Students
Frédéric-Charles Baitinger
Maîtrise de Sciences politiques : IEP de Grenoble. 1998-2002.
Licence d'esthétique : Paris I, Saint-Charles, 2002-2003.
Magistère de philosophie contemporaine : ENS Paris. 2003-2005.
Maîtrise de Philosophie : Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne. 2003-2005. (Mention très bien.)
Preparation for the agrégation de philosophie : Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne. 2005-2007.
Fields of specialization: 20th century literature and aesthetic philosophy
Frédéric-Charles Baitinger is currently in his second year of the French Literature doctoral program at the Graduate Center (CUNY). His academic interests concern various domains. In his political science thesis, he explored the links that exist in contemporary political theory between aesthetics and revolutionary discourse (Mehdi Belhaj Kacem ou l'esthétisation du discours révolutionnaire). He then examined, in his philosophy thesis, the manner in which Nietzsche and Kierkegaard critiqued (and rethought) the relationship of the individual to Christianity and faith (Le christianisme selon Kierkegaard et Nietzsche). Finally, in the context of his doctoral dissertation, he is interested in the work of Georges Bataille and, more specifically, in the function of laughter in these works, as it relates to eroticism and transgression. He currently teaches French language at Hunter College, CUNY.
Outside of his academic activities, Baitinger also works as an art critic. He is the author of numerous prefaces for various art books, as well as part of the editorial committee of Artension magazine (www.artension.fr) — a bi-monthly magazine in which he has published over thirty articles. He is also the founder and Editor in Chief of the online magazine, Artup-TV (www.artup-tv.com). Finally, he is the author of two books published by Edition Critères, as well as a book on artist Anne Brunet published by Editions Galerie 13, Jeannette Mariani.
— Jadikan Lighting painting – Territoires visuels (ISBN : 2917829648) Edition Critères
— Belles de murs – Une leçon de féminisme pour tous (coming soon) Edition Critères
— Anne Brunet (ISBN : 2953793003) Editions Galerie 13, Jeannette Mariani
Chandra Balkaran
B.A., French, SUNY at Stonybrook
M.A., French, SUNY at Stonybrook
Viral Bhatt
B.A., French, Drew University
M.Phil., French, CUNY, The Graduate Center
Areas of Specialization: Women's Studies, Gender Studies, Women's Films and Filmmaking, Feminist Theory.
Viral Bhatt earned her B.A. (Hons) in French from Drew University, where she wrote her senior thesis, Une étude du passé colonial de la France à travers quelques films contemporains with a special focus and sensibility to the female director's lens. A firm believer in the value and significance of interdisciplinary studies, Viral has completed a Certificate in Women's Studies and her dissertation topic aims to explore the role of the female body in contemporary French and Francophone films of female directors. Viral has given a lecture at Drew University on the importance and relevance of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Monique Wittig to contemporary feminist and gender studies. She recently presented a paper, "Catherine Breillat and the Question of Women's Sexuality" at the Sexuality Across the Discipline Conference at The University of Binghamton. She currently teaches French at William Paterson University.
Erika Bodor
B.A., French, University of Colorado at Denver
Languages: Hungarian, French
Angèle Renard Branca
Maîtrise de Lettres Classiques, Université de Haute-Bretagne (Rennes, France, 1996)
Areas of Specialization: theatre; 17th and 18th century women actors, spectators and playwrights; gender theory; history of emotions; political theory
Languages: French and Italian
Angèle is currently working on her dissertation: “The Politics of Empathy: Women and the Staging of Pity and Sympathy in French Theatre (1598-1794)”. She published “A Woman’s Happy Tragedy: The Paternal Order in Question- Madame de Villedieu’s Manlius” (Fortune and Fatality: Performing the Tragic in Early Modern France (1553-1715), ed. Desmond Hosford, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008) and presented the following papers: “Resurrecting the Commune on Stage: Nadine (1882) by Louise Michel” (Cornell University, 2006), « XVIIth-Century Tragic Acting Techniques: the Monster and the Actor » (The Graduate Center, 2005), and “Cet Obscur Objet du Désir : Le Théâtre de Bernard-Marie Koltès” (The Graduate Center, 2004.) Angèle has also directed and acted in Bajazet by Racine, a staging with 17th-century acting techniques, The Opportunities of a Night by Crébillon fils, and Quai Ouest by Bernard-Marie Koltès.
