Recent Alumni

2018-19
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Ebenezer Concepción "Inverting (Trans)Modern Subjects: Toward A (Re)Vision of Sex, Gender, and Race in Two Novels by Alfonso Hernández-Catá (1885-1940)"
Mario Santana
Presidential Post-Doc in Hispanic Studies, Carnegie Mellon University
José Estrada "“El monstro con su figura”: Ruiz de Alarcón’s Transatlantic Self-Fashioning"
Frederick de Armas
Assistant Teaching Professor of Hispanic Studies, Carnegie Mellon University
Ji Gao "Guillaume Roville et Benoît Rigaud (1545-1597). Politiques éditoriales, contraintes économiques et ambitions culturelles en France dans la seconde moitié du seizième siècle"
Philippe Desan
Assistant Professor, Institute of Comparative Literature, Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University
2017-18
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Juan Camilo Acevedo "Cortar, Copiar y Pegar: autoría y publicación en el Siglo de Oro español"
Miguel Martínez
Owner, GarageLab Training
Joshua Baker "The Consumption of Objects of Memory in Contemporary Peninsular Literature"
Mario Santana
Rebecca Crisafulli "Sincerity and Social Transformation in the Work of Louise d'Épinay"
Robert Morrissey
Assistant Professor of French, Saint Anselm College
María de los Ángeles Gutiérrez Bascón "La Habana imaginada: Nostalgia, ruinas y utopía después de 1990"
Agnes Lugo-Ortiz
Postdoctoral Researcher, John Morton Center for North American Studies, University of Turku (Finland)
2016-17
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Karolina Bandurski "Representations of Monstrosity, Metamorphoses and Physical Deformity in Italian Renaissance Literature"
Armando Maggi
Instructor of Italian, Villanova University
Elizabeth Fiedler "An Investigation Into the Detective: The Protagonist's Power to Challenge, Shape and Mend Through Social Critique"
Rebecca West
Thelma Jiménez-Anglada "Territorios, Ley y Violencia: La Novela del Narcotráfico en México"
Agnes Lugo-Ortiz
Assistant Professor of Spanish, Lawrence University
Susana Pérez Alonso "El teatro de Rafael Álvarez El Brujo: Una visión del Siglo de Oro entre la creación personal y las tendencias escénicas de la palabra"
Mario Santana
Katrina Powers "What Was She Wearing?: Looking at Susanna in Golden Age Spain"
Frederick de Armas
Spanish Teacher, La Lumiere School
2015-16
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Diana Aramburu "Femicrime: Resisting the Legibility of the Female Body in Spanish Crime Fiction"
Mario Santana
Assistant Professor of Spanish, University of California, Davis
Anita Damjanovic "The Metamorphoses of Clarín"
Frederick de Armas
Spanish Immersion Teacher, Bellevue School District
Isabelle Faton "Justiciers et fugitifs: la justice dans le roman post-révolutionnaire"
Françoise Meltzer
Lecturer in French, University of Chicago
Lourdes Fernández "Los mundos aurales de la cultura juvenil en la literatura hispanoamericana"
Agnes Lugo-Ortiz
Instructor in Spanish, Suffolk University, Madrid Campus
Elana Kranz "The Art of Indeterminacy in the Prose Works of Goliarda Sapienza"
Rebecca West
Associate Director of Study Abroad, The College, University of Chicago
James Nemiroff "Comedias judaizantes: Performing Judaism in Lope de Vega’s Toledan Plays (1590-1615)"
Frederick de Armas
Lecturer of Spanish, Department of World Languages and Cultures, Iowa State University
Linsey Sainte-Claire "Quelques figures de la folie dans la littérature Caraïbo-Guyanaise"
Daniel Desormeaux
Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Middlebury College
2014-15
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Clovis Gladstone "Rousseau et la matérialité de l'existence"
Robert Morrissey
Project Director and Technical Director, Textual Optics Lab, University of Chicago
Cynthia Hillman "The Part and the Whole: a Study of Brevity and the Form of the Diary in Ennio Flaiano's Early Works"
Rebecca West
Assistant Director, Joint PhD Program in Financial Economics, University of Chicago
Chiara Montanari "The Witness on Stage: The Theater of Ascanio Celestini"
Armando Maggi
Associate Director of External Relations, Career Advancement, University of Chicago
Elizabeth Porretto "Other Mothers: Representations of Non-biological Motherhood in the Works of Elsa Morante and Dacia Maraini"
Rebecca West
Full-time Lecturer in Italian, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago
Neringa Pukelis "Magical Techniques and Structuralism in Gonzalo Torrente Ballester's La saga/fuga de J.B."
