Graduate Students 2009-10
French Department Graduate Students in 2009-10
First year Graduate Students
Second-year Graduate Students GAFS: The Graduate Association of French Students GAFS is the association of all graduate students currently enrolled in the graduate program in French. Activities include a work-in-progress series, an
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| Maren Baudet-Lackner | |
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Before coming to Yale Maren earned her BA from Tulane with a double major in French and History and her Maîtrise and DEA from Paris IV-La Sorbonne in French literature. Specialized in the 19th century, and particularly in Balzacian studies at the Sorbonne, her Master's thesis focused on feminine epistolarity in La Comédie humaine. A portion of this work was published in the Année balzacienne 2008 as an article entitled "Donner une voix aux femmes: Balzac et ses lectrices". Her current research interests are centered on representations of the construction of national and regional identities through the politics of patrimoine in Realist and late Romantic novels. |
| Susannah Carson | |
| Jonathan Cayer | |
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| Annie De Saussure | |
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After spending her senior year of High School in Rennes, France, Annie fell in love with Brittany and decided to pursue an undergraduate degree from l’Université de Haute Bretagne ( Rennes 2). In 2008, she earned a Licence in Lettres Modernes with a minor in Applied Linguistics. She then earned a Maîtrise in 2009. Her thesis examined the censorship of Materialist works in 18 th century France and, especially, discursive strategies used by authors to avoid censorship. Her interests include 18 th century literature, Rousseau, philosophy, political thought, francophone literature and questions of authorship and censorship. She is currently in her first year at Yale. |
| Jessica DeVos | |
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Before coming to Yale, Jessica earned an A.B. in East Asian Studies and French, and an M.A. in French literature from Bryn Mawr College. A specialist of Renaissance literature and history, her dissertation examines how women writers of the second half of the sixteenth century adapted Classical and Italian sources for female lyric voices. She also has a secondary research interest in 20th century French representations of "Indochine". During the 2008-2009 academic year, Jessica will be continuing to work on her dissertation in Paris as a student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure.
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| Caitlin DeWilde | |
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Caitlin received her B.A. from Bates College in 2008. After graduation, she spent a year in Brussels, Belgium teaching English through a Fulbright grant. She is currently in her first year. Her interests include francophone literature, postcolonial theory, immigration, and the notion of identity. |
| Julia Elsky | |
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Julia received her B.A. in French Literature from Barnard College in 2007. She is in her second year at Yale. Her primary interests include Eastern European émigré writers in France in the twentieth century, as well as translation, bilingualism, and the intersection of language and assimilation. |
| Catherine Culvahouse Fox | |
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Catherine is in her second year of the joint doctoral program in French and African American Studies. Her interests include literature and history of the French-speaking Caribbean, Haiti, and postcolonial theory. |
| Andrew Gates | |
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Andrew received an A.B. in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College in 2009, before joining the Yale French department that Fall. At Dartmouth, he focused on the role of religion in French literature and wrote an honor's thesis that explored the place of Christianity in the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and Paul Claudel as part of a greater exploration of questions of being, meaning, and the poetic act in nineteenth-century France. His interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and philosophy, notably idealism, symbolism, and modernism, as well as post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and Marxism. |
| Tara Golba | |
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Tara received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Boston University before coming to Yale. She is currently writing her dissertation, which focuses on the questioning of post/colonial epistemologies in Francophone narratives of investigation. Tara is the 2008-2009 French department representative to Yale's Graduate Student Assembly. |
| Awendela Grantham | |
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Awandela graduated with a B.A. in French and International Studies from Yale University in 2005. At Yale, she received the Montaigne Prize for French in 2002 and was a fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Mays Felllowship program. She is interested in the commoditization of blackness in postcolonial literature and the writings of Frantz Fanon. |
| Kristin Graves | |
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Kristin received her B.A. from Tulane University in 2008 with majors in French, English, and Art History as well as minors in Italian Studies and History. She is in Yale's joint program in French and African American American Studies. Her general interests include nineteenth and twentieth century expatriation, performance, politics of reception, queer theory, and dialogue between art and literature. |
| Elizabeth Hebbard | |
