Award

LCL Ph.D. Student Wins International Fellowship

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Doctoral student Joscha Valentin Jelitzki was awarded the Franz Werfel Fellowship by the Austrian Agency for Education and Internationalisation (OeAD) in the spring of 2024.  He is currently in Vienna conducting the research that the Fellowship was awarded to support.
 
Joscha joined the department in 2019 as a PhD student in German and Judaic Studies. In his dissertation he describes the aesthetics of desire in modernist literature from Jewish writers in fin-de-siècle Vienna. In contrast to our contemporary notion of desire as forming an identity, his project rediscovers desire as something that constitutively splits the subject. The project further demonstrates how Jewish-Christian differences were conceived as sexual differences in Central Europe around 1900.
 
Before coming to UConn Joscha studied in Berlin, Frankfurt/Oder, and Jerusalem, and worked as a research assistant for the critical edition of the works of Hannah Arendt. At UConn he teaches courses on German language, literature, and cinema. He has published an article on the poetics of Martin Buber’s life writing (Martin-Buber-Studien 2022, co-authored with Sarah Ambrosi). His article on the biblical figure of Job and its modern reception, co-authored with Dr. Sebastian Wogenstein, is accepted for publication. Currently, Joscha is writing an article on the recent emergence of German Jewish gangster rap.
 
The Franz Werfel Fellowship is allowing Joscha to further a specific dimension of his doctoral research. In 2022, he presented a chapter draft at the Viennese Jewish Studies Colloquium, which offered a comparative reading of the notion of ‘drive’ in Freud and in the Talmud. As a visiting researcher he will have access to the numerous literary archives of the city of Arthur Schnitzler and Bertha Pappenheimer, and connect the literary material to the authentic urban streets and neighborhoods of today. Dr. Wilhelm Hemecker (Vienna) and Dr. Brigitte Spreitzer (Graz) will offer their expertise from decades of scholarship in the field to support Joscha in his research and act as his local advisors.

German Studies Student Wins Prestigious Fellowship

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Guerlina Philogene, a senior in German Studies’ dual-degree EUROBIZ program, has been named a graduate fellow in the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Graduate Program, funded by the United States Department of State and administered by Howard University. The program, which welcomes applications from members of underserved minority communities, prepares students for foreign service careers in the State Department.

Guerlina says she became aware of her strong interest in a diplomatic career thanks to her experiences in LCL, in particular with her advisers in the German Section, professors Anke Finger and Sebastian Wogenstein. “Before enrolling into UConn or EUROBIZ,” Guerlina says, “I met with Anke Finger and spoke to her about my deep interest in German and international relations.” Later, Sebastian “hinted to me, during my exchange year, that it appeared that I am more interested in foreign relations.” Guerlina concludes, “They both seemed to have known where my mind was headed before I discovered my passion while in Brussels.”

According to the announcement in UConn’s campus publication Today, 

Following her graduation from UConn, Philogene will attend graduate school and take part in Pickering activities during her summer break between years in Washington, D.C. She will also take part in a two-week program in Washington this summer as an orientation to the program. Upon completion of graduate school, Philogene will have a 10-week overseas internship at a United States embassy or consulate. Philogene will then have a five-year commitment to State Department employment in foreign service.

Guerlina generously credits her time in LCL with helping her form the broad perspective necessary for a diplomatic career. She says, “The topics we talk about during my German courses also resonate deeply with my goals representing the United States. We discussed topics that are not often talked about when you think about Germany such as for example, Turkish, Black, and Vietnamese minority groups and their experiences.”

LCL, Guerlina relates, “became a place of refuge for me to study.” Moreover, her time in the department represented an important part of her development as a future global leader. “Whenever I go abroad,” she continues, “I always try my best to represent groups that are often looked over when speaking about the US. The German department although small, exemplifies diversity and pushing boundaries.”

Congratulations, Guerlina!

Ana María Díaz-Marcos will be an UCHI fellow

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LCL is thrilled to announce that Ana María Díaz-Marcos has been awarded a fellowship for the 2023-24 academic year at the UConn Humanities Institute!

Ana María, a Professor of Spanish Studies, will continue work in the vein of her exciting digital humanities exhibitions and collections, which she completed as part of the international program Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage. Those open-access digital works published in the last two years include an exhibition about the history of the antifascist newspaper La voz published in Spanish in New York between 1937-1939, coincident with the Spanish Civil War, a collection of articles from the newspaper focused on the topic of antifascism and feminism, and a collection of political cartoons published in La voz by Puerto Rican artist José Valdés Cadilla. The project that she will complete during my fellowship at the UCHI will focus on Spanish antifascist activist Ernestina González Fleischman, whom I discovered while reading La voz. Ana María writes that “this book will provide the first in-depth study of her leadership in New York´s arena of civil rights and protest, and the first edition of her collaborations in the leftist press.”

