Alumni
Welcome to the Alumni Page. If you are an alumnus or alumna and would like to submit your contact information and current activities for this page, please send them along to the webmaster. This page is updated frequently.
Hamid Bahri (Ph.D. 2004)
Assistant Professor, York College
Hamid Bahri is a recent Ph.D. in French and literature, with specialization on North Africa. His scholarly interests include: Arab women’s writings, exile, Diaspora, cultural studies, and translation theory in French and Arabic texts.
His most recent publication is: “Father-daughter relations in the Francophone Maghrebian novel: Assia Djebar’s Loin de Médine” in “Francographies,” the journal of the Société des Professeurs Français et Francophones d’Amérique (SPFFA), May 2005.
Recent conferences include “The Colonial Language and Modern Arab Writing: Ambivalence, Identity and Agency” at the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) 18-21, Boston Massachusetts 2006, and
“The Rise of the Arab Novel in English” at the MLA conference in Philadelphia, December, 2006.
Chadia Samadi Chambers (Ph.D. 2012)
Assistant Professor of French, Augustana College
Licence de Lettres Modernes, Université Stendhal Grenoble III, France Licence des Arts du Spectacle, Université Stendhal Grenoble III, France Master's of Arts in European Comparative Literary Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury, U.K.
Chadia's dissertation examined the emergence in contemporary texts of the Paris massacre of Algerians of October 17, 1961, exploring the role of literary and cinematic narratives in the construction of collective memory of the massacre. While at CUNY, she presented several papers throughout North America and Europe on topics such as: le héros politique dans le théatre de Kateb Yacine (at New York University); research on the use of the short story (at the 2010 NeMLA convention in Montréal); and the importance of the Singer Sewing machine (at the "Women in French" Colloquium at Wagner College). In 2011, she also presented research at the Centre d'Histoire Sociale et de l'Islam Méditerrranéen at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes des Sciences Sociales in Paris.
Carole Fabre (Ph.D. 2007)
Glenn Fetzer (Ph.D. 1988)
Professor of French at Calvin College, in Grand Rapids, Michigan
Glenn Fetzer’s most recent publications include these articles: “ Guillevic et le rythme du familier ” in Guillevic : La poésie à la lumière du quotidien, Ed. Michael Brophy (Bern : Peter Lang, 2009) 59-72 ; “Contrepoints rythmiques et sonores chez Jean-Michel Espitallier et Lorand Gaspar,” Irish Journal of French Studies, vol. 7, 2007 ; “Rapprochements et enjeux culturels : Conversations dans le Loir-et-Cher de Paul Claudel”, in Les Lettres romanes, 78 : 1-2 (2008), 79-92 ; and “Stratégies adjectivales chez Guillevic” in Guillevic et la langue, Ed. Laurence Bougault, (Caen: Calliopées: 2009), 185-193.
Conference activities during the 2008-09 academic year include these papers presented: “Rapporter le mot, saturer l’instant” at the colloquium “Guillevic Maintenant”, Cerisy-la-Salle, France, 11-18 July 2009; “Hocquard et la poétique de la grammaire”, at the 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, March 26-28, 2009; and “Énonciation et repérage dans la poésie de Lorand Gaspar”, at the colloquium « LE TEXTE : modèles, méthodes, perspectives » at Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 25-27 September 28, 2008.
Jean François (Ph.D. 2004)
Assistant Professor at York College
Jeanne Fuchs (Ph.D. 1977)
Professor Emerita in the Department of Comparative Literatures and Languages, Hofstra University
Jeanne Fuchs has worked as a consultant to the Dean of Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She has presented a paper entitled, "Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Native Son," in Vevey, Switzerland at the 7th International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference, June 27-July 3, 2004.
Katherine Galvagni (Ph.D. 2009)
Cara Gargano (Ph. D. 1995)
Chair, Department of Theatre, Film, and Dance, Long Island University
(C.W. Post Campus)
Cara Gargano has presented an paper entitled: “Les transports du deuil: silence et parole dans Pierre ou la consolation de Marie Laberge,” at the “Création et Réalité d’Expression Française” Colloquium at Fordham University, March 2002.
She is the president of the Congress on Research in Dance, and has chaired a panel on Reconciliation and Collaboration in Dance Education and Performance at the International CORD conference on Dance and Human Rights, Montreal, November 12-13, 2005.
