Comparative Literature dissertations put our doctoral students in dialogue with disciplines across the University, and the dissertation committees they assemble reflect the rigor of their specialist training and the interdisciplinary reach of their thinking.
Click on the buttons below for the authors, titles and faculty committees of recent Comparative Literature dissertations.
Recent Dissertations
2024 Graduates
Jamie Clegg, PhD in Comparative Literature, with Certificate in Critical Translation Studies
Dissertation: Leaps of Faith: Reading and Disillusionment in 20th and 21st Century Life-writing
Chair: Bénédicte Boisseron (Afroamerican and African Studies)
Committee: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature), Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature), Megan Sweeney (English Language and Literature)
Srdjan Cvjeticanin, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Ironies of Freedom: A Study of American Literature
Chairs: Antoine Traisnel (Comparative Literature) and Silke-Maria Weineck (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Kerry Larson (English Language and Literature , Marjorie Levinson (English Language and Literature)
Elisabeth Fertig, PhD in Comparative Literature, with Certificates in Critical Translation Studies and German Studies
Dissertation: Radiopoetics: Sound and Gendered Subjectivity in the Austrian Hörspiel after 1945
Chair: Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature), Stephanie Rowden (Art & Design), Tyler Whitney (Germanic Languages and Literatures), Johannes Von Moltke (Germanic Languages and Literatures)
Shalmali Jadhav, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Imagined Intimacies: Black and Dalit Women Writing from the Global South
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee Members: Manan Desai(American Culture), Madhumita Lahiri (English Language and Literature), G.N. Devy (English, Somaiya Vidyavihar University)
Lisa Levin, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Reflections on Renée Vivien
Chairs: Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature) and Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Aisha Sloane (English Language and Literature), Megan Sweeney (English Language and Literature), Gillian White (English Language and Literature)
Marina Mayorski, PhD in Comparative Literature, with Certificates in Critical Translation Studies and Judaic Studies
Dissertation: Guilty Pleasures: Popular Literature and the Formation of Jewish Cultural Modernity in Hebrew, Ladino, and Yiddish
Chair: Maya Barzilai (Middle East Studies)
Committee: Mikhail Krutikov (Slavic Languages and Literature), Devi Mays (Judaic Studies), Shachar Pinsker (Judaic Studies)
Dylan Ogden, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Cracks in the Iron Curtain: Reception and Influence of the Nouveau Roman in Late-Soviet Russia
Chair: Benjamin Paloff (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Michèle Hannoosh (Romance Languages and Literatures), Sofya Khagi (Slavic Languages and Literatures), Jindrich Toman (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Ana Popovic, PhD in Comparative Literature, with Certificate in Women's and Gender Studies
Dissertation: Invalid Feelings: Affect in Crip Literature
Chairs: Lucy Hartley (English Language and Literature) and Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature), Antoine Traisnel (Comparative Literature), M. Remi Yergeau (English Language and Literature)
2023 Graduates
Duygu Ergun, PhD in Comparative Literature, with Certificates in Film, Television, & Media and German Studies
Dissertation: The Making of an Aesthetic Domain: An Archive of Lived Relations after Postwar Turkish-German Media Initiatives
Chair: Kristin Dickinson (Germanic Languages and Literatures) and Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Andreas Gailus (Germanic Languages and Literatures), Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature), Johannes Von Moltke (Germanic Languages and Literatures)
Graham Liddell, PhD in Comparative Literature, with Certificate in Critical Translation Studies
Dissertation: Narrative Wayfinding: Author-izing Arab and Afghan Migration across Morphing Borderscapes
Chair: Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature), Andrew Shryock (Anthropology)
Committee: Cameron Cross (Middle East Studies), Michèle Hannoosh (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Genta Nishku, PhD in Comparative Literature, with Certificate in Critical Translation Studies
Dissertation: How the Silence Sounded: Writing Trauma in Albanian and Post-Yugoslav Literatures
Chair: Tatjana Aleksic (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Hakem Al-Rustom (Anthropology), Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature), Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature)
2022 Graduates
Alexander Aguayo, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: (De)formations of the 'I': Contemporary Black Women Poets of the Americas
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature), Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Annette Joseph-Gabriel (Romance Studies, Duke University), Antoine Traisnel (Comparative Literature), and Gillian White (English Language and Literature)
Tameekia (Imani) Cooper Mkandawire, PhD in Comparative Literature, with Certificate in Digital Studies
Dissertation: Ancestors and Algorithms Ethnocomputing AI with African and African Diasporic Heritage
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Irina Aristarkhova (Art & Design), Lisa Nakamura (American Culture), and Afua Ansong, (Africana Studies. Mount Holyoke College)
Karl Gaudyn, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: A Sensuous Love of the Unseen: Beauty and Ordinary Life in the Works of Gautier, Pater, Proust, and Bellow