Angèle was the project coordinator for Act French, a festival of New Works held at the Martin Segal Theatre at the Graduate Center in 2005. She also taught French at CUNY and the French Institute-Alliance Française in New York as well as literature classes (20th century Francophone novels and drama) at CUNY and at the Institute for American Universities in Avignon, France. She is currently teaching French at Ethical Culture Fieldston Middle School, where she is Chair of the World Language program. In her teaching, she is interested in developing differentiated instruction and assessments, student-centered activities and interdisciplinary work and seeks to develop her students’ understanding of the Francophone cultures in the world and, in particular, in New York.
Chris Brandon
B.A., French and Comparative Literature, Illinois State University
M.A., French Literature, Tulane University
Interests: 19th and 20th century literature, the international avant-garde, visual/media poetics, early cinema.
After recently passing his orals with distinction, Chris works on Stéphane Mallarmé, visual poetry, and media poetry. He is particularly interested in the dimensionality of poetics/poetic texts and their interactions with the reader. His thesis project is tentatively titled "Reading Mallarmé, Reading Media." Chris has given papers on Roland Barthes’s autobiographical writings, hysteria in silent film, and witnessing in cinema. Having taught French and literature at both Lehman College and Fordham University, he is also active in Writing Across the Curriculum initiatives at Bronx Community College.
Christina Buehler
B.A., French, St. Anselm College
M.A., French, Middlebury College
Christina is a doctoral candidate currently writing her dissertation on Mme. d'Aulnoy and other women fairy tale writers of 17th and 18th century France. She has been teaching French and Latin at St. Anthony's High School on Long Island since 1994. In addition to teaching full time, Christina was promoted to Director of Public Relations in 2007. Aside from her academic and administrative responsibilities at St. Anthony's, Christina has been involved in numerous extracurricular activities including choreographing the spring musicals and coaching Varsity Kickline.
She has chaperoned a dozen pilgrimages to Europe for over one hundred choral and orchestra performers. She is currently the advisor for the school's yearbook. She is also serving as the Internal Coordinator for the school's Middle States Evaluation in Fall 2010.
Chris Clarke
B.A., French, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
M.A., Literary Translation French - English, NYU, New York, NY
Areas of Specialization: Translation studies, contemporary French literature, cinema studies, linguistics.
Chris is a first-year student in the French program. His specialization is Translation Studies, and he is particularly interested in French literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Chris is also participating in the Film Studies Certificate program. His translations include work by Frédéric Beigbeder (Undergraduate Honours Thesis), Éric Chevillard (Masters Thesis), Pierre MacOrlan (Brooklyn Rail) and Raymond Queneau (New Directions).
Deirdre Ellen Cutting
B.A., French and Psychology, St. John Fisher College
M. Phil., French, CUNY Graduate Center
Areas of Specialization: French cinema, European Union studies
Wilson Décembre
Maîtrise de philosophie, Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)
Areas of specialization: philosophy and literature, Black Francophone culture and literature, Paganism (philosophy, arts and literature).
I was born in Jacmel, Haiti. After one year studying at L'Ecole Normale Supérieure de Port-au-Prince (année préparatoire de philosophie), I went to Paris where I earned a Maîtrise in Modern Philosophy. My thesis, supervised by Professor Patrick Wotling, was entitled: "L'Aliénation chez Feuerbach et Nietzsche : Essai sur deux philosophies de l'immanence."
I have published many articles. Most of them are about (or related to) philosophical topics. My main interest is paganism. How it is (and/or can be) lived, thought, developed, constructed… through different branches of culture such as: philosophy, the arts, literature, etc. Led by this spirit, I have written Vitalité et Spiritualité : Apologie du rapport-au-monde afro-haïtien (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2009), a book in which I point out how the Afro-haitian culture whose vodou (not "voodoo") is the cornerstone shows a broad and striking sympathy with life, a Dionysian sympathy (in the Nietzschean sense of the word). This is what I analyze through different aspects: the practical, the ethical, the esthetical and the (properly speaking) philosophical aspects.