Mario Santana
Part-time Instructor, Loyola University Chicago
2013-14
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Miriam Aloisio "Dalla comicità all’apocalisse: Una lettura ecocritica dell’opera di Luigi Malerba"
Rebecca West
Kevin Anzzolin "Guardians of Discourse: Journalism and Literature in Porfirian Mexico (1887-1912)"
Agnes Lugo-Ortiz
Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Stout
Corinne Bayerl "Moral Philosophy and Pedagogy in the Work of Pierre Nicole"
Thomas Pavel
Senior Instructor of Comparative Literature, Clark Honors College, University of Oregon
Sarah Christopher Faggioli "A Sixteenth-Century Reader and Critic of Vittoria Colonna: Rinaldo Corso's Commentary on Her Spiritual Rime"
Elissa Weaver
Jeffrey Coleman "Bracing for Impact: Portrayals of Immigration in Contemporary Spanish Theatre"
Mario Santana
Assistant Professor of Spanish, Marquette University
Jenna Leving Jacobson "Confessing Exile: Revolution and Redemption in the Narratives of the Cuban (Re)encuentro"
Agnes Lugo-Ortiz
Adjunct Instructor, Modern Foreign Languages, Dominican University
Felipe Rojas "Hemos visto un mal tan fiero’: The Figure of Ganymede in the Theatre of the Spanish Golden Age"
Frederick de Armas
Assistant Professor of Spanish, West Liberty University
2012-13
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Mary Angelo "Force of Habit: How the Convent Shapes the Family in the Fiction of Adélaïde de Souza"
Robert Morrissey
Julia Chamard-Bergeron "Le moyen d'être soi. Psychologie morale du roman classique"
Thomas Pavel
Mary Druyvesteyn "Alphonse de Lamartine. Authoring the Nation’s Narrative: Poetry, Politics, and Providence"
Françoise Meltzer
Tànit Fernández de la Reguera "Cuba y Cataluña en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX: El teatro popular e identidades (proto)nacionales"
Agnes Lugo-Ortiz, Mario Santana
Maggie Fritz-Morkin "Excrement Imagery and Rhetoric in Medieval Italian Literature"
Justin Steinberg
Assistant Professor of Italian, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Nancy Knezevic "This Woman I play: The pleasure (and talent) of Theatricality in Laclos, Diderot and Rousseau"
Françoise Meltzer
Roni Kubati "L' "uomo transitorio" nella cultura italiana contemporanea"
Rebecca West
Clelia Masciello "Donne in guerra: Agnese, agnello sacrificale della Resistenza o figura ancestrale dell'emancipazione femminile? Il contributo della Resistenza femminile all'emancipazione della donna"
Rebecca West
Italian Lecturer, University of Chicago
2011-12
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Lisa Barca "Heavy Weather and a Slant of Light: Modernity, Mythos, and the Metaphysical Functions of Poetry from Emily Dickinson to Eugenio Montale"
Rebecca West
Barrett Honors College Honors Faculty Fellow, Arizona State University
Jesús Botello "Cervantes, Felipe II y la dialéctica del poder"
Frederick de Armas
Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Delaware
Emmanuelle Claydon (Bonnafoux) "L’animal miroir de l’homme dans la Fiction du lyon d’Eustache Deschamps"
Daisy Delogu
James Fortney "Homosexual Productions: Gay Italian Prose Fiction from the 1970s to the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century"
Armando Maggi
Assistant Professor (Teaching) of Italian, University of Southern California
Sylvie Goutas "Evolution and Revolutions of Charity in 19th-Century French Society and Novel: Personal and Collective Charity in Honoré de Balzac’s The Human Comedy"