“Ernestina González Fleischman,” Ana María continues, “led an awe-inspiring life marked by political activism, international visibility, and intellectual relevance. She tirelessly engaged in public activities, published in several New York-based Spanish newspapers, run a radio program in Spanish (also based in New York city), and delivered speeches on topics of human rights, antifascism, feminism, and anti-imperialism. She accomplished all that during her two decades living in New York and, later on, in Mexico. It is hard to believe that such a prominent figure in the arena of the anti-fascist Hispanic hubs in the United States, Mexico, and Spain could have vanished from historical accounts. My monograph will recover the life and intellectual work of one of the most significant Hispanic women to oppose fascism in the thirties and forties. Her life and writings will expand our knowledge of US Hispanic antifascism in that period, addressing materials from archives and leftist periodicals that have not been studied before.”

Xu Peng receives Richard Brown Fellowship

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Congratulations to Xu Peng, a graduate student in Chinese Studies, who has been named the Richard Brown Dissertation Fellow at the UConn Humanities Institute! Xu will continue work on his Ph.D. thesis “From History to the Future: Chineseness in Contemporary Cuban, Puerto Rican and Dominican Literatures and Cultures.” The dissertation studies the literary and cultural representation of Sino-Caribbean experiences. By analyzing contemporary articulations of Chineseness in Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Dominican literatures and cultures, Xu hopes to demonstrate how these articulations recode Chineseness within the mestizo nation and how such recodings provoke reconsiderations of national identity and cultural politics in the Spanish Caribbean.

Departing from the prevailing tendency to (re)discover the Chinese presence in Caribbean histories, Xu takes a future-oriented approach to Sino-Caribbean experiences that, instead of pivoting on a marginalized positionality, is more attuned to each nation’s political, economic, racialized, gendered, and sexualized realties in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Xu hopes that this project will serve as a critical point of entry into the globalized processes of (re)creating Asian subjects and into the continuing interrogation of Chinese futurity in the Caribbean and beyond.

LCL’s Glorimarie Peña Alicea wins Aetna Translation Award

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Glorimarie Peña Alicea has won the Aetna Translation Award from UConn’s English department for her translation of Claudia Hernandez’s short story “El hijo muerto” as “Dead Child’s Manual.” Glorimarie’s translation will appear in the 2023 edition of the Long River Review. Congratulations, Glorimarie, on this signal achievement.

Glorimarie writes that Hernandez’s story, “published in the book titled De fronteras changed my perspective on undocumented migration. After reading Hernandez’s work, I decided to include the cultural production of the Salvadoran undocumented migration in my research, jumping into an unknown world for me.” Glorimarie worked on her award-winning piece during the first course she took to complete the Literary Translation Certificate under the guidance of professor Peter Constantine and with the help of colleagues Sandra Ruiz Lopez (a former LCL Graduate Student) and Angela Pitassi. Receiving this award, she writes, “reiterates the importance of collaboration in the literary translation practice.”

Professor Peter Constantine, head of LCL’s Translation Studies Program, writes of Glorimarie’s work, “In her brilliant and sensitive translation… Glorimarie shows a particular awareness of Hernández idiosyncratic use of the page, where image and word complement one another in very significant ways. It is a tour de force of translation.”

Glorimarie is currently working on her doctoral dissertation, focused on the literary and cultural production of the undocumented Dominican and Salvadorian migrations in the late 20th and 21st century. She is also currently translating the poetry volume Lo arrugado del eco by Yomarilly Meléndez Meléndez, a young Puerto Rican writer. Last year Glorimarie also won the National Dominican Day Parade Scholarship, and she has recently collaborated with the podcast La Brega in an episode about the tension between salsa and merengue music, undocumented migration, and racism in Puerto Rico.

LCL Fêtes its Graduate Students at 2016 Annual Awards Soirée

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Award1The Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages held its Graduate Student Awards Ceremony on Thursday, April 21st, welcoming students, staff, and faculty – along with friends and family – to honor some of the standout graduate students of the 2015-16 academic year. Department Head Gustavo Nanclares delivered some brief remarks and introduced the various award presenters, while Professor and recent Co-Head appointee Jennifer Terni oversaw the crowd’s enjoyment of her spectacularly orchestrated spread of food and drink. The Department is pleased congratulate the following award recipients:

Excellence in Teaching

Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies

Simone Puleo

French

Ryan Evelyn

GermanAward2

Britta Meredith

Italian Literary and Cultural Studies

Silvia DeAngelis

Spanish

Charles LeBel

Excellence in Research

Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies

Arnab Dutta Roy

French

Elisabeth Herbst Buzay

German

Niko Tracksdorf

Italian Literary and Cultural StudiesAward3

Denis Forasacci

Spanish

William Stark

The Borys and Lida S. Bilokur Award

Rafael Jaros

 

