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Recent Graduate Students and Placements

Genevieve Berendt, PhD 2025

“She Speaks for the Trees: Exegetical Ecofeminism from Medieval French Forests"

Dissertation Advisor: Sarah-Grace Heller

Placement: University of Minnesota-Morris

Demetrio Antolini, PhD 2025

“Thinking with the City: Contemporary Neapolitan Cinema from 2012–2022"

Dissertation Co-Advisors: Dana Renga and Jonathan Mullins

Placement: Associated Faculty - The Ohio State University & Italian Teacher - Bishop Watterson High School

Michela Bertossa, PhD 2025

Donne e Madri Degeneri. Reproduction, Gender, and Class in Liberal Italy (1861-1922)”

Dissertation Co-Advisors: Dana Renga and Jonathan Mullins

Placement: Associated Faculty, Coastal Carolina University

Thierno Aliou Diallo, PhD 2023

"Challenging Clitics”: Examining the Effects of Processing Instruction and Traditional Instruction on the Acquisition of Third-Person French Direct Object Pronouns"

Dissertation Advisor: Wynne Wong & Kiwako Ito (University of Newcastle, Australia)

Placement: French Language Director, Utah Valley University

Alioune Fall, PhD 2021

"From Negritude to Migritude: Multidimentional Resonances of the Concept of Africanness in African Literature"

Dissertation Co-Advisors: Lucille Toth, Adeleke Adeeko (Department of African American and African Studies)

Placement: Assistant Professor of French, Providence College

Kirby Childress, PhD 2021

Queer(ing) Trauma: Understanding the Role of Affect in Creating Visual Empathy through Contemporary French Film and Band Dessinée

Dissertation Advisor: Maggie Flinn

Placement: Associated Faculty, The Ohio State University & French teacher, Columbus City Schools

Enrico Zammarchi, PhD Comparative Studies 2019, MA Italian 2021

“‘My Style is Strictly Italo’: A History of Italian Hip-Hop”

Dissertation Co-Advisors: Barry Shank (Comp Studies), Dana Renga (Comparative Studies PhD)    

Placement: Tenure-track Assistant Professor, Gonzaga University

Lauren DeCamilla, PhD 2020

"Female Leads: Negotiating Minority Identity in Contemporary Italian Horror Cinema"

Dissertation Advisor: Dana Renga

Placement: Social Media Influencer + LGBTQ+ Activist

Dan Paul, PhD 2019

"Redefining a Gendered Genre: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Italian Teen Film"

Dissertation advisor: Dana Renga

Placement: Assistant Professor of Italian, Brigham Young University

Brian Troth, PhD 2019

"Risky Business: A Reworking of Risk in the Era of the Post-Post Aids in France"

Dissertation advisor: Maggie Flinn, Lucille Toth

Placement: Associated Faculty, Coffman and Scioto High Schools

Laurene Glimois, PhD 2019

"The Effects of Input Flood, Structured Input, Explicit Information, and Language Background on Beginner Learners’ Acquisition of a Target Structure in Mandarin Chinese"

Dissertation advisor: Wynne Wong

Placement: Assistant professor of Linguistics/Second Language Acquisition, Auburn University

Mackenzie Leadston, PhD 2019

"Theorizing the Comic Object in Classic French Cinema"

Dissertation advisor: Maggie Flinn

Placement: Associated Faculty, The Ohio State University

Xinyi Tan, PhD 2018

"Exotes en Asie Francophone: François Cheng, Ying Chen, Shan Sa, Kim Thúy, Victor Segalen"

Dissertation advisor: Danielle Marx-Scouras

Placement: Associate Professor of French and Chinese, Coastal Carolina University 

Caroline Noble, PhD 2018

"Mediterranean Seascapes in Contemporary French Cinema: Between Myth and Reality"

Dissertation advisor(s): Maggie Flinn

Placement: Teacher, Ecole Kenwood French Immersion School

Matthew Roesch, PhD 2017

"Les Sensation fortes: The Phenomenological Aesthetics of French Action Film"

Dissertation advisor(s): Maggie Flinn

Placement: Career Coach/Counselor, Idaho PTECH

Darrell Estes, PhD 2017

"Physical and Ontological Transformation: Metamorphosis & Transfiguration in Old French and Occitan Texts (11th –15th Centuries)"

Dissertation advisor(s): Sarah-Grace Heller, Jonathan Combs-Schilling

Placement: Associated Faculty, The Ohio State University

Dionisio Mingallon, PhD 2017

"Duplicité chamanique et vérité d’une folie dans le Neveu de Rameau de Diderot et Caligula d’Albert Camus"

Dissertation advisor(s): Danielle Marx-Scouras, Karlis Racevskis (Emeritus)

Placement: Associated Faculty, The Ohio State University

Rachel Elizabeth Willis, PhD 2017

"Souveraines de corps frontaliers: Narrating Quebec’s Insurgent Girlhood"