Thomas Pavel
Full-Time Lecturer in French, University of Chicago
Kathryn Hundley "Restless Reinvention: Solitude Under Construction in El laberinto de la soledad by Octavio Paz"
René de Costa
World Languages Teacher, University of Chicago Laboratory Schools
Michael Subialka "The Aesthetics of Ambivalence: Pirandello, Schopenhauer, and the Transformation of the European Social Imaginary"
Thomas Pavel, Rebecca West
Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian, University of California, Davis
Lin Yang "L’immaginario della Cina nei reportage di viaggio degli scrittori italiani (1955-1980)"
Rebecca West
Associate Professor, Nankai University
2010-11
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Heather Allen "Literacy, Text, and Performance in Histories of the Conquest of Mexico"
Lisa Voigt
Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Mississippi
Elizabeth Anderson "To Love and Be Loved: Petrarchan Friendship in the Canzoniere and the Triumphs"
Justin Steinberg
Jacob Blakesley "A History and Analysis of Quaderni di traduzioni"
Rebecca West
Associate Professor in Comparative Literature and Literary Translation; Co-Director, Leeds Centre for Dante Studies, University of Leeds
Emanuela Zanotti Carney "Enselmino da Montebelluna's Plainte de La Vierge. The Literary Tradition of Italian Vernacular Laments of the Virgin from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century"
Elissa Weaver
Senior Lecturer and Assistant Coordinator of the Italian Basic Language Program, University of Ilinois at Chicago
Colleen Donagher "Meraugis de Portlesguez, by Raoul de Houdenc: An Edition Based on the Turin Manuscript"
Peter Dembowski
Rocco Lacorte "Alcune note sul rapporto tra critica letteraria e concetto di "traducibilità." La prospettiva di Antonio Gramsci tra Francesco de Sanctis e Pier Paolo Pasolini"
Armando Maggi
Julie Meyers "Emblematic Figures and Human Agency in Michelet"
Robert Morrissey
Novia Pagone "The Emergence of Women Intellectuals: Women, Journalism and Shaping Identity During the Spanish Transition"
Mario Santana
Assistant Professor, Governors State University
Mireille Palm (Dobrzynski) "L'Âge classique dans le cinéma d'Éric Rohmer"
Larry Norman
Raffaello Palumbo Mosca "Tra fatto e verità: narrazioni ibride e impegno"
Rebecca West
Researcher, Università degli studi di Torino
Anna Proffit "Representing the Child in Spanish Film from El pequeño ruiseñor to El laberinto del fauno"
Mario Santana
Assistant Professor, Wilbur Wright College
2009-10
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Adolfo Campoy-Cubillo "Colonial Memories: Colonial and Postcolonial Discourses in Spanish Contemporary Cultural Production on Morocco (1980-2008)"
Mario Santana
Associate Professor of Spanish, Oakland University
Timothy Gaster "The Representations of Japan in Iberian and Iberian-American Societies (1870-1930): Revisiting, (Re)formulating, and Transgressing Discourses of Power (Orientalism)"
Mario Santana
Associate Professor, Monmouth College
Jennifer Haraguchi "Educating Rich and Poor Girls in Seventeenth-Century Florence: Eleonora Ramirez di Montalvo, Her Lay Conservatories and Writings"
Elissa Weaver
Assistant Professor of Italian, Brigham Young University
Glenn Roe "Challenging History: Charles Péguy and the Fight for Literature"
Thomas Pavel
Professor of French Literature, Université Paris-Sorbonne
Timothée Schellenberg "L'Informe et le retour. Le dehors de la littérature de Blanchot à Deleuze."
