Since 1971 our program has awarded 156 Ph.D. degrees and 40 M.A. degrees. Our students have produced dissertations on a great range of topics: comparative literary studies, literary theory and criticism, translation projects, women's studies, medieval and Renaissance studies, and literature and history, psychology, and the arts. The following list of doctoral dissertations during the past 17 years indicates the range of interests of the students in our Ph.D. program.

1987

Batorsky, Barry
Gestus in the Theatres of Brecht and Beckett:
Dir. E. Allen McCormick

Meister, Barbara
The Poems of Paul Verlaine As Set To Music by Claude Debussy and the Song Cycle "Songs and Proverbs of William Blake" by Benjamin Britte
Dir. Hanna Charney

Passaro, Maria
A Translation with Introduction of Torquato Tasso's Il Re Torrismondo (Torrismondo the King).
Dir. Fred J. Nichols

Prins, Johanna
The Coin of Redemptio
Dir. Frederick Goldin


Sinnreich, Deborah
Eustache Deschamps' L'Art de Dictier.
Dir. Frederick Goldin


Strefezza, Rose
Music and the Literary Arts as Seen Through Proust

Dir. Mary Ann Caws


Zucker, Charlotte
The Emergence of the Modern Woman in Yiddish and Western Literature.
Dir. Irving Howe


1988  


Carugati, Giuliana
Dalla Menzogna Al Silenzio.Il Viaggio "Mistico" Dela Scrittura Dantesca Nella "Divinia Commedia."
Dir. Fred J. Nichols

Georgulis, Christine
This is a True Story: Fiction Disguised as Fact in the Prefaces of Late 17th and Early 18th Century French and English Prose Works.
Dir. Robert Day


1989  


Alcalay, Ammiel
Re: Orienting/Writing the Mediterrean
Dir. Allen Mandelbaum


Celestin, Roger
From Cannibals to Radicals: Towards a Theory of Exoticism
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


Friedman, Rodger
So Much Nonsense: Poetic Copia in Rennaissance Texts
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


Renzullo, Achille
Marxist Dialectics in Its Application to Literary Theory and Criticism
Dir. Frank Rosengarten


Van Slyck, Phyllis
The Drama in the Picture: Literary Portraiture in James and Proust
Dir. Burton Pike


1990  


Attie, Alice
De-Constructing Textual Desire: Longing, Loss, and Recuperation in Contemporary American Poetry
Dir. Mary Ann Caws


Badendyck, Cynthia
The Lovers of Verona in Lope de Vega and Shakespeare: Problems in Comparison
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


Kraus, Joanne
The Comedy of Paradox: Mythic and Medieval Tricksters
Dir. Frederick Goldin


Pinkus, Karen
The Symbolice Quaestiones of Achille Bocchi: Humanist Emblems and Counter Reformation Communication
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


Tobias, Lillian
The Melancholy Imagination and the Romantic Poets: A Comparative Study of the Changing Odes and Themes of Melancholy in the Poetry of the English, French, and German Romantics.
Dir. E. Allen McCormick


1991  


Bourdeau, Martine
From Mysticism to Postmodernism: From Prison to Prison
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


D'Orazio, Marino
Antonfrancesco Grazzini (Il Lasca): Two Plays Il Frate (The Friar), La Pinzochera (The Bawd)
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


Goldfarb, Lisa
Fixing a Fleeting World: A Study of the Auditory Imagination in Valery and Stevens
Dir. Mary Ann Caws


Hamaoui, Lea
Words and Witness: Narrative and Aesthetic Strategies in the Representation of the Holocaust
Dir. Rosette Lamont


Lintz, Rita

The Body as Text
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


Miskowiec, Jay
Through a Tropics of Light: Magic Realism and Literature of the World
Dir. Gregory Rabassa


O'Driscoll, Sally

Rethinking Realism: Early Women Novelists in England and France
Dir. Robert A. Day, Nancy Miller


1992  


Daniele, Daniele
Deciphering the City: Urban Displacement and Failed Encounters in Surrealist and Postmodern Writing
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