Jarrod Hayes (Ph.D. 1996)
Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies, University of Michigan
Jarrod Hayes' recent publications include a book: Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000) and numerous articles, including: “Créolité’s Queer Mangrove.” Music, Writing and Cultural Unity in the Caribbean. Ed. Timothy J. Reiss. (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2005) 307–322; “Queer Resistance to (Neo-)colonialism in Algeria.” Postcolonial, Queer: Theoretical Intersections. Ed. John C. Hawley. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001) 79–97.
His most recent invited lectures are: “Soyinka’s Queer Interpreters.” Comparative Postcolonialities Conference. University of Pittsburgh, 28 October 2005, and “Scandals and Lies: Sapho’s Un mensonge and the Truth about Roots.” Duke University, NC, Durham, February 13, 2004.
Donna Kuizenga (Ph.D. 1974)
Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Vermont
Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Vermont
Donna Kuizenga's recent publications include a book: Madame de Villedieu (Marie-Catherine Desjardins), Memoirs of the Life of Henriette-Sylvie de Molière: A Novel. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil Jr., Eds. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004).
Catherine Liu (Ph.D. 1994)
Director, University of California Irvine (UCI) Humanities Center, Film & Media Studies
Professor, Film & Media Studies, UCI School of Humanities
Catherine Liu's publications include two books: The American Idyll: Academic Anti-Elitism as Cultural Critique (University of Iowa Press, 2011) and Copying Machines: Taking Notes for the Automaton (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
She has also published numerous scholarly articles and essays, including "Hou Hsiao hsien's The Flight of the Red balloon (2007) and D.W. Winnicot," in Pyschoanalytic Pscyhology (June, 2011); "American Intellectual Traditions: The Demand for Relevance and the Crisis of the Humanities," in the Western Humanities Review (Fall 2008: pp. 34-57); “Art Escapes Criticism or Adorno’s Museum,” in Cultural Critique (Volume 60. Spring 2005: 217-244); "To Catch a Falling Star: Political Ambiguity or Jacques Lacan Meets Andy Warhol," in the Cambridge Companion to Lacan (Cambridge University Press, 2002); and "Getting to the Photo-Finish: Photography, Autobiography, Modernity," in The Medium, ed. Andrew McNamara and Peter Krapp. (special edition of South Atlantic Quarterly, 2002).
Alison Baird Lovell (Ph.D. 2005)
Affiliate Assistant Professor, University of Washington in Seattle
Alison Baird Lovell holds a PhD in French with a Certificate in Renaissance Studies. She has a BA in Religion from Barnard College of Columbia University. Her book project is entitled The Shadow of Dante in Maurice Scève's Poetry. Recent publications include a book article on orientalism and Bounin's tragedy La Soltane (1561), as well as an article in Quidditas on Boaistuau's Théâtre du Monde (1558). At the Renaissance Society of America Conference in Montréal in March 2011, she is presenting a paper on two orientalist tales of the Histoires tragiques. Currently she is an Affiliate Assistant Professor in French & Italian Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. Prior to that, she was an assistant professor in Humanities & Classics at Ohio Wesleyan University, and taught French and Italian literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as well as tragedy, comedy, myth, poetry and poetics, and mysticism. She has held a postdoctoral humanities fellowship at Stanford University. Teaching experience also includes French language courses. Scholarly interests include Scève; Dante and Petrarch; humanism; evolving views of women; literary imitation; mysticism; orientalism; intersections of literature and religion, literature and philosophy.
Arta Lucescu-Boutcher
Professor of French, Fairleigh Dickinson University
Dr. Arta Lucescu-Boutcher is presently working as Professor of French at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her book, Rediscovering Benjamin Fondane, was published by Peter Lang in New York City in 2002. In 2006 she presented a paper on "Benjamin Fondane and Existential thought" at the "Conseil International d'Etudes Francophones" in Sibiu, Romania.
In 2005 she received a summer fellowship from "Société des professeurs français et francophones en Amérique" in order to pursue Francophone studies at Université Laval in Quebec. She is presently completing a Master's degree in Spanish literature at Middlebury College in Vermont.
Mario Macaluso (Ph.D. 1976)
Director, Student Teaching Program of World Languages, SUNY at Stony Brook
Mario Macaluso has published a book, Prickly Pears and Oleanders (Authorhouse, 2002).