Chair: Benjamin Paloff (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Danny Herwitz (Comparative Literature), Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature), and Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature)
Mariane (Mari) Stanev, PhD in Comparative Literature, with Certificate in Museum Studies
Dissertation: How to Hear Noise in Times of Peace: Listening to the Abolitionist Transimperial Cultural History of Pacification in the U.S. and Latin America
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Bénédicte Boisseron (Afroamerican and African Studies), Daniel Nemser (Romance Languages and Literatures), and Tiffany Ng (Music, Theatre & Dance)
Peter Vorissis, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Tableau Vivant and the Aesthetics of Modernity
Chair: Michèle Hannoosh (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Vincenzo Binetti (Romance Languages and Literatures), Daniel Herwitz (Comparative Literature), and Artemis Leontis (Comparative Literature)
Xiaoxi Zhang, PhD in Comparative Literature, with Certificates in African Studies and World Performance Studies
Dissertation: De-centering Modern Language(s): The Case of Chinese, Portuguese, and Swahili
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Kelly Askew (Anthropology), Marlyse Baptista (Linguistics), Daniel Herwitz (Comparative Literature), Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature), and David Porter (Comparative Literature)
2021 Graduates
Lauren Benjamin, PhD in Comparative Literature and English Language and Literature
Dissertation: Feral Modernisms
Chair: Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature), Joshua Miller (English Language and Literature)
Committee: Bénédicte Boisseron (Afroamerican and African Studies), Anita Norich (Judaic Studies), Antoine Traisnel (Comparative Literature)
Ali Bolcakan, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Language of Politics, Politics of Language: Political Literature in Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic
Chair: Artemis Leontis (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Kevork Bardakjian (Middle East Studies), Kristin Dickinson (Germanic Languages and Literatures), Elizabeth Wingrove (Political Science)
Vedran Catovic, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Satirical Literature in Context: Journey and Dissent in West and East Europe
Chair: Enoch Brater (English Language and Literature), and Olga Maiorova (Slavic Languages and Literature)
Committee: Tatjana Aleksic (Comparative Literature), Michele Hannoosh(Romance Languages and Literatures), and Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
Yael Kenan, PhD in Comparative Literature with Graduate Certificate in Judaic Studies
Dissertation: States of Mourning: Nationalism and Mourning in Palestinian and Israeli Literatures After 1948
Chair: Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Maya Barzilai (Middle East Studies), Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature), and Anita Norich (Judaic Studies)
Grace Zanotti, PhD in Comparative Literature with Graduate Certificate in Classical Reception Studies
Dissertation: Beyond Retribution: Re-theorizing Justice through Greek Tragedy
Chair: Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature), Antoine Traisnel (Comparative Literature), Elizabeth Wingrove (Political Science)
2020 Graduates
Sahin Acikgoz, PhD in Comparative Literature with Graduate Certificate in Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Queer Studies
Dissertation: Transgender in Translation: A Transnational Category of Socio-Cultural Analysis.
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Bénédicte Boisseron (Afroamerican and African Studies), Jarod Hayes (Romance Languages and Literatures), and Trish Salah (Queen’s University)
Maximillian Alvarez, PhD in Comparative Literature and History
Dissertation: Technologies of Resistance: Media, Anarchy, and Radical Politics in Early 20th-Century Mexico
Chair: Gareth Williams (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Howard Brick (History), Geoff Eley (History), Benjamin Paloff (Comparative Literature), and Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott (Latin American and Caribbean Studies)
Megan Berkobien, PhD in Comparative Literature with Graduate Certificate Program in Museum Studies
Dissertation: (E)co-translation: Toward a Collective Task
Chairs: Benjamin Paloff (Comparative Literature) and Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Catherine Brown (Comparative Literature), Ingrid Diran (Comparative Literature), and Juli Highfill (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Adrienne Jacaruso, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: The Encyclopedic Form in the Modern French Novel
Chair: Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Michele Hannoosh (Romance Languages and Literatures), Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature), and Antoine Traisnel (Comparative Literature)
Shira Schwartz, PhD in Comparative Literature with Graduate Certificate in Judaic Studies
Dissertation: Yeshiva Quirls: A Textual Ethnography of Jewish Gender, Sex and Reproduction
Chair: Rafe Neis (Judaic Studies)
Committee: Elizabeth Roberts (Anthropology), Naomi Seidman (Religion, University of Toronto), Megan Sweeney (English Language and Literature), and Ruth Tsoffar (Comparative Literature)
2010-2019
2019 Graduates
Will Runyan, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificate in Critical Translation Studies
Dissertation: Global Form and Fantasy in Yiddish Literary Culture: Visions from Mexico City and Buenos Aires
Chair: Misha Krutikov (Slavic Languages and Literature)
Committee: Tomoko Masuzawa (Comparative Literature), Anita Norich (Judaic Studies), and Mauricio Tenorio Trillo (University of Chicago)
