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

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

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

Demetrio Antolini, PhD 2025

“Thinking with the City: Contemporary Neapolitan Cinema from 2012–2022"
Dissertation Co-Advisors: Dana Renga and Jonathan Mullins
Placement: Visiting Professor - University of Iowa

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

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