I am a 4th year doctoral student and for my thesis I plan to analyze the pagan symbolism and "metaphorique" in Rene Depestre's literary work with the theoretical help of thinkers such as Nietzsche, Bataille, etc.
I have been teaching French as an adjunct at Pace University (New York) since 2005.
Paula S. DelBonis-Platt
B.S., Journalism, Boston University
M.A., French, University of Montana
Area of Specialization: 20th-21st Century French and Francophone Literature, Critical Theory, Feminism
Paula DelBonis-Platt is a Ph.D. candidate working on her dissertation, tentatively titled, “A Transnational View of the Francophone Second World: Voices from Central/Eastern Europe and China.” She has taught French at the University of Montana, French and English at a community college in Concord, NH, and English at the Université de Bourgogne. She developed the first online French course, using Wimba voice software, for the Community College System of New Hampshire in 2008, and will also be teaching online with the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School (VLACS) beginning in 2009. She is a freelance editor and copyeditor, and spent eight years at St. Martin’s Press (SMP). She has worked on such titles as The First Vietnam War (Atwood & Lovegall, Harvard UP), Imagining the Sacred Past: Hagiography and Power in Early Normandy (Herrick, Harvard UP), Conquering the Impossible (Horn, SMP), Fear and Trembling (Nothomb, SMP), The Adversary (Carrère, Picador), The Complete Jewish Guide to France (Kamins, SMP), Eastern Europe: A Traveler’s Companion (Méras, Mariner) and Frantz Fanon (Macey, SMP). She volunteers with refugees resettled through the UN High Commissioner on Refugees and has established a service-learning program for college students to gain practical language experience by assisting Francophone refugees in ESOL classes.
Claudy Delné
B.A., Histoire, Université de Montréal
M.ED, Université de Montréal
L.L.B., Université de Moncton
Né à Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Claudy Delné a fait ses études primaires à l'École Nationale Colbert Lochard et études secondaires au Lycée Anténor Firmin. Il a commencé ses études universitaires à l'École Normale Supérieure en Haiti (1988-1990). Au Québec depuis 1990, il a obtenu tour à tour un baccalauréat en enseignement de l'histoire et une maïtrise en Éducation à l'Université de Montréal. Il a obtenu également un baccalauréat en droit (L.L.B) de l'Université de Moncton (New-Brunswick, Canada) en 2000. Il a été admis au Barreau de l'Ontario (Canada) en 2002. Il a publié son premier ouvrage sur la didactique de l'enseignement de l'histoire qui s'intitule: "L'enseignement de l'histoire nationale en Haiti: état des lieux et perspectives" aux Éditions du CIDIHCA en 2001. Cette recherche lui a valu une mention spéciale en sciences sociales et humaines au concours des jeunes chercheurs parrainé conjointement par la Faculté des Études Supérieures et de la Recherche de l'Université de Moncton et l'ACFAS-Acadie (Association canadienne française pour l'avancement de la science), Mai 2000.
Il enseigne depuis 2003 le français au secondaire à NJ et à titre d'adjunct-teacher (chargé de cours) à Kean et Montclair State University. Il est candidat au doctorat au programme d'études françaises au Graduate Centre depuis 2005. Il s'intéresse particulièrement aux questions d'altérité, de représentations, de la race en littérature. Son projet de thèse portera sur l'évolution de la représentation de la Révolution haitienne dans les textes narratifs des écrivains français du dix-neuvième siècle.
Pierre Castro Desroches
B.A., French, Brooklyn College
M.A., French, Brooklyn College
Area of Specialization:
Lauren Donaldson
B.A., French Studies, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Area of Specialization: 20th century French literature, Food Studies
Lauren Donaldson earned her undergraduate degree in French with a minor in European Area Studies from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is currently a 5th year student specializing in gastronomic texts of the interwar period. In addition, she is working toward her certificate in women's studies, exploring the image of women in regional culinary texts. In 2009 she presented a paper entitled "Exploring the Evolution of the Regional Culinary Discourse Through the Works of Curnonsky" at NYU and in March 2010, she presented a paper entitled "[En]gendering Chocolate Consumption: Ambivalent Effects on 17th Century Women" at Columbia. Lauren was awarded the Jeanne Marandon grant through the SPFFA during the summer of 2010 to research political and nationalistic discourses that appear in culinary writings on and by women during the interwar period in France. When Lauren is not reading about and researching food and wine, you will find her indulging in it around the city.