Duygu Ula, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificates in LGBTQ Studies and Film, Television, and Media Studies
Dissertation: Towards a Local Queer Aesthetics: Queer Cultural Productions from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Turkey
Chair: Tatjana Aleksic (Comparative Literature) and Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Caryl Flinn (Film, Television and Media Studies) and Kader Konuk (Comparative Literature)
2018 Graduates
Harry Kashdan, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificate in Judaic Studies
Dissertation: Eating Elsewhere: Food and Migration in the Contemporary Mediterranean
Chair: Karla Mallette (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Pamela Ballinger (History), Carol Bardenstein (Middle East Studies), Tomoko Masuzawa (Comparative Literature), and Devi Mays (Judaic Studies)
Leigh Korey, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Aging Bodies, Hairy Bodies, Barely Human Bodies: Three Essays on Contemporary Iranian Literature
Chairs: Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature) and Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Kathryn Babayan (Middle East studies) and Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
2017 Graduates
Mélissa Gélinas, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificate in Screen Arts and Cultures
Dissertation: Heterolanguage in Twenty-First-Century Cinema and Literature: Transnational Mediations
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Nilo Couret (Romance Languages and Literatures), Jarrod Hayes (Romance Languages and Literatures), Daniel Herbert (Film, Television, and Media Studies), and Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature)
William Stroebel, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Fluid Books, Fluid Borders Modern Greek and Turkish Book Networks in a Shifting Sea
Chair: Vassilis Lambropoulos (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Tatjana Aleksic (Comparative Literature), Kader Konuk (Comparative Literature), Artemis Leontis (Comparative Literature), and Karla Mallette (Middle East Studies)
2016 Graduates
Etienne Charrière, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: “We Must Ourselves Write About Ourselves.” The Trans-Communal Rise of the Novel in the Late Ottoman Empire
Chair: Vassilis Lambropoulos (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Kevork Bardakjian (Middle East Studies), Michele Hannoosh (Romance Languages and Literatures), and Kader Konuk (Comparative Literature)
Emily Goedde, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: The Sound of Bombs – Translating Chinese Poetry from the Second World War
Chair: Xiaobing Tang (Asian Languages and Cultures)
Committee: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature), Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature), and John Whittier-Ferguson (English Language and Literature)
Sara Grewal, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Urdu Through its Others: Ghazal, Canonization, and Translation
Chair: Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Kathryn Babayan (Middle East Studies), Rajeev Kinra (History, Northwestern University), Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature), and Farina Mir (History)
Cassie Miura, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: The Humor of Skepticism: Laughter in Early Modern Literature from Montaigne to Milton
Chair: Trevor Douglas (English Language and Literature)
Committee: George Hoffmann (Romance Languages and Literatures), Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature), Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature), and Michael Schoenfeldt (Medieval and Early Modern Studies)
Mei-Chen Pan, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificate in Museum Studies
Dissertation: From Empire to Motherland: Writings and the Politics of Translation in the Literatures of Transcolonial Taiwan, 1937-1960
Chair: Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature) and Jonathan E. Zwicker (Asian Languages and Cultures)
Committee: Anne C. Herrmann (Women’s and Gender Studies), Youngju Ryu (Asian Languages and Cultures), and Xiaobing Tang (Asian Languages and Cultures)
2015 Graduates
Olga Greco, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: From Triumphal Gates to Triumphant Rotting: Refractions of Rome in the Russian Political Imagination
Chair: Valerie Kivelson (Medieval and Early Modern Studies)
Committee: Paolo Asso (Classical Studies), Basil Dufallo (Classical Studies), and Benjamin Paloff (Comparative Literature)
Hilary Levinson, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Disturbing Translations: Distance, Memory, and Representation in Contemporary Latin American Literature
Chair: Katharine Jenckes (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Amy Carroll (English Language and Literature), Santiago Colas (Comparative Literature), and Victoria Lagland (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Rostom Mesli, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificate in Women’s Studies
Dissertation: In Defense of Identity Politics: A Queer Reclamation of a Radical Concept
Chair: David Halperin (Comparative Literature)
Committee: David Caron (Women’s and Gender Studies), Lisa Disch (Political Science), and Gayle Rubin (Women’s and Gender Studies)
Richard Pierre, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Lyric Petrologies: Language of Stone in Rilke, Trakl, Mandelstam, Celan, and Sachs
Chair: Silke-Maria Weineck (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Andreas Gailus (Germanic Languages and Literatures), Sofya Khagi (Slavic Languages and Literatures), and Marjorie Levinson (English Language and Literature)
2014 Graduates
Basak Çandar, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Representing Censored Pasts: State Violence in Twentieth Century Turkish and Spanish Literature