Françoise Meltzer
Véronique Sigu "Du manuscrit à la bibliothèque: La matière médiévale dans la Bibliothèque universelle des romans (1775-1789)"
Robert Morrissey
Director of Education, Alliance Française de Princeton
2008-09
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Kimberly Borchard "The Science of History: Empiricism and Historiography in the First Century of Spanish Colonialism in the New World"
Lisa Voigt
Associate Professor, Randolph-Macon College
Rafaela Fiore Urízar "Secretos de familia: memoria y trauma en tiempos de libertad"
Mario Santana
Associate Professor of Spanish, California Lutheran University
Cristina Guijarro-Cazorla "Reflexiones acerca de la situación jurídica de la mujer en la novela y cine peninsular desde los años 50 hasta nuestros días"
Mario Santana
Co-founder, Taplingua
Daniel Lorca "Neo-stoicism and skepticism in Part I of Don Quijote"
Frederick de Armas
Associate Professor, Oakland University
Carmela Mattza "From Estrella to Isabel de Borbón: Reading Life is a Dream as 'speculum reginae'"
Frederick de Armas
Associate Professor of Spanish, Louisiana State University
2007-08
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Courtney Quaintance "Gentleman's Club: Collective Identity in a Sixteenth-Century Venetian Salon"
Elissa Weaver
2006-07
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Karen De Bruin "‘La femme supérieure’: l'individu, le roman et la république libre de Germaine de Staël"
Françoise Meltzer
Associate Professor of French, University of Rhode Island
Gemma Delicado Puerto "Love for Sale: María Magdalena en la Literatura del Siglo de Oro"
Frederick de Armas
Associate Professor, Universidad de Extremadura
Chiara Maria Fabbian "Studi sul terma e la filosofia di un senso trascurato: l'odorato nella cultura e nella storia letteraria italiana"
Rebecca West
Clinical Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago
Kerra Gazerro Hanson "St Catherine of Siena: Dominican Tertiary, Spiritual Author and Doctrinal Model"
Armando Maggi
Visiting Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies, Wheaton College, Massachusetts
Juan Pablo Gil-Osle "Las Amistades Imperfectas: La Celestina y María de Zayas"
Frederick de Armas
Associate Professor, Arizona State University
Rafal Krazek "Montaigne et la philosophie du plaisir: pour une lecture épicurienne des Essais"
Philippe Desan
Adjunct Professor of Spanish and French, North Central College
Benjamin Nelson "Tending to Empire: The Spanish Pastoral Novel and Its Reflection Upon Imperial Spain"
Frederick de Armas
Associate Professor, University of South Carolina, Beaufort
2005-06
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Arnaud Coulombel "Histoire, érudition et sentiment national au temps des guerres de religion: Claude Fauchet et la recherche des Antiquités françaises"
Philippe Desan
Outreach Coordinator, Center in Paris, University of Chicago
Fabio Ferrari "Italian Myths and Counter-Myths of America: Allegorical Representations of America in 20th-Century Italian Literature and Film"
Rebecca West
Associate Professor, Franklin University Switzerland
Héctor García Chávez "Alejo Carpentier: sincretismo, revolución y crisis de historicidad en su visión neobarroca de América Latina"
Patrick O'Connor
Spanish Senior Lecturer, Loyola University Chicago
Kristen Grimes "Petrarch and the Tradition of the Divine and the Earthly Maternal"
Rebecca West
Associate Professor, Saint Joseph's University
Fay Ellen Rosner "Art as Social Currency in A la recherche du Temps Perdu"
Thomas Pavel
Assistant Professor of Instruction in French and Weinberg College Adviser, Northwestern University
2003-04
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Daniela Pastina "Nation, Homeland, and Family in Literature and Opera In the Decennio di Preparazione (1850-1860)"
Rebecca West
Olivia Edelman "Manatial de transparencia: Surrealismo en la poesia de Xavier Villarrutia, Octavio Paz, y Luis Cernuda"
Patrick O'Connor
Amy Graves Monroe "Propagande, pratiques d’histoire et proto-journalisme: l'historiographie engagée de Simon Goulart (1543-1628)"
Philippe Desan
Associate Professor, State University of New York at Buffalo
Sally Hill "Photographic Fictions: Photography In Italian Literature 1945-2000"
Rebecca West
Head of School & Associate Professor of Italian School of Languages and Cultures, University of Wellington, New Zealand