Sophie Marinez (Ph.D. 2010)
Assistant Professor of French, CUNY, Borough of Manhattan Community College
Sophie Maríñez has won the 2012 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend award to complete a book entitled Building Subjects: Women, Castles, and Self-Construction in Early Modern France, which builds on her doctoral dissertation, a recipient of several grants, including the Carole & Morton Olshan Dissertation Fellowship, the Marandon Fellowship, the CUNY’s Doctoral Student Research Grant, and the 2009-2010 Carolyn G. Heilbrun Dissertation Prize awarded by the Women’s Studies Certificate Program. Sophie has published several articles and presented her research at numerous national and international conferences, including, most recently, the Renaissance Society of America (Washington, D.C, March 2012, San Diego, 2013), and the Modern Languages Association (Los Angeles, January 2011). She has also been invited to give lectures on her research at Vassar College (2011), where she was a visiting faculty from 2010 to 2012, and the Graduate Center of City University of New York (2010). At BMCC, she is directing a Study Abroad program in partnership with the Université de Nantes. She is also the advisor of the French Club and a founder of the student-led French literary magazine Échos du Tout-Monde.
Binita Mehta (Ph.D. 1997)
Assistant Professor and Chair, Department of French, Manhattanville College
Binita Mehta has published Widows, Pariahs, and ‘Bayadères’: India as Spectacle (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2002).
Her recent talks include: “Names, Places, Identities: Monica Ali’s Brick Lane and Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake," Faculty Lecture Series, Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY, on April 6, 2005.
She also Co-organized the joint Manhattanville College-SUNY Purchase Interdisciplinary Conference on the 200th anniversary of Haitian independence, at Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY, on October 29, 2004.
Binita Mehta was invited to the Graduate Center French Department to give a lecture on French pedagogy, as part of our Colloquium Series on Pedagogy, in December 2006.
Pamela Park (Ph.D. 1979)
Professor of French, Department of Languages and Literatures, Idaho State University
Pamela Park is Executive Director of the National French Honor Society, Pi Delta Phi.
Stève Puig (Ph.D. 2012)
Assistant Professor of French, St. John's University
Stève Puig holds a Master's degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He is working on Francophone Caribbean writers and urban literature. He has presented papers on Aimé Césaire, René Maran, Orientalism, littérature-monde, Louis-Philippe Dalembert and other contemporary Haitian writers. He has published articles in Formules, The Journal of Haitian Studies, the Encyclopedia of the Middle Passage and Nouvelles Francographies. He is currently writing the last chapter of his dissertation and is teaching at Hunter College in New York.
Animesh Rai (Ph.D. 2007)
Animesh has published a book entitled: The legacy of French Rule in India (1674-1954) : an Investigation of a Process of Creolization (Pondicherry : French Institute of Pondicherry, 2008).
Amalia Rechtman (Ph.D. 2005)
Assistant Professor, Queensborough Community College
Amalia Rechtman is currently in Paris, where she teaches courses at the Institut Universitaire d'Etudes Juives Elie Weisel.
Her publications include: Child Survivors of the Holocaust : Literature, Trauma, Memory. Ed. Insitute for Holocaust Studies Series (2006), and American Writers, Child Holocaust Survivors and the representation of the War Experience and its impact on their Lives and Work. Ed. Université Paris X - Nanterre (October 2006).
In October of 2006 she presented at a colloquium organised by the University of Paris X-Nanterre's Anglo-American Studies program. Her presentation was entitled, "Reflet des difficultés des survivants de la Shoah en Israel dans leurs oeuvres littéraires."
Noelle Rouxel-Cubberly (Ph.D. 2009)
Assistant Professor of Modern Languages, College of Staten Island
Maria-Luisa Ruiz (Ph.D. 2005)
Assistant Professor of French and Spanish, Medgar Evers College
Maria-Luisa's research focuses on literature and cultural connections between France and its colonies at the beginning of the 20th century, and contemporary Francophone women writers. She is the author of two books: Parole d’Alberta (2001, poetry) and Là où elle devient Méla (2004, novella).
She is the cofounder of Rivarticollection (see web site at www.rivarticollection.com), the publishing branch of a nonprofit organization that promotes Francophone books and writers in the US.
Maria-Luisa's recent professional activities include co-authoring a play that was presented at the Avignon Theater Festival in July 2006.
Her most recent publications include "La Proclamation d’indépendance haïtienne : fiction et matrice littéraire", forthcoming in the next issue of La Revue de recherche haïtiano-Antillaise, Paris, l’Harmattan, and
“Redefining the Concept of God : A Review of Yván Silén’s La Muerte de Mamá" in Calabash, A Journal of Caribbean Arts and Letters, 3:2 (Fall-Winter 2005).
Her most recent conference presentations include a paper given at the March 2007 NEMLA Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, entitled "La maison, la voiture et l’enfant: mondes de Duras, Duras de tous les mondes."