Chair: Cristina Moreiras-Menor (Romance Languages and Literatures) and Kader Konuk (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Gottfried Hagen (Middle East Studies) and Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
Genevieve Creedon, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Worlds of Wonder: National Parks, Zoos, Disney, and the Genealogies of Wonder in U.S. Culture
Chair: June Howard (American Culture) and Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Phillip DeLoria (American Culture), Vassilis Lambropoulos (Comparative Literature), and Patricia Yaeger (English Language and Literature)
Mandy Ann Davis, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: "A Puzzle View From Within": Problems with and Alternatives to Humanitarianism and Savior Narratives for Ethiopia and Rwanda
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Omolade Adunbi (Afroamerican and African Studies), Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature), Miriam Ticktin (Anthropology)
Maria Hadjipolycarpou, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Intersubjective Histories in the Mediterranean and Beyond: The Poetics of Self in Postcolonial Life Writing
Chair: Artemis Leontis (Comparative Literature) and Michele Hannoosh (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature), Daniel Herwitz (Comparative Literature), and Vassilis Lambropoulos (Comparative Literature)
Spencer Hawkins, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Foundational Ambiguities: Metaphor, Translation, and Intertextuality in Hans Blumenberg’s Metaphorology
Chair: Andreas Gailus (Germanic Languages and Literatures) and Silke-Maria Weineck (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Vassilis Lambropoulos (Comparative Literature), Benjamin Paloff (Comparative Literature), and Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature)
Christopher Meade, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Writing Inter-American Space: History, Fiction and Territory in Cather, Carpenter, Delany and Borges
Chair: Santiago Colas (Comparative Literature) and Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Gregg Crane (English Language and Literature) and Katharine Jenckes (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Michael Pifer, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: The Stranger’s Voice: Acts of Appropriation in Anatolian Literature and Society
Chair: Kevork Bardakjian (Middle East Studies)
Committee: Kathryn Babayan (Middle East Studies), Catherine Brown (Comparative Literature), and Kader Konuk (Comparative Literature)
Shannon Winston, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Interrupted Visions: Seeing and Writing the Mediterranean of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
Chair: Michele Hannoosh (Romance Languages and Literatures) and Tomoko Masuzawa (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Jarrod Hayes (Romance Languages and Literatures), Marjorie Levinson (English Language and Literature), and Karla Mallette (Romance Languages and Literatures)
2013 Graduates
Efrat Bloom, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificates in Critical Translation Studies and Judaic Studies
Dissertation: This Place of Poetry: Writing, Displacement, and the Poetics of the Mother Tongue in H. Leyvik, Paul Celan, and Sargon Boulus
Chair: Daniel Herwitz (Comparative Literature) and Anita Norich (Judaic Studies)
Committee: Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature), Shachar Pinsker (Judaic Studies), and Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
Suphak Chawla, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Thinking the Good Without the True: Pedro Paramo and the Value of Magical Realism
Chair: Santiago Colas (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Katharine Jenckes (Romance Languages and Literatures), Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature), and Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
Amr Kamal, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Empires and Emporia: Fictions of the Department Store in the Modern Mediterranean
Chair: Carol Bardenstein (Middle East Studies) and Michele Hannoosh (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Mona Domosh (Geography, Dartmouth), Jarrod Hayes (Romance Languages and Literatures), and Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
Matthew Pfaff, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Strange New Canons: The Aesthetics of Classical Reception in 20th Century Experimental Poetics
Chair: Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Sara Ahbel-Rappe (Classical Studies), Basil Dufallo (Classical Studies), Joshua Miller (Judaic Studies), and Gillian White (English Language and Literature)
Mikey Rinaldo, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Breaking the Letter: Illegibility as Intersign in CY Twombly, Steve McCaffery and Susan Howe
Chair: Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Matt Biro (History of Art), Michele Hannoosh (Romance Languages and Literatures), and Alex Potts (History of Art)
Ramon Stern, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Geographies of Escape, Pathologies of Attachment: Diasporic Difference and Arab Ethnicity Re-Examined
Chair: Cristina Mereiras-Menor (Romance Languages and Literatures) and Ruth Tsoffar (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Santiago Colas (Comparative Literature), Elliot Colla (Arabic and Islamic Studies, Georgetown University), Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature), and Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
Patrick Tonks, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Cannibal Routes: Mapping the Atlantic as a Network of Appropriations.
