University of Connecticut |
CLCS Faculty Profiles
Nehama Aschkenasy
Nehama Aschkenasy earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from New York University in 1977. She also holds degrees in Judaic Studies and English literature from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. As Professor of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut she teaches a variety of courses in Israeli and Middle Eastern literature, Bible, Women’s Studies, and English Literature at the Stamford campus and graduate courses in literature and politics and literature and religion at the Storrs campus. Dr. Aschkenasy has published three books, Eve’s Journey: Feminine Images in Hebraic Literary Tradition, a Choice selection and winner of the Present Tense / American Jewish Committee Literary Award, Woman at the Window: Biblical Tales of Oppression and Escape and Biblical Patterns in Modern Literature. She also guest-edited a dedicated volume of the AJS Review (28:1, 2004), titled The Bible's Presence in Contemporary Hebrew Literature and Culture, with invited articles from senior scholars in the field, to which she also contributed a methodological Introduction and an article. Aschkenasy has contributed chapters to scholarly books ranging from biblical topics to the study of James Joyce, and published numerous essays in Judaic Studies, Women's Studies, and Comparative Literature in publications such as Modern Language Studies (where she served on the Advisory Board), SYMPOSIUM, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies (where she currently serves on the Editorial Board), Prooftexts, Journal of Biblical Literature, the AJS Review (the scholarly publication of the national and international Association for Jewish Studies, where she served as Associate Editor for sixteen years), Midstream, Lilith, Tradition, and Hadassah Magazine. She has also served as guest scholar, distinguished lecturer, and panelist in many academic institutions and community study retreat in the US, Canada, and Europe. She has also frequently given commentary on Middle Eastern politics and culture in the Stamford, CT area television station and published Op-Ed pieces in and local papers. 
Ed Benson Ed Benson earned a Ph.D from Brown University in 1971, then taught at high schools in Providence, at Central Missouri State University and at the Universities of Rhode Island and New Mexico, before coming to UConn in 1998. He wrote Money and Magic in Montaigne in 1995, and many articles on sixteenth-century literature as well as French cinema; his most recent article was “The Screen of History in Clément’s Forbidden Games.” He is currently an assistant editor for literature of the French Review, and the chair of the Executive Committee on the Teaching of Language of the Modern Language Association. 
Anne Berthelot An “agrégée des lettres” and a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Anne Berthelot is now professor of French and Medieval Studies at the University of Connecticut. Following her dissertation for the French “Doctorat d’Etat” on the writer in 13th century French literature, she has written numerous books and articles on Medieval literature, focusing especially on the Arthurian legend with a comparatist approach. She is part of the team who is making the so-called Lancelot-Grail Cycle accessible to a large audience in the prestigious series of “La Pléiade” (Gallimard). Her most recent book is a synthetic presentation of the Arthurian legend for the Editions du Chêne, La Légende du roi Arthur (Fall 2004), which has now been translated into German. She is working on a book-length study of the enunciation problems in the Roman de Perceforest, and at the same time is preparing an edition of a little-known Arthurian romance that may be considered as the source for the Perceforest, the Roman des fils du roi Constant. 
Norma Bouchard Norma Bouchard (PhD, 1996, Comparative Literature, Indiana University) is Associate Professor of Italian Studies and Chair of Modern and Classical Language. She teaches courses in 19th and 20th century Italian Culture and Literature, Italian American Studies, Film, and Critical Theory. Among her publications are The Politics of Culture and the Ambiguities of Interpretation: Umberto Eco's Alternative (Lang, 1998), Céline, Gadda, Beckett: Experimental Writers of the 1930s (Florida UP, 2000), Risorgimento in Modern Italian Culture: Revisiting the 19th century Past in History, Narrative, and Cinema (Farleigh Dickinson UP, 2005), Reading and Writing the Mediterranean: Essays by Consolo (Toronto UP, 2006), Italian Cultural Studies: Negotiating Regional, National and Global Identities, Annali d’Italianistica 24 (2006) as well as numerous critical essays and translations. She currently serves as Associate Editor of Italica and Book Review Editor of Italian Culture, and is a member of the AAIS and MLA Executive Committees. 