She participated in a panel entitled "Difficult subjects: Caribbean Women Writers on Power and Abuse" at the CUNY Conference on the African Presence and Influence on the Cultures of the Americas, hosted by Hostos College, in November of 2006.
In May of 2005, she was the invited presenter of Yván Silén’s novel La Muerte de mamá at Lectorum, a Spanish language bookstore in Manhattan. Also in May of 2005, Maria-Luisa participated in the round table on Haitian literature at the Haitian book fair at York College, where she read some excerpts from her book Là où elle devient Méla.
Charline Sacks (Ph.D. 1984)
Professor Emerita of French,
Department of Foreign Languages,
Nassau Community College
Charline Sacks has presented a paper entitled, "Focus on Strategies for Adult Learners" at the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (Washington, April 2003).
She is now professor Emerita at Nassau Community College.
Frances Santiago (Ph.D. 1998)
Chair, Department of Humanities,
University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez
Frances Santiago has published an article, "Cinéma Antillais: Cine en las Antillas Francesas-Guadeloupe y Martinique."Sargasso, 2 (2003-2004) 89-105.
Nicole Beth Wallenbrock (Ph.D. 2012)
B.A., Bard College
Nicole Beth Wallenbrock researches French film, and particularly its relationship to contemporary politics. The French Review published her article, "Awakening from the Algerian War: Mon colonel" in October 2011. She wrote a chapter in Lost and Othered Children in Contemporary Cinema (Lexington Books), “The Ideal Immigrant is a Child: Michou d’Auber and the Politics of Immigration in France” and her chapter, "An apology for French torturers: L'ennemi intime", in Cinema as scaffold: Re-inscribing the Tortured Body (Palgrave-Macmillan) is forthcoming. She currently is writing about pork in French comedies. She teaches French at Hunter, and Film at City College of CUNY.
Adelia Williams (Ph.D. 1989)
Associate Dean, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, Pace University
Professor of Modern Languages and Cultures, Pace University
Adelia Williams has been at Pace University since 1989, serving as Chairperson of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures for eight years, before becoming Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. As Associate Dean, she directs the implementation and assessment of the Core Curriculum, and oversees seven academic departments in the Humanities and Mathematics. Her responsibilities also include directing the Pace NEH Challenge Grant and the Straus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies.
Two of her recent papers include, "Poetics of Space/Poetics of Place: Claude Esteban on Edward Hopper," Urban Ecology Conference, Pace University, April 2004; and “How Presidential Assessment Grants Foster the Learning Objectives of a New Core Curriculum,” Co-presenter, AAC&U conference on General Education and Assessment, Long Beach, March 2004.
Dean Wilson (Ph.D. 2007)
Consultant to the Film Studies Program
Vietnam National University, Hanoi
In early 2004, while conducting his dissertation research in Hanoi, Dean Wilson was invited to speak at a conference sponsored by the Ford Foundation on the topic of developing new film studies curricula at Vietnam National University. The following year Dean was hired as a consultant, through the International Institute of Education (IIE), to write a grant proposal on behalf of the university seeking Ford Foundation support for the curricula he advocated at the 2004 conference. The proposal was approved, and in the summer of 2005 the program Dean designed was launched. Its funding was renewed in July 2008 for another three years with a 40 percent budget increase.
The Film Studies program is a full-time, graduate-level writing certificate course in two specializations: critical writing and screenwriting. It is based in the Faculty of Literature of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. This project is a model for new MA and MFA degrees, as well as a teacher training laboratory for a new film school planned for 2012. Since 2005, 76 young people from diverse backgrounds have been certified by the program and started new careers in film and media. Its new website, which includes short films produced by our students, can be viewed at http://tinvanonline.org. Comments in English, French or Chinese are welcome.
Anne E. Witte (Ph.D. 1992)
Professor Culture and Communication
EDHEC Grande Ecole
Master of Science in Arts & NGO’s
Assistant Dean, Intercontinental Track Programmes, EDHEC Business School, Nice – France
Anne E. Witte has held a position as Professor of Culture and International Communication at EDHEC Business School, France since 1991. Her research and writing address questions in cross cultural psychology, cultural history, literature, anthropology, international communication and critical thinking. She serves as Assistant Dean for offshore projects involving exchanges between business schools in New York, Beijing, and Nagoya and EDHEC Grande Ecole, France.
Anne has recently published a book entitled Past and Future Culture (BookSurge Publishing, 2010).