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature) & Jarrod Hayes (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: George Hoffman (Romance Languages and Literatures), Paul Johnson (History), Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature)
2012 Graduates
Sebastian Ferrari, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Imagining the Community: Documentary Aesthetic in Roberto Bolano and Alfredo Jaar
Chair: Katharine Jenckes (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Santiago Colas (Comparative Literature), Michele Hannoosh (Romance Languages and Literatures), Daniel Noemi (Romance Languages and Literatures), and Gareth Williams (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Alexandra Hoffman, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificate in Judaic Studies
Dissertation: Laughter Through Tears: Politics, Identity and Humor in the Work of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Sholem Aleichem and Mordkhe Spector
Chair: Anita Norich (Judaic Studies)
Committee: Sandra Gunning (American Culture), Mikhail Krutikov (Slavic Languages and Literatures), Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature), and Joshua Miller (Judaic Studies)
John Rowland, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Virtual Realities: Virtue and Fantasies of Social-Material Community in British Poetry and Criticism, 1725-1785
Chair: Clement Hawes (Medieval and Early Modern Studies)
Committee: Marjorie Levinson (English Language and Literature), David Porter (Comparative Literature), and Silke-Maria Weineck (Comparative Literature)
Corine Tachriris, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Branding World Literature: The Global Circulation of Authors in Translation
Chair: Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature), Benjamin Paloff (Comparative Literature), Jennifer Wenzel (English Language and Literature)
Orian Zakai, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Zion of Their Own: Hebrew Women’s Nationalist Writing (1896-1956)
Chair: Carol Bardenstein (Middle East Studies)
Committee: Shachar Pinsker (Judaic Studies), Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature), and Ruth Tsoffar (Comparative Literature)
2011 Graduates
Christopher Davis, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Scribes and Singers: Latin Models of Authority and the Compilation of Troubadour Songbooks
Chair: Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Catherine Brown (Comparative Literature), Alison Cornish (Romance Languages and Literatures), Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature), and Elizabeth Sears (History of Art)
Nahoko Fukushima, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: “Sharebon” and the Courtesans: A Phase Edo Aestheticism as the Potlatch/Splash of Ideology
Chair: Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen (Asian Languages and Cultures)
Committee: Alina Clej (Comparative Literature), Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature), Shuen-Fu Lin (Asian Languages and Cultures), and David Porter (Comparative Literature)
Alan Itkin, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Bringing the Past Back to Life: Classical Motifs and the Representation of History in the Works of W.G. Sebald
Chair: Basil Dufallo (Classical Studies) and Julia Hell (Germanic Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Maya Barzilai (Middle East Studies) and Johannes Von Moltke (Germanic Languages and Literatures)
Corina Kesler, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Hail Utopia: Communist, Mystical and Post-Colonial Voices: Retrospectives and Future Promises
Chair: Eric Rabkin (English Language and Literature)
Committee: Tatjana Aleksic (Comparative Literature), Elliott Ginsburg (Middle East Studies), and Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
2010 Graduates
Sayan Bhattacharyya, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Reading Dialectically: The Political Play of Form, Contingency and Subjectivity in Rabindranath Tagore and C.L.R. James
Chair: Vassilis Lambropoulos (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Santiago Colas (Comparative Literature), Daniel Herwitz (Comparative Literature), Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature), and Jennifer Wenzel (English Language and Literature)
Maria Gonzalez, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Translating Quechua Poetic Expression in the Andes: Literature, the Social Body and Quechumara Movements
Chair: Santiago Colas (Comparative Literature) and Philip Deloria (American Culture)
Committee: Bruce Mannheim (Anthropology), Javier Sanjines (Romance Languages and Literatures), and Gustavo Verdesio (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Marcelo Hamam, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Freedom, Speech and Inequality in Rousseau’s Philosophical Rhetoric from the Deconstructive Interpretation to the Foundations of his Political Thought
Chair: Arlene Saxonhouse (Political Science) and Richard Velkley (Philosophy, Tulane University)
Committee: Sara Ahbel-Rappe (Classical Studies) and Vassilis Lambropoulos (Comparative Literature)
Michael Kicey, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Risk and Responsibility: Ancient and Modern Dialogues on Interpretation
Chair: Ross Chambers (Comparative Literature) and James Porter (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Dean C. Hammer (Classics, Franklin and Marshall College), Vassilis Lambropoulos (Comparative Literature), and Marjorie Levinson (English Language and Literature)
Monica Lopez-Lerma, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificate in Screen Arts and Cultures
Dissertation: Re-Imagining Justice: A Study of Ethics, Politics, and Law in Spanish Contemporary Fiction
Chair: Cristina Moreiras-Menor (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Dario Gaggio (History), Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola (Romance Languages and Literatures), and Ruth Tsoffar (Comparative Literature)