Phillip Griffith
B.A., University of Georgia
M.A., Columbia University
Area of Specialization: 20th Century poetry, contemporary art
Phillip came to the CUNY Graduate Center after completing an M.A. degree in French Cultural Studies from Columbia University and a B.A. in English and French Literature from the University of Georgia. His research interests are in twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature, the avant garde, theory, and contemporary poetry and art. He presented his research on Suzzane Doppelt's Le pré est vénéneux in spring spring 2012 at the CUNY Graduate Center's first-annual theory conference. He teaches French at the City College of New York. In 2011, Phillip worked at New York City's public arts non-profit Creative Time on the exhibition Living as Form; his texts appear as part of the website's online archive of over 350 socially engaged art and cultural projects. He has also worked at the contemporary art magazine ART PAPERS. Phillip teaches Creative Writing with Oxbridge Academic Programs' New York College Experience. His poems have been published in La Petite Zine, Esque, and the CUNY Graduate Center Advocate, selected by Wayne Koestenbaum as runner-up in the annual poetry contest.
Gorica Hadzic
B.A., French, Montclair State University
M.A., French, Montclair State University
Areas of Specialization: 19th century French literature, 19th century French avant-garde theater, les Nabis
Click here to see some of Gorica's paintings.
Gorica is currently writing her dissertation. Her main interest is in the contribution of French artists to the late 19th and early 20th century Parisian avant-garde theater. She has presented papers on Zola and Proust. Gorica also translated a website that features some of the most prominent French artists working today. (http://www.empreintes-fr.com/) . She is also the recipient of the CUNY Graduate Research Grant for 2007-2008.
Sara Hanaburgh
B.A., French, University of Massachusetts- Amherst
M. Phil., CUNY Graduate Center
Areas of Specialization: Sub-Saharan African literatures and cinemas, human rights and literature, globalization studies, constructions of racial and ethnic identities
Sara has recently completed her dissertation, titled “Global Wreckage and Consumer Illusions: Responses to the Human Effects of Economic Globalization in Sub-Saharan African Francophone Novels and Films, 1973-2005.” Her research initially led her to investigate the politics of publishing in French and indigenous languages in Senegal and Mali, and she has also travelled extensively in Morocco as well as to Tunis and Sousse, Tunisia. She has been a regular peer reviewer for African Studies Review since 2005, and she has extensive experience teaching at the university level. She was a Graduate Teaching Fellow of French at Brooklyn College from 2002-05 and has held adjunct positions in French at Hunter College, the University of Brasilia, Brazil, and Purchase College, SUNY. She has been teaching French as an adjunct at Fordham University since 2010. She was an active member of the committee of faculty and students who developed the curriculum and requirements for the Ph. D Program in French Option: International Human Rights in the French-speaking World and has co-organized conferences on human rights and literature. Her recent presentations include a paper on the representation of contemporary globalization in three African Francophone novels. She also works as an independent translator in French, Portuguese and English, and is presently translating a novel by the late Gabonese author, Angèle Rawiri, into English.
Desmond Hosford
B.M., Harpsichord Performance, Manhattan School of Music
M.Phil., Musicology, Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Ph.D., Musicology, Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Areas of specialization: 17th- and 18th-century tragedy, tragédie en musique, the Bourbon court of France, animal philosophy, and early modern gender and sexuality.
