The Transliteratures Project

After receiving a BA in Classics from Truman State University (Kirsville, Missouri)  I won a Mellon Fellowship to study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  There I completed an MA in Classics in the Fall of 2001.  I come to Rutgers hoping to complete a PhD on some aspect of the Roman world.   I am interested in Latin and Greek literature and general and Roman law and history and Latin epigraphy specifically.   As a Transliteratures fellow I will be taking classes in the German department as well.   I enjoy all types and periods of German literature and history, but am especially interested in the history of German scholarship within the field of Classics.

I took my B.A. in Classics from the University of Alberta in 1998, then completed an M.A. in Classics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before arriving at Rutgers as the Transliteratures Fellow in the Department of Classics in Fall 2000. My academic interests fall into three broad categories, including a general interest in Greek and Latin language, Latin epic and elegiac poetry, and Roman historiography, concentrating mainly on the last. Much of Latin historical prose until recently has been considered as merely a source for ancient history and not as literature per se. My scholarly interests have followed a similar pattern, for as part of the Transliteratures Project I participated in a seminar on exoticism and the Enlightenment in French literature of the 18th century, where I discovered much in the analysis of modern literature that can be profitably applied to that of antiquity. My dissertation, under the direction of Professor T. Corey Brennan, consists of a historiographical study of Caesar's Bellum Civile. I attempt to evaluate Caesar more as a literary artist than as the consummate politician and military man.

I received my B.A. in Classics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001, where I completed a senior honors thesis entitled "The Social and Political Origins of the Augustales: Influences of the Late Republic and the Augustan Age," in which I examined the beginnings of the Imperial cult in Italy and the relationship of the cult to its primary members, namely, freed slaves. In the Fall of 2001, I arrived at Rutgers University as the Transliteratures Fellow in the Department of Classics. My primary academic interest is the social, political, and cultural history of the Roman Empire and Late Antiquity, but I also have strong interests in the related fields of Greek and Roman literature of the Roman Empire and Latin epigraphy. As part of the Transliteratures Project, I recently took a seminar through the Italian Department, which focused on the large influence that Greek and Latin texts had on the style and development of Italian literature.

I was born in Italy and raised and educated in Rome, where I received my Doctoral Degree in Women's Studies from the University "La Sapienza." In Italy, I have co-edited a special issue of the literary journal tutteStorie on Italian-American women artists and I am currently working on the publication of my first book on personal writing and Italian-American women's literature, forthcoming in 2003. I am now getting my second Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Rutgers, focusing primarily on marginal literature, with a special interest in transnational identities and migrant feminine subjects and the way in which their literary production resists main narratives.

My mother is French, my father is German, and I grew up bilingually in a small town close to Cologne, Germany. I studied at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, and graduated with a M.A. and the German State Exam in French, English, and Spanish in June 2001. Thanks to a scholarship from the University of Mainz, I was able to study a year at Washington College, M.D., in 1997/98 and to take Spanish classes at the University of Valencia, Spain, in Fall 1999. My master's thesis discussed the significance of the underground motif in African-American literature and focused on major works by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Amiri Baraka. I also included Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground as a source of inspiration for the three authors, taking into consideration that Dostoevsky's work deals with similar preoccupations, such as issues of identity and marginality . Since Fall 2001, I have been enrolled at Rutgers University. As a Transliteratures Fellow I am pursuing my studies at the French department, while also taking classes in the Spanish department. I am now focusing my research on the underground motif in French and Spanish literatures in order to enlarge my knowledge in this field. In addition, I am interested in French and Spanish-American theater, especially of the 17th and 20th centuries. Since 1997, I have also taken Japanese language classes, as I thought it challenging to learn a completely different language. I am planning to teach at a university after completing my Ph.D.

Although I am of Italian origins, I was born in Albania. It was there that I took my first intellectual steps, acquiring the language and completing my first years of school. My higher education took place in Italy, where I completed high school and university, and in France, where I learned the language of Descartes and Pascal. In June 2000 I received my Laurea (Italian Masters) magma cum laude and my Maîtrise de Lettres Modernes, with a thesis on 17th century writer Urbain Chevreau and his La suite et le mariage du Cid. In September of the same year, I started my Ph.D in French as a Transliteratures Fellow at Rutgers University. Thanks to this Project, I have the opportunity to continue my research in Italian literature and, above all, to teach it to undergraduate students.