Liansu Meng, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: The Inferno Tango: Gender, Politics, and Poetry in China 1919-1980
Chair: Santiago Colas (Comparative Literature) and Lydia Liu (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Shuen-Fu Lin (Asian Languages and Cultures) and Wang Zheng (Women’s and Gender Studies)
2000-2009
2009 Graduates
Nicole Bishop, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificate in Women’s Studies
Dissertation: Toward Holistic, Ethical Scholarship in Literature (Or, Taking off my Glasses to “See” Jamaica Kincaid)
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Santiago Colas (Comparative Literature), Richard Mann (Psychology), and Jonathan Metzl (Culture, Health, and Medicine)
Neil Doshi, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Revolution at the Crossroads: Street Theater and the Politics of Radical Democracy in India and Algeria
Chair: Jarrod Hayes (Romance Languages and Literatures) and Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Ross Chambers (Comparative Literature), Vassilis Lambropoulos (Comparative Literature), and William Worthen (Theatre and Drama)
Seunghei (Clara) Hong, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Writing Pain, Erasing Cult: The Politics of Memory in Partition Literature
Chair: Christi Merrill (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Anne Herrmann (Women’s and Gender Studies), Leslie Pincus (History), and Youngju Ryu (Asian Languages and Cultures)
Christopher Love, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Creating Tragic Spectators: Rebellion and Ambiguity in World Tragedy
Chair: Vassilis Lambropoulos (Comparative Literature) and Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Santiago Colas (Comparative Literature) and John Whittier-Ferguson (English Language and Literature)
Nicholas Theisen, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Reading and Ignorance: Poetic Constraints of Lyric
Chair: Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen (Asian Languages and Cultures)
Committee: Marjorie Levinson (English Language and Literature), Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature), and Joseph Reed (Classical Studies)
2008 Graduates
Sylwia Ejmont, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: The Troubadour Takes the Tram: Experience in Polish Poetry and Music
Chair: Bozena Shallcross (Slavic Language & Literatures, University of Chicago)and Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature), Benjamin Paloff (Comparative Literature), and Brian Porter (History)
Jonah Johnson, PhD in Comparative Literature and Germanic Languages and Literatures
Dissertation: A Battle as Not Yet Fought: The Tragic Consequences of Early German Idealism
Chair: James Porter (Comparative Literature) and Silke-Maria Weineck (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Andreas Gailus (Germanic Languages and Literatures), Vassilis Lambropoulos (Comparative Literature), and Mika Lavaque-Manty (Political Science)
Adeline Koh, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Inventing Malayanness: Race, Education and Englishness in Colonial Malaya
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Mamadou Diouf (Afro-American and African Studies) , Simon Gikandi (English Language and Literature), and Andreas Kalyvas (Political Science)
Stanton McManus, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificate in Film Studies
Dissertation: Democracy in Transición: Politics, Melodrama, History
Chair: Vassilis Lambropoulos (Comparative Literature) and Cristina Moreiras-Menor (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Catherine Benamou (American Culture), Juli Highfill (Romance Languages and Literatures), Frederic Jameson (Comparative Literature, Duke University), and Johannes Von Moltke (Film, Television, and Media Studies)
2007 Graduates
Abraham I. Acosta, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Thresholds of Illiteracy: Orality and Biopolitics in Modern Latin America
Chair: Gareth Williams (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Javier Sanjines (Romance Languages and Literatures), Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature), and Gustavo Verdesio (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Maria Cristina Hamill, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Changing Paradigms in the Caribbean: An Analysis of Julia Alvarez’s Saving the World and In The Name of Salomé and Maryse Condé’s Tree of Life and I, Tutuba, Black Witch of Salem
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Santiago Colas (Comparative Literature), Larry LaFountain-Stokes (Women’s and Gender Studies), and Richard Rosa (Romance Studies, Duke University)
Zehra Asli Igsiz, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Repertories of Rupture: Recollecting the 1923 Greek-Turkish Compulsory Religious Minority Exchange
Chair: Carol Bardenstein (Middle East Studies) and Vassilis Lambropoulos (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Gottfried Hagen (Middle East Studies), Kader Konuk (Comparative Literature), and Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
2006 Graduates
Laura Halperin, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Narratives of Transgression: Deviance and Defiance in Late Twentieth Century Latina Literature
Chair: Frances Aparicio Latin American and Latino Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago). and Maria Cotera (American Culture)
Committee: Rosario Ceballo (Women's and Gender Studies), Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature), and John Gonzalez (English, University of Texas, Austin)
Charise Y. Hastings, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificate in Music Theory Pedagogy
Dissertation: The Performer’s Role: Storytelling in Ballades of Chopin and Brahms
Chair: Marion A. Guck (School of Music)
Committee: John Ellis (School of Music), Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature), Kendall Walton (Philosophy), and Steven Whiting (School of Music)