Desmond's publications include: Fortune & Fatality: Performing the Tragic in Early Modern France (1553-1715) (ed. with Charles Wrightington, 2008), French Orientalism: Culture, Politics, and the Imagined Other (ed. with Chong J. Wojtkowski, 2010), "Uneasy Anthropocentrism: Cartesianism and the Ethics of Species Differentiation in Seventeenth-Century France" (JAC, 2010), "Anthropomorphic Terror: The Bête-Machine, the Ballet de Cour, and the Tragédie en Musique" (Music and Art, 2009), "'Regnorum Ruina': Cleopatra and the Oriental Menace in Early French Tragedy" (French Orientalism, 2010), "Reigning Women, Crushed Women: Duty, Glory, and Suicide in the Tragedies of Philippe Quinault" (Formes et formations au dix-septième siècle, ed. Buford Norman, 2006), "The Queen's Hair: Marie-Antoinette, Politics, and DNA" (Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2004), and the articles "Marie-Antoinette," "Opera," and "Queering Royalty" in The Gale Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender (ed. Fedwa Malti-Douglas, 2007). Desmond directed and performed in the American premiere of Jean Racine's Bajazet, a full production featuring 17th-century tragic gesture, staging, costume, and music. As a harpsichordist, he has directed performances of 17th- and 18th-century vocal and instrumental music with his period instruments ensemble, La Musique de la Reine, including a full production of Jean-Baptiste Lully's Armide. Desmond is an adjunct lecturer in French at Hunter College, an editor at the Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale, and the director of the Foundation for French and Francophone Musical Culture at the Graduate Center.
Lisa Karakaya
B.A., Hillsdale College
Languages: French, Spanish, basic Turkish, some German
Areas of specialization: 20th-century French literature, class constructs and reflections in literature and language, representations of women in the postmodern novel, de-/reconstruction of self in postmodern literature
I am a third-year student (2012), working towards a doctoral degree in French literature with a certificate in Women's Studies. I have a wide range of interests, but am particularly interested in class constructs and reflections in literature and language, and communication between social classes or more accurately between "les dominants" and "les dominés", to use Pierre Bourdieu's terms. I am also interested in reproductive rights; I am currently researching abortion and contraception in 17th century France, and for a different project, reproductive and civil rights in the neoliberal state. I recently presented a paper, Annie Ernaux’s “Ecriture Plate: A Link Between Two Worlds women's strategies of survival in Colette's Gigi, La Seconde, and Julie de Carneilhan, and communication between social classes as seen in Québécois literature.
I have a B.A. in French and Spanish from Hillsdale College. After college I taught English in northern France for a year, then worked in various fields, including publishing and finance, before starting my doctoral degree at CUNY. I have taught French as a Graduate Teaching Fellow at Queens College since 2011.
Lynn Karam
B.A., French, Montclair State University
M.A., French, Montclair State University
Languages: English, French and Arabic
Areas of Specialization: Middle Eastern Studies, Lebanese Women Writers
Lynn Karam is a 7th year doctoral student and is currently at the dissertation proposal stage in her research. She was born in Beirut, Lebanon and came to the States at the age of 12, hence her interest in Middle Eastern Literature, Music and Dance. She has completed some work in translation, which included the supervision of an Independent Study for a student completing her MA in Liberal Studies at the Graduate Center of CUNY. For this project, she edited translations from Arabic to English of a collection of poems by Saudi journalist and poet, Hani Naqshabandi. In addition, she collaborated on the translation from French to English of a collection of interviews with film director Arthur Penn for a book published in 2008 by Sticking Place Books. Lynn presented a paper on Orientalism in 17th Century French literature focusing on Madame de Villedieu’s Mémoires du Sérail sous Amurat II. This paper has been approved for publishing. Lynn is currently an Adjunct Instructor at Montclair State University. Lynn is also currently teaching French at Edison High School in Edison, NJ and completing a continuing education course to fulfill state requirements for secondary teaching certification.
Wednesday Knudsen
B.A., Drama, University of Washington
Area of Specialization:
Jacquelyn Libby
B.A., French, Sussex University, England
Area of Specialization: Albert Camus
Jacquelyn Libby is from England. She earned her BA in French and European Studies from the University of Sussex in Brighton. Before moving to New York City, she taught English, French and Spanish in Paris and Barcelona. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate Center, City University of New York writing her thesis on the French Algerian writer and journalist Albert Camus.