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Liz received a BA in French and German and a BMus in Bassoon Performance from the University of Georgia in 2007. After graduation she taught elementary school in Provence while studying at the Conservatoire Darius Milhaud, then spent several months teaching and performing in the Atlanta area. Now in her first year at Yale, she is pursuing interests in translation theory, the music critique, orality and performance practice, and the culture and history of the Luberon. A native of Mississippi, Liz is hopelessly addicted to SEC football (go Dawgs!) and southern cooking. |
| Dustin Hooten | |
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Dustin earned a B.S./B.A. in Applied Mathematics and French and Francophone Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2008, and a Maîtrise in Lettres Modernes from the Université Lumière Lyon 2 in 2009. He is interested in 18th century literature, dialogues, theatre, and scientific discourse, especially that of Diderot. He is currently in his first year at Yale. |
| Irina Iakounina | |
| Annabel Kim | |
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Annabel received her B.A. in French and Art History from Williams College in 2007. Her interests include metaphor, language (its acquisition, creation, deployment, and reception), neologisms, theology, still lives and domestic visual culture, fat cats and small dogs. |
| Mary Anne Lewis | |
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Mary Anne earned a dual degree in Accounting and French Literature at the University of Notre Dame in 2003. Upon graduating, she accepted a Fulbright appointment to teach English in a suburb of Troyes, France. After returning to the United States, she worked as a credit analyst before beginning graduate school at the University of Minnesota. In 2008, Mary Anne earned her M.A. in French Literature and continues to cultivate her interests in literature of the Maghreb, the writer's role in social justice and human rights, prison literature, and questions of responsibility on the part of both reader and writer. She has been awarded grants from the Kellogg Institute, the Nanovic Institute, and the Scholarly Events Fund. Mary Anne entered the Ph.D. program in French at Yale in the fall of 2008 and is currently awaiting publication of two translations in Cultural Poetics: A Reader. |
| Anne Linton | |
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Before joining Yale in 2005, Anne earned a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Her dissertation focuses on representations of hermaphrodism in nineteenth century fiction and medicine in an attempt to historicize the "mythe de l'androgyne," long held as a universal and atemporal archetype. Anne is also a great lover of the outdoors who enjoys climbing, hiking and camping. |
| Claire McMurray | |
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Claire received her B.A. in French Studies from Scripps College in 2001.She is in her fifth year of study at Yale and is working on her dissertation which investigates cinematic representations of rural France from 1945 onwards. A minor in Film Studies, Claire is very interested in French cinema and works primarily on film and the twentieth century. She is currently studying abroad on the Yale exchange program with the ENS in Paris, researching at the Cinémathèque and watching as many movies as is humanly possible! |
| Jennifer Pahlke | |
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Jen received her B.A. in French, English, and International Studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2007. She is particularly interested in postcolonial and colonial writings, having so far especially focused on North Africa. |
| Raisa Rexer | |
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| Sasha Santee | |
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Sasha S. joined the Yale French department in 2005. She holds a B.A. in French Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her periods of interest are the 19 th and 20 th centuries. She is currently thinking about Parisian signes d’appartenance, and how they are acquired or performed for the sake of social and economic advancement. |
| Aaron Schlosser | |
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Aaron received his BA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College in 2007. His interests include French philosophy, twentieth-century French literature, and intersections of literature and philosophy, among others. |
| Maryn Santos | |
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Maryn received her B.A. from Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada. She is currently in her third year at Yale. Her interests include early French children's literature, object narratives, and the relation between texts and textiles |
| Rachael Sterner | |
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Rachael received her B.A. in French and Secondary Education from Ursinus College in 2003. She is in her sixth year at Yale, focusing on her dissertation, "Broken Walls: Saints Jeanne de Chantal and Louise de Marillac Writing Faith and Independence Outside the Convent". |
| Erin Tremblay Ponnou-Delaffon | |
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Before coming to Yale, Erin earned a B.A. at Haverford and an M.A. at Bryn Mawr and worked in France. Her primary interests include 19th- and 20th-century narrative, religion and literature, and 20th-century French thought, although she has a soft spot, too, for the Middle Ages. Erin is currently at the ENS in Paris, preparing a dissertation on contemporary authors' attempts to contend with and create literary, aesthetic, and ethical responses to the problem of suffering. |
| Chapman Wing | |
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Chapman is interested in the interactions between fiction and non-fiction discourses, especially with regard to scientific knowledge production, popular science culture and their relationship to literature in post-revolution France. Particular interests include theater, 19th century technology, 19th century science fiction, problems of the discursive and/vs. the material, and questions of reception. He is especially fascinated by the literary exploration of outer space, and is contemplating a dissertation proposal about French narratives
involving trips to the Moon. |