Jing Jiang, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Racial Mimesis: Translation, Literature, and Self-Fashioning in Modern China
Chair: Lydia Liu
Committee: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature), David Porter (Comparative Literature), and David Rolston (Asian Languages and Cultures)
Meredith Martin, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: The Rise and Fall of Meter: Poetic Form and English National Culture, 1880-1920
Chair: Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Kali A.K. Israel (History), Marjorie Levinson (English Language and Literature), and John A. Whittier-Ferguson (English Language and Literature)
Ronit Ricci, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Translating Conversion in South and Southeast Asia: The Islamic “Book of One Thousand Questions” in Javanese, Tamil and Malay
Chair: Nancy Florida (Asian Languages and Cultures)
Committee: Alton Becker (Linguistics), Barbara Daly Metcalf (History), and Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
Renee Silverman, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: The Terrain of Poetry and Cultural Memory in the First Spanish Avant-Garde (1914-1925)
Chair: Tobin Siebers (English Language and Literature)
Committee: Catherine Brown (Comparative Literature), Juli Highfill (Romance Languages and Literatures), and Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature)
2005 Graduates
Anis A. Memon, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: A Look at the Use of Popular Language in Certain exemplary Mid-20th Century French and Italian Novels as an Index of the Transition from Modernism to Postmodernism
Chair: Vincenzo Binetti (Romance Languages and Literatures) and Alina Clej (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Alison Cornish (Romance Languages and Literatures), Jarrod Hayes (Romance Languages and Literatures), and Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
Charles Daniel Sabatos, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Minor Tragedies: National Identity as Cultural Translation in the Czech and Slovak Novel
Chair: Tomoko Masuzawa (Comparative Literature) and Scott Spector (Germanic Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature), Jindrich Toman (Slavic Languages and Literatures), and Herbert Eagle (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
2004 Graduates
Lily V. Chiu, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificate in Women’s Studies
Dissertation: Alternative: Imagining and Performing the Native Woman in Francophone and Vietnamese Literature
Chair: Jarrod Hayes (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature), Simon Gikandi (English Language and Literature), Panivong Norindr (French & Comparative Literature, University of Southern California), and Jack Yeager (Comparative Literature, Louisiana State University)
Sean Jeffrey Cotter, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Living Through Translation: Lucian Blaga, T.S. Eliot, and the Cultural Politics of Translation in Modernism
Chair: Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature) and John Whittier-Ferguson (English Language and Literature)
Committee: Mircea Borcila (Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Washington), Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature), and Katherine Verdery (Anthropology)
Madelaine Hron, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: The Translation of Pain in Immigrant Texts
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Zdenka Brodska (Slavic Languages and Literatures), Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature), Tobin Siebers (English Language and Literature), and Silke-Maria Weineck (Comparative Literature)
Katherine Kong, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Epistolary Positions: Gender and Authority in Medieval and Early Modern French Letters
Chair: Catherine Brown (Comparative Literature) and Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature), George Hoffmann (Romance Languages and Literatures), and Charles Witke (Classical Studies)
Margaret Wickins Lynch, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Stories, Saints, and Dreams: The Literary Uses of Dreams in Early Medieval Hagiography
Chair: Catherine Brown (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Alison Cornish (Romance Languages and Literatures), Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature), Catherine Sanok (English Language and Literature), and Charles Witke (Classical Studies)
Sheila Skaff, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: The History of Cinema in Poland and the Transition from Silent to Sound Film 1896-1939
Chair: Richard Abel (Film, Television, and Media Studies), Bogdana Carpenter (Slavic Languages and Literatures), and Anita Norich (Judaic Studies)
Committee: Alina Brodzka (Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences), Hubert Cohen (Film, Television, and Media Studies), Tomoko Masuzawa (Comparative Literature), Piotr Michalowski (Middle East Studies), and Tobin Siebers (English Language and Literature)
2003 Graduates
Susan Florence Gorman, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Generic Ideologies: The Intersection of Empire, the Epic and the Novel in French West African and Latin Literatures
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Mamadou Diouf (History), Simon Gikandi (English Language and Literature), David Porter (Comparative Literature), and Silke-Maria Weineck (Comparative Literature)
2002 Graduates
Monika Irene Cassel, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Poetesses at the Grave: Transnational Circulation of Women’s Memorial Verse in Nineteenth-Century England, Germany and America
Chair: Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Kali Israel (History), Marjorie Levinson (English Language and Literature), and Silke-Maria Weineck (Comparative Literature)
Leah Chang, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Printing the Muse: Book Production and the Construction of Female Authorship in Renaissance France