Deborah Rosenberg "The Converso in the Spanish Picaresque Novel"
Frederick de Armas
Assistant Professor of Instruction, Northwestern University
Florence Vatan "Les maîtres du sensible, l'esthétique de Baudelaire et de Flaubert à la lumière des conceptions médicales de leur époque"
Philippe Desan
Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Kerry Wilks "Tan fáciles son mis lazos de romper? Circe, the Seventeenth Century Theatrical Enchantress"
Frederick de Armas
Associate Dean of the Graduate School & Professor of Spanish, Wichita State University
Olivia Yañez "Apariencias, humor y pasión: técnicas de liberación en las obras de Ángeles Mastretta"
Patrick O'Connor
Instructor of Spanish, College of Lake County
2002-03
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Sarah Hurlburt "Montaigne and the Academy: 1800-1812"
Philippe Desan
Associate Professor, Whitman College
Lynn Westwater "The Disquieting Voice: Women's Writing and Antifeminism In Seventeenth-Century Venice"
Elissa Weaver
Associate Professor of Italian, George Washington University
2001-02
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Janis Be "The Representation of Violence and the Violence of Representation: Argentine Women Writing Against the State"
Patrick O'Connor
Professor of Hispanic Studies, Whitman College
Peg Kern "The Public and Private Space of the Female Character: Spatially Orienting History and Conscience in the narrative of Ippolito Nievo"
Rebecca West
Vice President and Owner, The International Kitchen
Catherine Ramsey-Portolano "The Women Writers Experience In Late Nineteenth-Century Italy: From the Literary to the Epistolary Reality In the Work of Neera"
Rebecca West
Associate Professor and Program Director of Italian Studies, American University of Rome
José Julio Vélez Sainz "The Spanish Parnassus: Canon Patronage and Propaganda In the Golden Age"
Frederick de Armas
Professor of Spanish Literature, Universidad Complutense Madrid
Maria Walford-Dellú "Pavese e la critica (1941-2000)"
Paolo Cherchi
Guest Lecturer (Italian for Singers), Wheaton College
2000-01
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Nathalie Hester "Traveling for Writing's Sake: Seventeenth-Century Italian Tourists and their Narratives"
Elissa Weaver
Associate Professor of Italian and French, University of Oregon
Meredith Ray "A gloria del sesso feminile: Epistolary Constructions of Gender In Early Modern Italian Letter Collections"
Elissa Weaver
Professor of Italian, University of Delaware
Eric Touya "La poièsis en question: Les poètes français et Richard Wagner"
James Lawler
Professor of French Literature, Clemson University
Olga Vilella "The Nation on Display: Literature and Cultural Practices of Latin American Modernismo"
Patrick O'Connor
Professor, Saint Xavier University
1999-00
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Anna Diakow "El retorno renovador a la tradición: la memoria colectiva en la narrativa española (1973-1994)"
Mario Santana
Assistant Professor of Instruction, Northwestern University
Suzanne Magnanini "Between Fact and Fiction: The Representation of Monsters and Monstrous Births in the Fairy Tales of Gianfrancesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile"
Elissa Weaver
Associate Professor, University of Colorado-Boulder
Ana Osan "Nuevas historias de la Tribu: el poema largo y las poetas españolas del siglo XX"
Susana Cavallo
Professor, Indiana University Northwest
1998-99
Name Dissertation Title / Advisor Current Position
Kathleen Doyle "Women Reading, Writing, and Remembering: The Construction of Carmen Martín Gaite's Protagonists"
Mario Santana
Associate Professor of Spanish, Rhodes College
Gareth Evan Gollard "Eyewitnessing and the Illustrative Aesthetic: Visualizing History in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century France"
Françoise Meltzer
Stacy Hoult-Saros "Inside Looking Out: Spying and Subjectivity in Norah Lange"
René de Costa
Professor of World Languages and Cultures, Valparaiso University
Patricia Montilla "Desecrating Poetry: Parody and the Avant-garde in the Early Works of Oliverio Girondo"
René de Costa
Associate Professor of Spanish, Western Michigan University
Kevin James O'Donnell "A Red's Harvest: Cultural Adaptation as Intervention in Manuel Vázquez Montalbán's Early Carvalho Novels"
Mario Santana