Rebecca M. Linz
B.A., French and English, Albion College, M.A., French, Michigan State University
Languages: English (native), French (near-native)
Areas of Specialization: Literature of Quebec, 20th-century French and Francophone Literature, Women's Studies
Rebecca Linz is currently completing her dissertation, entitled "Maternités et Identités: Motherhood and National Identities in Literary Texts of Quebec." She has taught French at Manhattan School of Music, Fordham University, Queens College and Saint John's University, and she currently holds an administrative staff position at Sarah Lawrence College. Her publications include several book reviews, an article entitled, “France Théoret’s (Wo)Manipulation of Language” in the anthology (In)Scribing Gender: International Women and the Creative Process, ed. Jen Bouchard (Diversion Press) and a translation of an article entitled, “L’imaginaire masculin dans les romans de Suzanne Jacob” by Aleksandra Grzybowska (the translation is to be published in a book of essays by Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Thanks to several different research and travel grants, she has been able to present papers on women's writing and literature at conferences in the United States, Canada, and Scotland. While pursuing her Ph.D., Rebecca also earned a Certificate in Women's Studies at the Graduate Center.
Ruth Lipman
B.A., English, SUNY at Stony Brook
M.L.S., Library Science, Pratt Institute
M.A., Education and Reading, New York University
M.Phil, French, CUNY Graduate Center
Areas of Specialization: 20th century French literature, trauma studies, memory
Ruth is a doctoral candidate. She became a full-time student at the Graduate Center when she retired from her teaching position in the New York City public school system. She taught English and reading at Park East High School in East Harlem where she also served as coordinator of the reading program and coordinator of the English department. Ruth is currently working on her dissertation. She presented a paper entitled "Voices Silenced, Voices Reclaimed" at a conference at the Graduate Center in 2010.
Dana Loev
B.A. Psychology, Loyola University, New Orleans
M.A. French Literature, Hunter College
Area of Specialization:
Eric Lynch
B.A., French and English, Rutgers University (2005).
Areas of specialization: Contemporary French poetry, visual arts.
Eric Lynch is a doctoral candidate focusing on the relationship between text and image in contemporary French poetry and visual arts. In fall 2011, he hosted a reading and discussion with Michel Deguy at NY’s Poets House. Eric presented a paper, “‘Chose innommable et inouïe’: Synesthesia and the Evolution of Rimbaud’s Poetry”, at the 19th Century French Studies Conference in 2009. A participant in CUNY’s Paris study abroad program in 2010-2011, he also taught English in Argenteuil, France. He has taught French at Fordham University and currently teaches French and English literature courses at Brooklyn College.
Amy Martin
B.A., French, Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH
M.A., French, Hunter College, New York, NY
Languages: English, French, Spanish
Areas of Specialization: 17th Century, Women's Studies, Children's Literature
Amy is a third year doctoral student interested in fairy tales and early writing for children. She presented a paper in Feb. 2011 on the female in Perrault's tales called, "The Modernist and the Misogynist: Ambiguities in the Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault." Along with positions teaching French at Brooklyn and Fordham Universities, Amy serves as a student representative on the French department's Executive Committee and as the program representative to the Doctoral Students' Council, and she works as a research assistant and copy editor for Dr. Domna Stanton.
Hiroshi Matsui
B.A., Liberal Arts, International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan
M.A., Comparative Culture, International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan
Area of Specialization:
Thomas Muzart
M.A., Sciences Po Lyon
Areas of Specialization: 19th and 20th century literature, gender studies, queer studies, travel literature.
Thomas Muzart earned his Masters degree at Sciences Po Lyon in Communications and Culture. His studies in France led him to work on cultural activism and queer studies, especially in his thesis, entitled Les festivals de cinema gay et lesbien en France : le militantisme culturel en question. After working for several theatre companies in New York and Paris, he decided to combine his academic and professional interests to further question issues identity and performance. He is also interested in travel literature in the 19th and 20th centuries. He published several articles on gender studies for the online magazine non.fiction, and he recently presented a paper entitled “Jean Genet et le roman : une idiosyncrasie romanesque pour une idiosyncrasie identitaire” at the annual French department's conference at CUNY. He is currently teaching French at Queens College and City College.