Finkelman, Louis

The Romantic Rehabilitation of Cain
Dir. Lillian Feder


Schneider, Ursula

Ars amandi: A Thematic Inquiry of Sexual and Erotic Exceptions in the Early Tales of Thomas Mann and in the Works of Marguerite Duras
Dir. E. Allen McCormick


1993  

Auerbach, David
Diamonds and Flint by Jose Maria Arguedas: A Critical Translation
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


Brockman, Susan
The Romance of Narrative: Design and Desire in the Odyssey, The Aithiopika, and Don Quixote
Dir. Robert A. Day


DeLange, Margreet

The Muzzled Muse: Literature and Censorship in South Africa 1963-1985
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


Kupersmidt, Jane
Figuring Reticence
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


Leupold, Dagmar
The Oxymoron as Generative Model in Petrarch, Hofmannswaldau, and Musil
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


Pies, Stacy
The Poet or the Journalist: Stephane Mallarme, John Ashbery and the Poeme Critique
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


Pouchard, Line
Tragic Silences in Hamlet and Antonin Artaud
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


1994  


DeVito, Lori
Caterina Percoto's Italian and Friulan Stories
Dir. Hermann W. Haller


Taaffe, Tom
Shaping of the Eternal in the Poetry of Achterberg and Yeats
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


Waters, Aluson
The Language(s) of Exile: Conrad, Nabokov, Beckett
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


1996  


Hamel, Eric

Plotinian Presence and the Work of W.B. Yeats and Yves Bonnefoy
Dir. Burton Pike


Makowiecka, Maria
Women's Departures -- Rewriting/Rethinking Female Travel Recits
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


Rothberg, Michael
Documenting Barbarism: Memory, Culture and Modernity after the "Final Solution"
Dir. Nancy Miller


Simmons, Ann
Fictions of Feminity: Fin de Siecle Representatives of Hysteria
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


Tawil, Judy
Kabbalah in Poetry and Criticism
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


1997  


Sealy, Joseph
Landscapes and Consciousness
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


Tagopoulos, Constance
Myth, Memory and Love in Plato, Seferis and Joyce: The Quest for Balance and Language
Dir. Burton Pike


Vicentini, Ana
The Names of the Name: The Paternal Metaphor in Psychoanalysis and Literature
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


1998  


Fisch-Freedman, Gina
Isabelle De Charriere (1740-1805): A Philosophical 'Impromptu' in the Age of Reason
Dir. Nancy Miller


Zaccardo, Patricia
Calibrating Difficulty in Modernist Literature: The Space for Reading in Djuna Barnes and Franz Kafka
Dir. David Kleinbard


1999  


Bertoletti, Isabella
The Transgression of Boundaries in the Poetry of Francesco Petrarca and Gaspara Stampa
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


Del Re, Gabriele
La Poetica Del "Banale"; Uno Studio Della "Perdita Di Elevazione" Nelle Myricae Di Giovanni Pascoli
Dir. Robert S. Dombroski


Goldfarb, David
The Discourse or the Primitive in Western European and Polish Modernism
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


Mayer, Margarita
Re-Creating Life: The Autobiographical Writings of Elias Canetti and Pablo Neruda
Dir. Burton Pike


Robinson, John
Motion and the Body in Marcel Proust and Gertrude Stein
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


Roussetzki, Remy
A Theater of Anxiety: The Irrepresentable in Shelley's The Cenci and in Musset's Lorenzaccio
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


Rupprecht, Caroline
Subject to Delusions: Narcissism in Sigmund Freud, Henriette Hardenberg, Djuna Barnes and Unica Zurn
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


2000


Grothe, Anja Medusa

Cassandra, Medea: Re-Inscribing Myth in Contemporary German and Russian Women's Writing
Dir. Amy Mandelker


Long, Andrew

Conspiracy and the Modern Novel: A Study of Zola, Conrad and Kafka
Dir. Stanley Aronowitz


Treanor, Sister
Lucia Wings: A Comparative Study of Franciscan Characteristics in Boccaccio's Decameron, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Marguerite De Navarre's Heptameron
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


Weiss, Lou
Rhetoric of Metamorphosis
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


