Recent Ph.D.s and Placement

Sara Russell, Ph.D. 2010

Dissertation: "Courtship, Violence and the Formation of Marriage in the Early Modern Italian Novella Tradition"

Currently: James R. Gray Lecturer, UC Berkeley, Italian Studies

Maurizio Vito, Ph.D. 2009

Dissertation: "Sea and Land, Collectivity and Individual: Metaphors at Odds in the Political Field"

Currently: Visiting Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Wesleyan University

Amyrose Gill, Ph.D. 2008

Dissertation: "The Possibility of Friendship: Conceptions and Representations of Married Life in Italian Renaissance Literature"

Karina Xavier, Ph.D. 2008

Dissertation: "Rescuing Rome: Identity and Legacy in Sixteenth-Century Italian and Spanish Literature"

Currently: MIT- Brazil Program Coordinator

Aileen Astorga Feng, Ph.D. 2008

Dissertation: "From Poetry to Politics: Petrarchism as Discursive Formation in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy"

Currently: Assistant Professor of Italian, University of Arizona

Jessica Otey, Ph.D. 2008

Dissertation: "Tragedy as Encounter: Politics, Intertextuality and Modern Italian Drama"

Currently: Lecturing Fellow, Italian, Duke University

Rhiannon Noel Welch, Ph.D. 2008

Dissertation: "Under the Shadow of Our Flag: Race and (Re)productivity in Liberal Italy"

Currently: Visiting Assistant Professor of Italian, Franklin and Marshall College

Angela Matilde Capodivacca, Ph.D. 2007

Dissertation: "Curiosity and the Trials of the Modern Imagination"

Currently: Assistant Professor of Italian, Yale University

Silvia Valisa, Ph.D. 2007

Dissertation: "Dissonant Vehicles of Gender: The Ideology of Character from Alessandro Manzoni to Elsa Morante"

Currently: Assistant Professor of Italian, Florida State University

Stephanie Malia Hom, Ph.D. 2007

Dissertation: "Destination Italy: Tourism, Colonialism, and the Modern Italian Nation-State, 1861-1947"

Currently: Assistant Professor of Italian, University of Oklahoma

Tamao Nakahara, Ph.D. 2005

Dissertation: "Bawdy Tales and Veils: The Exploitation of Sex in Post-War Italian Cinema (1949-1979)"

Cosetta Seno Reed, Ph.D. 2005

Dissertation: "Realism versus Utopianism: The Moral Perspective of Anna Maria Ortese"

Currently: Assistant Professor of Italian, University of Colorado, Boulder

Marco Ruffini, Ph.D. 2004

Dissertation: "Art without Author: The Death of Michelangelo and Vasari's Lives"

Currently: Assistant Professor of Italian Studies and Adjunct Professor of Art History, Northwestern University

Susan Gaylard, Ph.D. 2004

Dissertation: "Shifty Men Writing Monuments: Creating a Permanent Self in Early Modern Italian Literature"

Currently: Assistant Professor of Italian, University of Washington

Irene Zanini-Cordi, Ph.D. 2004

Dissertation: “La donna abbandonata nella letteratura italiana”

Currently: Assistant Professor of Italian, Florida State University

Eleonora Stoppino, Ph.D. 2003

Dissertation: “Ariosto medievale: Textual and Sexual Genealogies in Orlando Furioso”

Currently: Assistant Professor of Italian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Claudia Karagoz, Ph.D. 2002

Dissertation: “‘Amori Molesti’: The Mother-Daughter Relationship in Contemporary Italian Women's Writing”

Currently: Assistant Professor of Italian, St. Louis University

Nella Nencini, Ph.D. 2001

Dissertation: “Tempering and Temperament in Italian Pastoral Drama of the Late Cinquecento”

Currently: Safari Guide in Kenya

Robert Rushing, Ph.D., 1998

Dissertation: “Writing without End : Epistemology in Italo Calvino and Carlo Emilio Gadda”

Currently: Associate Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Elizabeth Leake, Ph.D.  1998

Dissertation: “Regret and Reinvention : Ignazio Silone's Early Narrative”

Currently: Associate Professor of Italian, Rutgers; Visiting Professor, Department of Italian, Columbia University

Lori J. Ultsch, Ph.D. 1996

Dissertation: “The Giovin Signore Revisited : Narratives of Cicisbeism”

Currently: Associate Professor of Italian, Hofstra University

Margaret Gallucci, Ph.D., 1995

Dissertation: “The Unexamined Life of Benvenuto Cellini: Poetic Deviation & Sexual Transgression in Sixteenth-Century Italy”