My literary interests lie in 16th-17th century moralistic and religious French literature. I am currently working on religious and political literature produced at the court of France under François Ier. I am looking into the forms, arguments, and topoi used by French humanist writers in a courtly setting for the purpose of advising the Prince about the rules of good government and the defense of (Catholic and Gallican) religion. I am particularly interested in a writer called Guillaume Michel, aka Michel de Tours, who produced various allegorical, moralizing pieces purporting to teach the King how to behave and uphold Catholicism.

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where I grew up, I am currently a Transliteratures Fellow at Rutgers University. I graduated magna cum laude from Mount Holyoke College in 1994 with a double major in international affairs and French. I went on to earn a Master's degree in political economy from American University in Washington, DC, and a Master of International Affairs degree in international business from Columbia University, in New York. After three years as Latin America equity strategist for a Spanish bank, I decided to pursue a doctorate in French literature at Rutgers. My interests are eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. I am currently working on a project involving cartography and nationalism in eighteenth-century France. I live in New York City with my husband.

I am a second year graduate student and Transliteratures Fellow in the German Department at Rutgers University with interests in comparative literature, literary theory, musicology, ancient Greek literature and philosophy, and the romantic/post-romantic periods of literature. I hold a B.A. in musicology from The College of New Jersey, having also studied abroad at Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Universität in Frankfurt, Germany. In the past, I have taught music, history and foreign languages at Princeton Latin Academy and also English (as a foreign, student teacher) at Frankfurt University. I continue to teach both music and foreign language privately, while pursuing advanced degrees in German literature. With hopes of building an academic career in the field of German studies and musico-literary culture, plans for a dissertation topic have not been finalized, but will most likely involve an exploration of the elusive image of the musician as artist in 19th century and contemporary artistic expression, emphasizing the evolving conceptualization of the musical genius in both serious art and popular culture, and the quasi-mythical influences of Mozart, Beethoven and other famous musicians upon this ambiguous, transcultural icon of the musician in art. In addition to German, I have also studied Latin, ancient Greek and Italian.

In April 2000 I took my Laurea (Italian Master) in Classics from the University of Pisa (Italy). In Pisa I attended also the first year of a school for teachers, before arriving at Rutgers as Transliteratures Fellow in the Department of Italians in Fall 2001. My academic interests are related to baroque Italian literature, but I am interested in all literatures and in relationships and cross-references among them. I consider very important the understanding of social and historical context of literary works. My classical cultural background helped me to analyze the theatre of Federico Della Valle and its references to classical tragedy for my Laureats dissertation. As a part of the Transliteratures Project I participated in a seminar on Latin novel. This has been an opportunity for learning an American approach to classical literatures. I am currently engaged in a seminar on Greek oratory which is helping me to discover the roots of the ethical and aesthetical interpretation of rhetoric in European literature.

I received my B.A. in Spanish, French, and Anthropology in May of 2002 from Rutgers College.  My undergraduate studies culminated with a Henry Rutgers Scholars Thesis focused on the effects of exile on the culture and identity of individuals from the Southern Cone.   Presently, I am continuing my academic pursuits as a Transliteratures Fellow with the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.  I am interested in exploring contemporary peninsular literature and culture and I intend to continue to exercise an active interdisciplinary approach in my work.  In the near future I hope to enrich my graduate career by studying or researching abroad in Spain.    

I am currently a second year Transliteratures Fellow in the doctoral program in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Rutgers. Spanish and German are my two main areas of language concentration and I am working steadily on improving my French. I graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in German Literature and completed my M.A. in Hispanic Literature at NYU in Madrid. My masters thesis focused on the role of the female protagonist in the Mexican coming of age novel Balún Canán by Rosario Castellanos. My continued interest in fictions of development in contemporary Latin American literature stems from this project and has expanded to encompass other academic interests such as genre/gender theory, autobiography, and psychoanalysis. I have tried to combine academic pursuits with cultural endeavors and have found the perfect solution in traveling and living abroad. I have studied and worked as an interpreter in Spain and have taught in Ecuador and Argentina. This summer I hope to travel to Buenos Aires to research contemporary women playwrights in Argentina.