2001  


Calabritto, Monica
The Subject of Madness: An Analysis of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and Garzoni's L'Hospedale De'Pazzi Incurabili
Dir. Clare Carroll


Dal Ben, Paolo

Lo Sguardo Di Perseo: Calvino e Conrad - Dal Testo All' Ipertesto
Dir. Robert S. Dombroski


Fox, Soledad
Cervantes, Flaubert, and the Quixotic Counter-Genre
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


Henao, Eda
Nation, Culture, and Identities: The Colonial Subject's Search for Identity in the Works of Julia Alvarez, Rosario Ferre, and Analydia Vega
Dir. Fred J. Nichols


Jones, Valentina

La Belle Helene de Constantinople: The Text of the Female Body in a 14th Century Chanson de Geste
Dir. Scott Westrem


Luisetti, Federico
Plus Ultra: Enciclopedismo Barocco e Modernita
Dir. Robert S. Dombroski


Nematollahy, Ali
Anarchism and Literature in France, 1870-1900
Dir. Julia Przybos


Sukhanova, Ekaterina
An Anxiety for Influence: Shakespearean Themes and Images Through the Prism of Russian Modernism
Dir. Daniel Gerould


2002  


Cadel, Francesca
Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) ed Ezra Pound (1885-1972): Paesaggi Culturali a Confronto Tra 1968 e 1975
Dir. Hermann W. Haller


DeLuca, Giovanna
Lo sguardo infantile nel cinema italiano e francese
Dir. Eugenia Paulicelli


Pallitto, Elizabeth
Laura's Laurels: Re-Visioning Platonism and Petrarchism in the Philosophy and Poetry of Tullia D'Aragona
Dir. Clare Carroll


Pietrantonio, Vanessa
Debenedetti e la cultura europea
Dir. Robert S. Dombroski


Vigo, Julian
Performative Bodies, Hybrid Tongues: Race, Gender, Sex and Modernity in Latin America and the Maghreb
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


Weiss, Tara
Love's Descent into Melancholy
Dir. Vincent Crapanzano


2003  


Downward, Lisa

Female Developments in the Modern Novel: Neera, George Eliot, Susanna Tamaro, Sibilla Aleramo, Doris Lessing, and Gertrude Stein
Dir. Burton Pike


Gulli, Bruno
An Art Hidden in the Forest of the Earth: Labor Between Economy And Culture
Dir. Stanley Aronowitz


Jones, Charlotte
L'Esprit Romanesque: Fiction, Epistemology, and Gender in France and England, 1641-1688
Dir. Clare Carroll


Minott-Ahl, Nicola
The Construction of a Cause: Gothic Architecture and the Nineteenth Century Historical Novel
Dir. Felicia Bonaparte


Moore, Cyrus
Renaissance and Reformation: From Private Morals to Public Policy in Alonso De Ercilla's "La Araucana" and Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene"
Dir. Clare Carroll


Obey, Erica
The Wunderkammer of Lady Charlotte Guest
Dir. Joshua Wilner


Pascale, Vincenzo

Memoria E Violenza in "Il Sorriso Dell' Ignoto Marinaio" Di Vincenzo Consolo
Dir. Eugenia Paulicelli


Spaldo, Ellen
The Picaresque Woman: Gender-Bending, Genre-Bending, and The Episodic Self in "MollFlanders," "The Runagate Courage," "Mother Courage and Her Children," and "Fear of Flying"
Dir. Nancy Miller


Teikmanis, Nora
Virtue and the Renunciation of Violence in the Fiction of Dostoevsky and His European Contemporaries
Dir. David Kleinbard


2004  


Aitel, Fazia
Barbarology or a New Theory of Exile and Identity: A Study of Exile, Writing and Resistance in Two Algerian Novels: "Vaste est la prison" by Assia Djebar and "Un passager de l'occident" by Nabile Fares


Augspach, Elizabeth
Hortus Inversus: Domineering Ladies and Their Medieval Gardens
Dir. William Coleman


Henninger, Max
Humble Killers: Literary and Cinematic Representations of the German and Italian Militant Left, 1970-1999