 

LCL Fêtes its Graduate Students at 2016 Annual Awards Soirée

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Award1The Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages held its Graduate Student Awards Ceremony on Thursday, April 21st, welcoming students, staff, and faculty – along with friends and family – to honor some of the standout graduate students of the 2015-16 academic year. Department Head Gustavo Nanclares delivered some brief remarks and introduced the various award presenters, while Professor and recent Co-Head appointee Jennifer Terni oversaw the crowd’s enjoyment of her spectacularly orchestrated spread of food and drink. The Department is pleased congratulate the following award recipients:

Excellence in Teaching

Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies

Simone Puleo

French

Ryan Evelyn

GermanAward

Britta Meredith

Italian Literary and Cultural Studies

Silvia DeAngelis

Spanish

Charles LeBel

Excellence in Research

Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies

Arnab Dutta Roy

French

Elisabeth Herbst Buzay

German

Niko Tracksdorf

Italian Literary and Cultural StudiesPicture3

Denis Forasacci

Spanish

William Stark

The Borys and Lida S. Bilokur Award

Rafael Jaros

 

 

LCL Celebrates Outstanding Students at 2016 Undergraduate Award Ceremony

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AwardceremonyThe Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages was pleased to host a large crowd on April 27th at the annual LCL Undergraduate Award Ceremony. Among those present to congratulate this year’s crop of outstanding students was Guest of Honor Justice William P. Robinson III, Supreme Court Justice of the State of Rhode Island and UConn Alumnus (PhD French). LCL is proud to acknowledge the achievements of the following recipients:

 

AWARD IN ARABIC STUDIES 

Excellence in Arabic Language:

John Thomas Ciurylo

 

 AWARDS IN CHINESE STUDIES

Excellence in Chinese:

Hans Rutgers Massaquoi

Michael Cala

Caitlyn Durfee

Harrison Hall

Laura Madeline Jones

Maya Munstermann

Emily Prue

 

 AWARD IN CLASSICS & ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN STUDIES

The Allen M. Ward Prize in Ancient Greek

Alyssa Luis

 

AWARDS IN FRENCH STUDIES

The Gene J. Barberet and B. June Gilliam Scholarship

Justine Plourde

The Fannie Hatheway Boss Prizes

Lucas Bladen

Betty Noe

 The Marie Naudin Award

Carmen Hatchell

The Paul and Joan Meyer Award

Jane Eklund

The Dr. Gene J. Barberet Award

Daniela Doncel

 

AWARDS IN GERMAN STUDIESAwardceremony2

The Marlis Zeller Cambon Scholarship

Jessica Rehaag

The Lederer Prize

Alison Hosey

Excellence in German in the Eurotech Program

Brian Sheehan

State of Baden-Wuerttemberg Study Abroad Scholarships

Siena Biales

Nikita Noskov

Hubert Bis

Donald O’Boyle III

Travis Braisted

Nicholas Oliveira

Josiah Butler

Paige Orlofsky

Hayden Clarkin

Carolynn Pahner

Justin Claspell

Chanhyun Park

John Galligan

Maria Rozman

Conor Glettenberg

Kyle Sanford

Alison Hosey

Sydney Smith-Romanski

Dustin Kaiser

Christian Schirmer

Amber Levasseur

Katherine Stone

Thomas McMorrow

Philip Syrrist

Owen Wilcox

 

AWARDS IN HEBREW & JUDAIC STUDIES

Sylvia and Leo Dashefsky Award fo

r Excellence in Hebrew Studies

Lea Anne Toubiana

The Cohen‐Henes Award

Kerry Carnahan

Seliger Holocaust Studies Award

Lorraine Gordon

 

AWARDS IN ITALIAN LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES

The Friends of Franco Masciandaro Award

Danielle Ullo

The Glauco Cambon Memorial Scholarship

Jacqueline Bodnar

 

AWARDS IN SPANISH STUDIES

Excellence in Spanish Prizes

Allison Battista

Carly Bernheimer

Christiana Field

Ryan Kauer

Matthew Kosior

Alexandra Leonelli

Andrew Lutz

Diana C. Macklem

Michael Mcguigan

Ariana Scurti

Emily Socha

John Sullivan

Jeffrey Tamucci

Jessica Tosti

 

 DEPARTMENTAL AWARDS

Outstanding Senior Scholars

Chinese

Sean Lee

Classics & Ancient Mediterranean Studies

Andrew Harnedy

French

Michael Roy

German

Nicole Henry

Italian Literary & Cultural Studies

Larisa Virvo

Spanish

Paulina Rowe

The Chester Obuchowski Memorial Scholarship

Melissa Scarbrough (French)

Peri Stevens (Spanish)