PhD Alumni Directory

2023

Paul De Morais is a Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley's Center for African Studies

2022

Molly Bronstein is a teaching Fellow at the University of Tübingen.

Aurelia Cojocaru is an Assistant Professor of Humanities in the Program in Cultures, Civilizations & Ideas at Bilkent University, Ankara

Donna Honarpisheh is Curator and Podcast Host at Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami

Christopher Scott is a Lecturer of Greek Literature and Language at UC Berkeley

Amanda Siegel is a Lecturer in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley

2021

Alex Brostoff is an Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College.

Kathryn Crim is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Williams College.

Howard Fisher is an Assistant Professor in the First-Year Writing Program at University of Connecticut

Matthew Gonzales is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Cal State University, Los Angeles, specializing in Latinx literatures.

Emily Laskin is a Postdoctoral Fellow at New York University.

2020

Nicole Adair is pursuing creative writing.

Keru Cai is an Assistant Professor of Asian Studies and Comparative Literature at Penn State.

Sherilyn Hellberg is a nonfiction writer and translater, and recent recipient of a Danish Arts Foundation fellowship.

Bristin Jones is a Lecturer in English and Spanish at UC Merced.

Maya Kronfeld is an Assistant Professor in Duke University's Program in Literature and Theory.

Danny Luzon is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Haifa.

Jocelyn Saidenberg is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Deep Springs College.

Simona Schneider is a Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Udine, Italy.

Simone Stirner is an Assistant Professor of German Studies in the Department of German,  Russian, and East European Studies at Vanderbilt University.

Diana Thow is a Faculty Fellow in Residence at the University of Iowa's translation program

2019

Keith Budner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Philip Gerard is a research fellow at the Centre interdisciplinaire d’étude des littératures (CIEL) of the University of Lausanne.

Taylor Johnston is a Postdoctoral Fellow in American Literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev – Department of Foreign Literatures & Linguistics

Johnathan Vaknin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at the University of Arizona.

2018

Paco Brito is teaching in the English Department at Orange Coast College. 

Marianne Kaletzky is the Executive Secretary of the San Mateo Community College Federation of Teachers / AFT 1493

Irina Popescu is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies at Bowdoin College.

Yael Segalovitz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics, Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

2017

Ashley Brock is an Assistant Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania.

Katie Kadue is in the Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago.

Julia Nelsen is Program Manager at the Institute of European Studies and France-Berkeley Fund.

Jane Raisch has accepted a position in Renaissance Studies at York University in the UK.

Laura Wagner is a Tenure-Track Instructor of English at Orange Coast College.  

2016

Kareem Abu-Zeid is an Editor and Translator and is the recipient of the PEN Center’s USA Translation Prizeand the NEA’s translation grant for 2018.

Madeleine Cohen is the Academic Director at the Yiddish Book Center. 

Emily Drumsta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Brown University.

2015

Kristin Ann Dickinson has won the 2017 Charles Bernheimer award from the American Comparative Literature Association. She is an Assistant Professor of German at the University of Michigan.

Katrina Dodson translated The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector (New Directions; Penguin UK, 2015) which won the 2016 PEN Translation Prize. and was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2015 by the New York Times. She is a translator, writer and blogger living in New York City.

Ramsey McGlazer is Assistant Professor Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. 

Bonnie "Bo" Ruberg is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Ruberg is a scholar of gender and sexuality in digital media and digital cultures, with a focus on queer issues in video games.

Rachel Wamsley teaches in the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics at Ben-Gurian University of the Negev. 

Jeffrey Weiner was appointed as a Lecturer in Comp Lit at UC Davis.

Tristram Wolff won the 2015 Charles Bernheimer award for his dissertation “Romantic Etymology and Language Ecology” and is now Assistant Professor of English at Northwestern University and DUS of their Comp Lit program.

2014

Kfir Cohen s a senior research fellow and the head of the Globalization and Sovereignty cluster at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute in Jerusalem.

Andrea Gadberry is an Associate Professor in Comparative Literature and the Gallatin School at NYU.

Cullen Goldblatt will begin a position as Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at SUNY Binghamton in Fall, 2022.

Jessie Hock was appointed to a tenure-track position in the English Department at Vanderbilt University.

Celine Piser is a Grants Writer and winner of the Anne & Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies.

Suzanne Scala is a technical writer at Google. She is happy to chat with any current student or alumnus/a thinking of transitioning to tech writing or a related field.

