Virginie Greene]
Suicide in the Spanish Middle Ages: Literary Representation of Self-Aggression and Transgression

ELOISA MORRA (Italian) 
Advisor: Jeffrey Schnapp [Francesco Erspamer, Federica G. Pedriali (University of Edimburgh)]
Visual Storytelling. Gadda’s Iconographies from L’Adalgisa to Il Pasticciaccio

LUIGI PATRUNO (Spanish)
Advisor: Doris Sommer [Mariano Siskind, Federico Finchelstein (The New School)]
El pueblo en escena Cultura y peronismo (1943-1955)

MAX SEAWRIGHT (Portuguese)
Advisor: Josiah Blackmore [Sergio Delgado, Jeffrey Schnapp]
Bodies of Books: Literary Illustration in Twentieth Century Brazil

JULIANNE MAE VANWAGENEN (Italian)
Advisor: Francesco Erspamer [Jeffrey Schnapp, Giuliana Minghelli]
The Mythologist in Microgroove: Fabrizio De André’s Italy (1961-1981)

JOHN A WELSH (Italian)    
Advisor: Jeffrey Schnapp [Francesco Erspamer, Tom Conley, Joseph Luzzi (Bard College)]
The Pact of Geryon: An Italian Theory of Ethics and Representation