Marie-Jasmine Narcisse
B.A., Pharmacy, Faculté de Médecine et de Pharmacie, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Certificat en Linguistique, Centre de Linguistique, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Areas of Specialization: Haitian Literature, Autobiography, Memory
Jasmine has worked as a journalist and media producer, a translator, a copywriter, and an art director... When she is asked about the unexpected path from an original diploma in Pharmacy and her steadfast career in linguistics and communication, she vigorously argues that no one (and, most of all in Haiti, where options are so scarce) should be forced to choose a career at 18. Actually, in her recent settlement in New York, she decided within many options, to finally reconcile her many "hers" by focusing on what was common in all of her activities: the text.
She is interested in the construction of the self in personal memory writing in Haitian Literature. She spends herself between her course of study, teaching French at York College (CUNY), and the promotion of the Haitian Book Centre for the diffusion of Haitian (and Francophone) literature outside Haiti.
Her publications include Mémoire de Femmes (link), Germaine ou Chercher la vie...
Laila Pedro
B.A., French, Connecticut College
Languages: Spanish and French
Laila Pedro is a 6th-year student at the Graduate Center; she is currently writing her dissertation on artistic relationships between French, Francophone and Cuban artists. She is also avidly interested in translation, poetry and poetics, dance, and all manner of performance and body art. Laila has presented her work at "Rethinking the Mangrove: Second Symposium of Critical Practices of Caribbean Cultural Studies" at the University of Puerto Rico; "Bodies," the12th Annual Comparative Literature Conference at the University of South Carolina, Columbia; at the Carolina Conference on Romance Literatures at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; at the International Conference on Body Image and Identity, and at Association of Writers and Writing Programs Annual Conference. She writes regularly on the arts in New York for Idiom, an online arts magazine.
Joseph Rienti
B.A., International Political Economy and French, Fordham University
M.A., Humanities and Sciences, Fordham
University
Areas of Specialization: 19th Century Literature,
Cultural Studies, French Gastronomy
Director of International and Study Abroad Programs at Fordham University in New York, Joe studied abroad at the Université de Paris, Sorbonne for one year while pursuing his BA in International Political Economy and French from Fordham University. Upon graduating in 2002, Joe taught high school English at Lycée Charles le Chauve in Roissy-en-Brie, France as part of an Ambassade de France and Fulbright Commission partnership. He has also worked as a Financial Aid counselor at Fordham. Mr. Rienti holds an MA in Humanities and Sciences from Fordham's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and is currently pursuing a PhD in French at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has travelled throughout France and the Francophone world. Joe is also an adjunct instructor of French at Fordham University.
John Sorrentino
B.A., French Translation, Montclair State University
M.A., French Literature, Hunter College
M.Phil., French, CUNY Graduate Center
Area of Specialization: Works of André Gide, Queer Theory, 19th Century French Novel
John F. Sorrentino is a PhD Candidate in French Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center. His dissertation is entitled "Gide in the First Person: The 'I' of Religion and Same-Sex Sexuality." He has taught French language courses throughout CUNY and is currently teaching French at John Jay College of Criminal Justice as well as an online French course for NHTI, Concord's Community College in New Hampshire. As a Macaulay Honors College Instructional Technolgy Fellow, John worked for three years at Brooklyn College before joining the central team in 2009.
Click here for John's site Reading Gide.
Liza Tripp
M. Phil, French, Graduate Center
B.A., French, Barnard College
Certificate in French-English Translation, NYU.
Languages: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, English
Website: www.lizatripp.com
Area of Specialization: Translation
Liza Tripp is currently working on her dissertation, which is tentatively entitled “Word-View: Cultural and Linguistic Subjectivity in the Translation of Virginia Woolf’s Inanimate World.” She has been a professional freelance translator of French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese into English for 9 years. Professionally, she handles legal, financial and technical translations for use in litigation and other legal matters. Academically, she is interested in the practice of literary translation as well as translation, reception and language theory. Recent publications include an Italian-to-English translation of Tamar Pitch’s book on gender and prevention, La società della prevenzione, and a review of Michael Cronin’s Translation Goes to the Movies for a special issue of the LSE Graduate Journal of Social Science. Liza resides in Centerport, NY with her two daughters Lorelei and Ariel, her husband Noel and their two dictionary-eating dogs.
