The Department wishes to congratulate our recent doctoral graduates on their successful job searches. Best wishes and continued success in all your endeavors.

Juan Caballero:  Visiting Assistant Professor, Departments of English & Spanish, Christian Brothers University, Memphis, TN

Sarah Chihaya: Assistant Professor, Department of English, Princeton University

Paul Haacke: Adjunct Instructor 2012-13, Department of Media, Culture & Communication, NYU

Stiliana Milkova, PhD 2007: Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Oberlin College

Karen Spira: Assistant Professor, Department of Spanish, Guilford College

Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé, PhD 2008: Assistant Professor, Department of English, Tulane University; book contract with University of Chicago Press

For a list of job placements since 2005, please click here.

Comparative Literature graduate student Mandy Cohen has just been selected as the inaugural winner of the Renate Voris Fellowship Award for her dissertation in progress, titled “Here and Now: The Modernist Poetics of Do’ikayt.”  The merit-based Fellowship is awarded annually to a graduate student in German or Jewish Studies or related fields in the Arts and Humanities

The judges’ citation singles out Mandy’s critical practice: “compelling close reading, with the purpose of developing  conceptual claims on the basis of poetic form (rather than the other way around, ‘applying’ theory to artistic practice).”

Please join us in congratulating Mandy!

Please join us in congratulating Tim Hampton, Tony Cascardi, and Francine Masiello, Comparative Literature faculty who have recently received prestigious awards and honors—both internal Berkeley Awards and others from national organizations.  More information on each can be found in the News section.

Several Comparative Literature faculty have recently received prestigious awards and honors—both internal Berkeley Awards and others from national organizations:

Tim Hampton, Professor of Comparative Literature and French, is one of five recipients this year of the Distinguished Teaching Award, Berkeley’s highest honor for teaching. Hampton joins fellow DTA recipients in the Department, Karl Britto, Leslie Kurke, and Kathleen McCarthy.

As reported in the Berkeleyan, the DTA Awards Ceremony will take place on Wednesday, April 24, 5-7 PM in Zellerbach Playhouse with a reception afterwards; all are invited to attend and to celebrate Professor Hampton’s achievement.

Tony Cascardi, Professor of Comparative Literature, Rhetoric, and Spanish & Portugese and Dean of Arts & Humanities, is the winner of the 2013 Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Award, presented by the Renaissance Society of America for the best book in Renaissance Studies published between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012, for his Cervantes, Literature, and the Discourse of Politics (University of Toronto Press, 2012).

Francine Masiello, Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish & Portugese, has just been confirmed as one of two Martin Myerson Faculty Research Lecturers for the 2013-14 Academic Year. This lecture series, established in 1912, honors the research of the University’s most distinguished scholars by having them give a public lecture for the full campus community. In garnering this high honor, Masiello joins former Faculty Research Lecturers from Comparative Literature Thomas G. Rosenmeyer (1990), Robert B. Alter (1998), Judith Butler (2005), and Leslie Kurke
(2010).

Dwinelle Language & Literature Departments Ceremony
Thursday, May 23rd
1:00-4:00pm, Zellerbach Hall
Reception immediately following on the Mezzanine Level in Zellerbach Hall

Students may register to participate online by May 3rd.   The University-wide Commencement ceremony will be held on Saturday, May 18th. Additional information is posted here.

Graduate student Yael Segalovitz wins 1st place in 2013 Distinguished Fellows Video Contest

Comparative Literature Graduate Student Conference
Disembodied: Literature and Transmission in a Digital Age

For conference papers click here.

For more information please contact ucbdisembodied@gmail.com

The Comp Lit Library is now home to a number of new books, and the updated library catalogue can be found at the following link: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8FW4j-PxePiMUFJOWFHd3Zobnc/edit.  Library users should note that while the document provides a record of the library’s holdings, it does not support online checkout; please continue to fill out check-out cards in the library for all borrowed material.  Contact Kathryn (kcrim@berkeley.edu), Laura (l.wagner@berkeley.edu), or Tristram (triswolff@berkeley.edu) with any library questions.

Th Department of Comparative Literature would like to congratulate Professor Judith Butler, she is this year’s recipient of the Adorno Prize. This distinguished award recognizes outstanding achievement in philosophy, theater, music or film.  Previous winners of the prize include the film director Jean-Luc Goddard (1995) and the philosopher Jacques Derrida (2001).

Read an interview with Professor Butler about the award here.

Thursday, October 18

5:00 pm
Comparative Literature Library, 4337 Dwinelle

David Sedley,
Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature, Haverford College,

“Bacon, Montaigne, and the Naturalization of the Essay”