Chair: Domna Stanton (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Catherine Brown (Comparative Literature), George Hoffmann (Romance Languages and Literatures), Peggy McCracken (Comparative Literature), and Valerie Traub (Women’s and Gender Studies)
Justin Read, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Forms of Transculturation: The Cultural Aesthetics of Modernist/Vanguard Poetry of the Americas
Chair: Juli Highfill (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Jossianna Arroyo (Romance Languages and Literatures), George Bornstein (English Language and Literature), Santiago Colas (Comparative Literature), and Marjorie Levinson (English Language and Literature)
Nirmala Singh-Brinkman, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: The Representation of Seville’s Female Cigar-Maker in Andelusian Regionalism and in Nineteenth-Century French and Spanish Literature
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature) and Juli Highfill (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Alina Clej (Comparative Literature), Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola (Romance Languages and Literatures), Carroll Smith-Rosenberg (American Culture), and Claudia Ritter (Political Science)
2001 Graduates
Heather Bowen-Struyk, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Rethinking Japanese Proletarian Literature
Chair: Ken Ito (Asian Languages and Cultures)
Committee: Markus Nornes (Asian Languages and Cultures), Leslie Pincus (History), James Porter (Comparative Literature), and Alan Wald (American Culture)
Shai P. Ginsburg, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Trapped in Language: Nation, Space, and Subject in Hebrew Literature, Hebrew Literary Criticism, and Jewish National Ideologies
Chair: Hannan Hever and James Porter (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Tim Bahti (Comparative Literature), Carol Bardenstein (Middle East Studies), and Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
Martin R. Heggestad, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: “Gebildet Genug, Um Zu Lieben Und Zu Trauern”: Bildung and Irony in the Literature of the Goethezeit
Chair: Frederick Amrine
Committee: Timothy Bahti (Comparative Literature), Alina Clej (Comparative Literature), James Porter (Comparative Literature), and Patricia Anne Simpson (Germanic Languages and Literatures)
Eric M. Kligerman, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Scenes of Witnessing in Paul Celan, Anselm Kiefer and Daniel Libeskind
Chair: Julia Hell and James Porter (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Matthew Biro (History of Art), Andrei Markovits (Political Science), and Silke-Maria Weineck (Comparative Literature)
Pei-Jing Li, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: The Politics and Poetics of Wo/Man/Ufacture: Male Representations of Woman in Chinese Han Fu and Roman Love Elegy
Chair: Shuen-fu Lin (Asian Languages and Cultures)
Committee: Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker (Asian Languages and Cultures), Donka Markus (Classical Studies), Yopie Prins (Comparative Literature), and David Rolston (Asian Languages and Cultures)
Jeffrey Joe Romero Middents, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificate in Film Studies
Dissertation: Hablemos de Cine: Locating the Film Journal in the Development of Peruvian National Cinema
Chair: Santiago Colas (Comparative Literature) and Carina Yervasi (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Catherine Benamou (American Culture) and Margarita de la Vega-Hurtado
Katarzyna (Kashia) Pieprzak, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Which Way to the Modern Art Museum? Cultural Discourse on Art and Modernity in Post-Colonial Morocco
Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Richard Candida-Smith (History), Matthew Connelly (History), Simon Gikandi (English Language and Literature), and Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature)
2000 Graduates
Suzanne Black, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: A Voice Sought in Order: Poetry, Science and Knowing Self in W.H. Auden, Fernando Pessoa, Francis Ponge, Paul Valery, and William Carlos Williams
Chair: Timothy Bahti (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Frederick Amrine (Germanic Languages and Literatures), Thomas Dunn (Chemistry), Laurence Goldstein (English Language and Literature), and William Paulson (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Rachel Gabara, PhD in Comparative Literature with Certificate in Film Studies
Dissertation: Je de Miroirs: French and Francophone Autobiography from Split to Screened Selves
Chair: Carina Yervasi (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: David Caron (Romance Languages and Literatures), Simon Gikandi (English Language and Literature), Stuart McDougal (English Language and Literature), and James Porter (Comparative Literature)
Deborah Starr, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Absent Presence: Inscriptions of the Egyptian Jewish Identity Since 1956
Chair: Carol Bardenstein (Middle East Studies)
Committee: Anita Norich (Judaic Studies), Anton Shammas (Comparative Literature), and Sasson Somekh (Arabic Language and Literature, Tel Aviv University)
Melissa Waldman, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: A History of Remembering: The French and Spanish in Florida, 1562-1565
Chair: Jose Rabasa (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Committee: Steven Mullaney (English Language and Literature), James Porter (Comparative Literature), Domna Stanton (Romance Languages and Literature)
Margaret (Marcy) Wheeler, PhD in Comparative Literature
Dissertation: Street Level: Intersections of Modernity in the Czech, Argentine, and French Feuilleton
Chair: Santiago Colas (Comparative Literature)
Committee: Ross Chambers (Comparative Literature), Herb Eagle (Slavic Languages and Literatures), and Frieda Ekotto (Comparative Literature)