Marguerite Van Cook
L.S. M. A., Modern European Studies, Columbia University (2011)
B.A. Magna cum Laude, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University (2008)
A.A. English (Hons), Borough of Manhattan Community College, (2006)
Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic, Fine Art Undergraduate (1975-1977)
Portsmouth College of Art and Design, Foundation Studies (1973-1974)
Areas of Interest: The Long Eighteenth Century in France and England; History of Western Political Economics; Romanticism; Aesthetics; Nineteenth Century Literature; Comics; Film; Theatre & Performance; Women’s & GLBT Studies.
Marguerite Van Cook is a second year student whose recent work looks at the intersection of political economics and literature, and the politics of gender. Van Cook came to New York with her punk band The Innocents after touring with The Clash. She stayed, opened the gallery Ground Zero, and curated numerous events and shows. Her own work as an artist and filmmaker placed her in many museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum and the Schwartz Art Collection at Harvard. Her other credits include poet (she was awarded the Van Rensselear Prize while at Columbia), writer, critic, comic book artist and actor. Her collaborative project with David Wojnarowicz and James Romberger, “Seven Miles a Second,” a graphic memoir of Wojnarowicz’s life and death, was published in France in 2012 and is in its second edition in America. In 2006, Van Cook became the creative and managing director of the Howl! Arts Festival, an annual all-ages, multicultural, LGBT-friendly arts festival, which led in 2009 to the establishment of Howl HELP, a free emergency health & care service for downtown artists.
Antoinette Williams
B.A., French, University of Houston
B.A., English and Creative Writing,
University of Houston
Areas of Specialization: Translation Studies and Francophone Identity in literature and language, specifically involving 20th century and contemporary texts from North Africa and Québéc
Antoinette Williams is a third-year French Department student whose academic interests have focused on everything from North African francophone literature and women's rights in the Franco-Arab world to Québécois Identity in literature, language and translation. She presented a paper in February 2011 for the Graduate Center Collective Identities Conference called, "A Call to Action: Algerian Women on the Verge of Autonomy in Assia Djebar's Les enfants du nouveau monde." Antoinette has served as a student representative to the French department's Executive Committee for the past two years. She also teaches French at Hunter College and spends her summers working in Paris as Assistant to the Director of an international study abroad program.
Ashley Williard
M.Phil., French, Graduate Center, CUNY (2012)
B.A., Liberal Arts, Hampshire College (2007)
Areas of Specialization: Atlantic Studies, Caribbean Studies, Early Modern Gender, Second Language Pedagogy, Translation Studies
Ashley is a doctoral candidate in the French Program, where her dissertation, Engendering Islands, analyzes representations of difference in the seventeenth-century French Caribbean. She has presented several papers on this topic, most recently at the Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Boston, Massachusetts (2013).
Since 2008, Ashley has taught French language classes throughout CUNY. During the 2010-2011 academic year, she taught English in Le Moule, Guadeloupe. She was a Substitute Lecturer at the College of Staten Island in spring 2013.
Ashley worked on interdisciplinary writing pedagogy as a Writing Fellow at York College for the 2011-2012 academic year. She is currently enrolled in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy certificate program, in which she is examining the relationship between technology and language learning.
Ashley has carried out archival research in Aix-en-Provence, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Paris. She is creating a digital database of primary sources concerning the early French Caribbean using Omeka in the New Media Lab. Thanks to the support of a CUNY Graduate Center Dissertation Fellowship, Ashley will complete her dissertation research in France during the 2013-2014 academic year.
Tim Wilson
M.Phil. French, CUNY Graduate Center (2012)
B.A. French, University of Vermont (2006)
B.A. Jazz, University of Vermont (2006)
Areas of Specialization: twentieth-century French literature, cinema, television, and popular culture, Indian Ocean literature, disability studies, and foreign language pedagogy.
Timothy E. Wilson is now in his sixth year at the Graduate Center. His dissertation examines children’s television and cultural identity in France. He has taught at Hunter College and the College of Staten Island. In 2011-2012, he served as a Writing Fellow at LaGuardia Community College.
Patricia Winter
B.A. French and Anthropology, Hunter College
Patricia Winter is a first year doctoral student. Before earning her B.A. (Hons) degree in French and Anthropology at Hunter College, she was a dancer and choreographer performing in Europe, Asia, and North America. She lived in Paris where she became a trapezist and hung out for 11 years.