Roger Célestin
Rosa Helena Chinchilla Renaissance; Golden Age; Early Modern Literature and Culture; Grammatical Theory in Colonial Latin America; and Cervantes. She is the editor of Fray Francisco Ximénez, Arte de las tres lenguas cakchiquel, quiché, y tzutuhil (1993), and La obra del Padre Manuel Mariano de Iturriaga S. J. en la Nueva España y el Reino de Goathemala (Forthcoming in 2006). Her publications also include a number of articles in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Revista Iberoamericana and other journals. Article topics include Cervantes, Juan del Encina, Garcilaso de la Vega, Nebrija and Juana de Austria, as well as other topics related to literary history (Golden Age, Patronage in the Early Renaissance, Early Modern Spectacle; the Influence of Rome on Spanish Humanism). She has been the recipient of a Newberry Library Fellowship and an NEH Seminar Fellowship. 
Anke Finger Anke Finger received her undergraduate degree (1991) from the University of Konstanz, where she studied German and American Literature and History. Her M.A. in Literary Studies and in Women’s Studies (1995) and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (1997) are from Brandeis University. She has taught at Boston College and, from 1997 to 2001, at Texas A&M University, College Station. She joined the faculty at UConn in 2001. Her research and teaching interests include German and comparative modernism, aesthetics, the avant-gardes, theories of media culture and Vilém Flusser, gender studies, intercultural communication, and the teaching of culture(s) and language. She recently published a book entitled Das Gesamtkunstwerk der Moderne (Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht), and her articles have focused on Franziska zu Reventlow and Frank Wedekind, among others. She is also co-founder (with Rainer Guldin, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano) and associate editor of Flusser Studies, an online journal focusing on media theory, cultural studies, and Vilém Flusser. Current research projects include a collection on the aesthetics of the total artwork for the Johns Hopkins University Press and a monograph on memory, life writing, and the former GDR. 
Joshua Gold Joshua Robert Gold received his B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and his M.A. and Ph.D. in German from Princeton University. Before joining the faculty at the University of Connecticut, he taught undergraduate and graduate courses on German language and literature, philosophy, literary theory, and film at Washington College and Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses primarily on the relationship between literature and philosophy in Romantic and twentieth-century aesthetic theory. In addition to contributing to the German program at UConn, he is also affiliated with the program in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies. 
Miguel Gomes Professor and current Chair of the Spanish Section. Author of Los géneros literarios en Hispanoamérica: teoría e historia (Universidad de Navarra, 1999), Horas de crítica: ensayos y estudiosM (Santo Oficio 2002), Poéticas del ensayo venezolano del siglo XX (Inti, 1996), and several other volumes. He also edited, among other books, Estética hispanoamericana del siglo XIX (Biblioteca Ayacucho, 2003), Estética del modernismo hispanoamericano (Biblioteca Ayacucho, 2003), Antología poética de Jorge Nunes (Monte Ávila Editores, 1997). He has published many articles on modern Latin American poetry, essay, and fiction. 
Benjamin Liu Benjamin Liu, Associate Professor of Spanish, received a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1987, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University in 1994 and 1996. Specializing in medieval Spanish literature, he joined the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Connecticut in 1997. He is the author of Medieval Joke Poetry: The Cantigas d’Escarnho e de Mal Dizer_ (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 2004), of articles in La Corónica, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, and Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, and of several book chapters, the most recent of which is “The Mongol in the Text,” in Under the Influence: Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile, edited by Cynthia Robinson and Leyla Rouhi (Brill, 2004). He has received awards from the University of Connecticut Provost’s Office and Research Foundation, and from the Mellon Foundation. His current research examines economic modes of interfaith relations in medieval and early modern Spain and how the circulation of money and goods among Christians, Muslims and Jews configures the complex social relations between these groups. 