Dissertation advisor(s): Danielle Marx-Scouras

Placement: Visiting Teaching Assistant Professor, The University of Denver

Paige Piper, PhD 2016

"Deathly Landscapes: The Changing Topography of Contemporary French Policier in Visual and Narrative Media"

Dissertation advisor(s): Maggie Flinn

Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor, Denison University

Ashley Powers, PhD 2016

"The Commerce of Time: The Influence of Thirteenth Century Commercial Society on the Conception and Expression of Time in Parisian Poet Rutebeuf’s Corpus"

Dissertation advisor(s): Sarah-Grace Heller, Jonathan Combs-Schilling

Placement: Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Ohio Wesleyan University

Adrianne Barbo, PhD 2015

"From Post-Cards to Stand-up: Cross-Cultural Representations of the Veil in the Maghreb and France"

Dissertation advisor(s): Danielle Marx-Scouras

Placement: Associated Faculty, The Ohio State University

Michele Gerring, PhD 2014

"Conflicting Representations of Maghrebi-French Integration in France: a Spectrum of Hospitality from Derrida to Foucault, as Seen in Contemporary Novels, Films and the Magazine 'Paris-Match'"

Dissertation advisor(s): Cheikh Thiam, Jean-François Fourny

Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor of French at Allegheny College

Douglas Roberts, PhD 2015

"The Hidden Ally: How the Canadian Supreme Court Has Advanced the Vitality of the Francophone Quebec Community"

Dissertation advisor(s): Wynne Wong, Danielle Marx-Scouras

Placement: Associated Faculty, The Ohio State University

Jaleh Sharif, PhD 2015

"France-Iran: dans le sillage du ‘désintérêt’ politique à une fascination culturelle mutuelle"

Dissertation advisor(s): Jennifer Willging

Placement: Teacher, Language Door Schools

Heidi Brown, PhD 2014

"What I Cannot Say: Testifying of Trauma through Translation"

Dissertation advisor(s): Jennifer Willging

Placement: Associate Professor, Loyola University Maryland

Nicole Hanlon, MA 2013

Placement: French teacher at Buckeye Valley High School (OH)

Clare Balombin, PhD 2013

"Saints in the Roman de Renart"

Dissertation advisor(s): Sarah-Grace Heller

Placement: Independent Scholar

Jarrett Anderson, MA 2012

Placement: French & Mandarin teacher at Germantown Academy (PA)

Anais Wise, PhD 2012

"L’Ironie Merimeenne ou l'art de transformer le coup de griffe en coup de maitre"

Dissertation advisor(s): Louis Shea

Placement: Language Training Specialist, U.S. Department of State

Lisa Bevevino, PhD 2012

"Demis Defors: the Narrative Structure and Cultural Implications of the Contemplation of Death in Medieval French Courtly Literature"

Dissertation advisor(s): Sarah-Grace Heller

Placement: Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota, Morris

Jennifer Branlat, PhD 2012

"Paris, Female Stardom, and 1930s French Cinema"

Dissertation advisor(s): Judith Mayne (Emerita)

Placement: Faculty, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Adela Lechintan, PhD 2011

"Cinematic Reverberations of Historical Trauma: Women's Memories of the Holocaust and Colonialism in Contemporary French-Language Cinema"

Dissertation advisor(s): Judith Mayne (Emerita)

Placement: Professor of Teaching, The Ohio State University

Andrew Anderson, PhD 2011

"Show, Not Tell: How the Theater of the Absurd Exposes the Violence of Identity in French Postcolonial and Regional Literature"

Dissertation advisor(s): Jennifer Willging

Placement: Senior Associated Faculty, The Ohio State University

Julie Parson, PhD 2011

"The Tradition of Femininity: Rethinking Sexuality and Gender in 1950's French Cinema"

Dissertation advisor(s): Judith Mayne (Emerita)

Placement: Senior Associated Faculty, The Ohio State University

Elizabeth Bishop, PhD 2010

"Brittany and the French State: Cultural, Linguistic, and Political Manifestations of Regionalism in France"

Dissertation advisor(s): Jean-François Fourny

Placement: Senior Associated Faculty, The Ohio State University

Kelly Campbell, PhD 2010

"Film, French, and Foie Gras: Examining the French cultural Exception"

Dissertation advisor(s): Jean-François Fourny

Placement: Senior Associated Faculty, The Ohio State University

Jacob Schott, PhD 2010

"The Kafka Case:  Constructing Kafka, Deconstructing the Self in Robert, Blanchot and Robbe-Grillet"

Dissertation advisor(s): Gene Holland

Placement: Academic Tutor, AJ Tutoring

Philip Nelson, PhD 2010

"Irony's Devices:  Modes of Irony from Voltaire to Camus"

Dissertation advisor(s): Jennifer Willging, Karlis Racevskis (Emeritus)

Placement: Assistant Professor, Ohio Wesleyan University