Jacqueline Loss Jacqueline Loss (PhD, 2000, Comparative Literature, University of Texas-Austin) teaches Latin American and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies. Her book “Cosmopolitanisms and Latin America: Against the Destiny of Place” was published by Palgrave in 2005. She is the co-editor of a forthcoming anthology of Cuban short stories to be published by Northwestern University Press and currently she is collaborating on a collection of literature from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Libya, and Cuba. Among the writers she has translated into English are Cubans Víctor Fowler Calzada. Ernesto René Rodríguez, and Jorge Miralles. Her critical essays have appeared in Nepantla:Views from South, Miradas (Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión de San Antonio de los Baños), Chasqui, Latino and Latina Writers, Mandorla, and New Centennial Review, among other publications. She is currently preparing a manuscript whose working title is “Cultural Memory: Cuba and the Soviet Bloc.” 
Lucy S. McNeece Lucy Stone McNeece is co-Chair of the Program in Comparative Literary & Cultural Studies and Head of the Mideast Studies Center at UConn. She received her PhD from Harvard in 1985 in Romance Literatures. She teaches courses in French and English on the literatures of the Caribbean, Africa, the Maghreb and the Middle East, as well courses in Theater, Film, Film theory and Postcolonial theory. She received and American Institute of Maghreb Studies grant, the Provost’s Large Grant and a Fulbright Research Grant for work in North Africa. She has published on Caribbean, African and North African writers as well as writers of the Near East. Her current research concerns the differing relation between signs and images across cultural boundaries and the impact of ancient traditions upon contemporary authors of the Mediterranean and Arabo-muslim world. 
Stuart S. Miller
Gustavo Nanclares Gustavo Nanclares teaches Spanish Peninsular literature and culture. Some of his research interests include the Spanish historical avant-garde, the narrative of the 1920s and 30s and their relationship to international film, and the literature of the Spanish-Moroccan war. He is also interested in peripheral nationalisms in Spain, and has published several works on Basque literature and culture. He is the author of several articles on literature and film in the 1920s and on the literary and intellectual works of Jon Juaristi, Ramón de Basterra, Jorge de Oteiza, Benjamín Jarnés, Ernesto Giménez Caballero, Ernestina de Champourcin, José Bergamín, Gilberto Owen, Mario Verdaguer, Miguel Méndez, and others. He is currently working on a book-length project on intermediality in Spanish and Mexican vanguard narrative. 
Laurietz Seda Twentieth Century Latin American and Caribbean Literature, postmodernism, globalization, film, drama, women and cultural studies. A recipient of two National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Grants (2000, 2003), professor Seda is the editor of the theatre anthology La nueva dramaturgia puertorriqueña and co-editor of Teatro de frontera11/12. She was the guest editor for a Special Issue on Caribbean Theatre for Latin American Theatre Review (Spring 2004). Professor Seda is member of the editorial board for Latin American Theatre Review, Revista Teatro XXI and Boletín del Archivo Nacional de Teatro y Cine del Ateneo Puertorriqueño. She has also published numerous essays on contemporary Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, Argentine, and Chilean theatre in edited collections and in journals such as Hispanic Journal, Latin American Theatre Review, Gestos, Conjunto, and Revista Teatro XXI. In 2005 she directed and organized the VI Conference/Festival Latin American Theatre Today:Translation, Trangender and Transnationalism. And in the same year she created the Premio de Teatro Latinoamericano George Woodyard. Professor Seda is currently working on a book tentatively titled: Cruzando puentes: La dramaturgia latinoamericana ante la globalización, and is co-editing a book of essays entitled Trans/Acting:The Politics of Performing Latin American Theatre. 
Eduardo Urios-Aparisi Pragmatics, Metaphor, Discourse Analysis, Politeness Theory and Applied Linguistics. He has published with G. Reyes and E. Baena Ejercicios de pragmática, 2 vol. (2000 Madrid: Arco Libros), and in a diversity of fields including metaphor ("Quarrelling about metaphor on love a pragmatic approach," in M. E. Placencia & R. Márquez-Reiter (Eds.), Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish, (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Press 2004), Greek comedy and literature, and also in creative writing. He is currently working on multimodal metaphor in Television commercials and in cinema, and on teacher-student interaction. 
Katharina von Hammerstein Katharina von Hammerstein received her Ph.D. in German at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and holds a degree in Math, German, and Education from Goettingen University, Germany. Her scholarly area of expertise is German literature and culture of the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. Her publications focus on German Romanticism (including extensive work on Sophie Mereau-Brentano); autobiographical writings / self-(re)presentations as political practice in nineteenth-century public discourses; the ways women have inscribed themselves into literary, social and political discourses in the nineteenth century; and colonial constructions of Self and Other as represented in the ways Black men and women have been represented in German and Austrian literature, ethnology, and visual arts around 1900. She has also published in the area of teaching German and interdisciplinary curriculum development, i.e., on approaches to linking language learning to the learning in other disciplines, such as history, art history, political science, geography, film, etc. Her scholarly background comes to bear in her graduate courses on German Romanticism, Self-Writings and Writing Yourself, Gender and Literature, Love in Literature, the 1848 Revolution, Colonial Literature and Postcolonial Approaches, and various other topics of nineteenth-century literature and culture. Since von Hammerstein is also very interested in film, she includes film and other artistic representations (e.g., UConn's extensive and precious Kaethe Kollwitz collection) whenever possible. Her research projects regularly take her back to Germany and Austria and she has presented papers at national and international conferences ranging from all over the U.S., Canada and Germany to Russia, England, Spain, Italy, France, South Africa, and Namibia. For fun, she loves movies, inspiring discussions, roller-blading, skiing, and travel! 
Manuela Maria Wagner Manuela Wagner holds an M.A in English studies and Marketing and a Ph.D. in English studies with a specialization in linguistics from Graz University, Austria. During her graduate studies she spent 2 years in the baby lab of Psychophysics in the department of Neurophysiology at the Max-Planck-Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, and 3 years in the Department of Human Development and Psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research interests include pragmatic development in first and second language acquisition, world language teaching methodology, intercultural communication, communicative development in special circumstances, and humor in the world language classroom. As director of the Critical Languages Program Manuela also engages in research in less commonly taught languages. She teaches courses in world language teaching theory and pedagogy, pragmatics, introduction to linguistics, as well as German language and culture. 
Friedemann Weidauer Friedemann Weidauer was born in Stuttgart, Germany. He received his BA in Classics from Reed College, Zwischenprüfung in German, American Studies and Education from the FU Berlin, and MA and PhD in German from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. His research and teaching focus on post-1945 East and West German culture, among his recent publications are articles on Jurek Becker, Wolfgang Borchert and minority literatures. Current research projects include the debate about the Moscow Trials among German authors in exile (1933- 1945) and a series of studies of East German Kulturpolitik as reflected in DEFA films. 
Sebastian Wogenstein Sebastian Wogenstein holds a doctoral degree from the University of Tübingen and joined the UConn faculty in 2005. While completing his doctoral studies, he had been teaching Comparative and German Literature at the University of Tübingen. He also studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and received an M.A. from Washington University in St. Louis. Sebastian Wogenstein’s research focuses on the reception of Greek tragedy in modern German literature and cultural theories, on theater, and on German-Jewish literature. He is also interested in the intersection of literature, human rights, and politics. Recently taught courses include “Word and Myth: Hebrew and Greek Narratives in German Literature,” “Topographies of Terror: The Holocaust, Human Rights, and the Literature of Trauma,” “Text and the City: Studies in 20th Century German Literature.” |