2013

Juan Caballero: Assistant Professor, Spanish & Hispanic Studies department, Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana; previously he was in the Department of Spanish and Hispanic Studies at Earlham College.

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

Karina Palau was appointed to several lectureships at UC Berkeley, both in the department of Comparative Literature and the Fall Program for Freshman.

Karen Spira is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Guilford College.

2012

Munia Bhaumik is now an Assistant Professor at Emory University in the Department of Comparative Literature.

Javier Jiménez is an Assistant Dean at Georgetown University. His primary responsibilities include advising students through their junior and senior years as well as working on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within Georgetown College and Georgetown's Hilltop campus.

Andrew Way Leong is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Sarah Ruth Lorenz is now Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian at Franklin and Marshall College.

Shaul Setter is a faculty member at Tel Aviv University and won the 2014 Charles Bernheimer award for his dissertation “After the Fact: Potential Collectivities in Israel/Palestine.”

David Simon received honorable mention for the 2013 Charles Bernheimer award for his dissertation “Careless Engagements: Literature, Science, and the Ethics of Indifference in Early Modernity.” He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of English.

Tobias Warner: Assistant Professor, UC Davis, Department of French.

Zohar Weiman-Kelman was appointed as an Assistant Professor of English Literature at Ben-Gurion University (after a PostDoc at U of Toronto and another gig at Penn.).

2011

Samuel England is an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Amanda Goldstein is now Associate Professor of English at UC Berkeley; previously, she was a post-doc at the University of Wisconsin English Department (2011-12) and was Assistant Professor in the English Department at Cornell University.

Lily Gurton-Wachter is an Associate Professor at Smith College.

Paul Haacke is Adjunct Associate Professor in the Humanities & Media Studies at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

Dascha Inciarte: Gray Lecturer, Department of Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley.

Tom McEnaney is now Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley in the departments of Comparative Literature and Spanish and Portuguese; previously, he was Assistant Professor, Cornell University, Department of Comparative Literature 2011-17. His new book, Acoustic Properties: Radio, Narrative, and the New Neighborhood of the Americas has just come out on Northwestern University’s Flashpoint series.

Lewis Rubman, retired.

Tyfahra Singleton is the Executive Director at Camp Phoenix. 

Amelia Borrego Sargent: Associate attorney with law firm of Munger, Tolles and Olson LLP, Los Angeles.

2010

Polina Dimova is a Lecturer in Russian at Vanderbilt University, and had previously been visiting assistant professor and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Russian and Comparative Literature, Oberlin College.

Hannah Freed-Thall is Associate Professor of French Literature, Thought, and Culture at NYU. She is the author of Spoiled Distinctions: Aesthetics and the Ordinary in French Modernism (Oxford UP, 2015), which was awarded the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies and the Modernist Studies Association Prize for a First Book. 

Seth Kimmel: Assistant Professor in the Department of Iberian and Latin American cultures at Columbia University. His first book Parables of Coercion: Conversion and Knowledge at the End of Islamic Spain(University of Chicago Press in 2015) won the 2017 Harry Levin Prize from the ACLA. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Stanford where he had an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Scholars in the Humanities.

Luis Ramos: Core faculty member in Liberal Studies at NYU; 3-year appointment renewable for five more years.

2009

Robert Adler-Peckarar is the Executive Director of Yiddishkayt of Los Angeles; previously, he had been Assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, Department of German and Slavic Languages and Literatures.bar

Maya Barzilai: Assistant professor of Hebrew Literature and Jewish Studies (Dept. NES & Judaic Studies); University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Roy Chan is now Associate Professor of Chinese Literature at the University of Oregon and had been assistant professor at William and Mary College, Department of Modern Languages.

Irene Siegel: Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Hofstra University. For her article, “A Judeo-Arab-Muslim Continuum: Edmond Amran El Malah’s Poetics of Fragments,” which appeared in the January 2017 issue of PMLA, she received honorable mention from the Modern Languages Association for the William Riley Barker prize, awarded to an outstanding article published in PMLA.

Ben Tran: Assistant Professor, East Asian Studies, Vanderbilt University, East Asian Studies program.

Sarah Wells is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Folklore Studies at the University of Wisconsin and had previously been Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

2008

Michael Allan is an Associate Professor at the University of Oregon.

Shamma Boyarin is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria (BC, Canada) where he is the Director of Religious Studies.

Naomi Brenner: Associate Professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, The Ohio State University.

Elizabeth Young: Assistant Professor, Department of Classics, Wellesley College.

Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé is an Associate Professor in English at Tulane. Previously she was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Fellowship for Scholars in the Humanities at Stanford University and a College Fellow in Comparative Literature at Harvard University.

2007

Anne Dwyer is an Associate Professor of German and Russian and an Associate Dean of the College at Pomona College.

Louise Hornby is an Associate Professor in the English Department at UCLA; previously she was an Assistant Professor of English at Tulane University.

Magdalena Kay: Professor of English (in the field of modern British poetry), University of Victoria, Canada.

David Larsen is a Clinical Associate Professor in Liberal Studies at NYU.

Stiliana Milkova is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Oberlin College.

James Ramey is a Full Professor of the Humanities Department at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Cuajimalpa in Mexico City. He is a Series Editor for Peter Lang’s Transamerican Film and Literature which is considered as dissertation-to-book projects.

Boris Rodin (Maslov): Associate Professor, University of Oslo

Ayelet Ben-YishaiAssistant Professor, English Department, University of Haifa.

Mary Brown: Assistant Professor, French Department, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Lital Levy: Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows, Associate Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Princeton University. Her book “Poetic Trespass: Writing Between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine” (Princeton University Press, 2014) won the 2015 MLA prize for a First Book.

Irene Perciali received an honorable mention for the 2006 Charles Bernheimer award for her dissertation “Personifying Capitalism: Economic Imagination, the Novel, and the Entrepreneur.”

Allison Schachter: Assistant Professor of Jewish Literature, Vanderbilt University.

Armando Vargas: Assistant Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature, Williams College.

2005

Tamara Chin is now Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University; previously, she had been Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago, Department of Comparative Literature, and post-doc in 2005-06 at NYU, Department of East Asian Studies. More recently, she was the co-winner of the 2015 Harry Levin prize for best first book from the ACLA.

Tyson Hausdoerffer is the Director of the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Western Colorado University.

Yu-Ting Lin: International project manager for a private museum/gallery (Angel Creative Dream Park) in Taiwan.

Petrus Liu is Associate Professor at Boston University of Chinese, Comparative Literature, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; previously, he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature, Cornell University.

Miryam Segal is an Associate Professor in Hebrew and the Director of the Religious Studies Program at Queens College in New York; previously, she was Assistant Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, Indiana University, Bloomington.

Shaden Tageldin is an Associate Professor Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature University of Minnesota and won the 2005 Charles Bernheimer award for her dissertation “Disarming Words: Reading (Post)Colonial Egypt’s Double Bond to Europe.”

David Walter: Fellow in the Humanities, Stanford.

2004

Toral Gajarawala is Associate Professor of English at NYU; previously, she was Assistant Professor at University of Oregon.

Jennifer Hosek is an Associate Professor of German Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada; previously, she was a Fellow in the Humanities, Stanford.

Anna Stenport has been appointed the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology. Previously, she was Chair and Professor in the School of Modern Languages at Georgia Tech.

2003

Julie Anderson is an English teacher at The College Preparatory School.

Amir Banbaji is a Senior Lecturer at the department of Hebrew Literature at Ben-Gurion University.

Thaddeus Lisowski is Teacher and World Language Chair at Head-Royce School in Oakland, California.

Lincoln Z. Shlensky is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Victoria. His first job out of UCB was as an assistant professor in English at the University of South Alabama, in Mobile, where he happily worked for three years before taking up his present position in Victoria, British Columbia.

Omise’eke (Natasha) Tinsley is an Associate Professor Professor in the African & African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin; previously, she was Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Minnesota.

2002

Pattie Wareh is Associate Professor of English at Union College.

Todd Hasak-Lowy is Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He taught for eight years at the University of Florida. After he got his tenure, he left the University of Florida. He now writes fiction, nonfiction, and translates. 

2000

Elliott Colla is associate professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. His 2014 novel, Baghdad Central, was adapted for television by Channel 4 (UK). 

Lilya Kaganovsky is Professor of Slavic, Comparative Literature, and Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Laura Schattschneider is an Attorney with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the General Counsel, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Division. She earned her Juris Doctor degree from NYU School of Law in 2006. She was a member of the UCLA Humanities Consortium from 2001 to 2003, and she has held Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellowship.

Alexandra Aryana Isfahani-Hammond is Associate Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Luso-Brazilian Studies at U.C. San Diego. She is also an independent journalist and Critical Animal Studies scholar.

Ann T. Delehanty is John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of French & Humanities at Reed College.

Paul Kottman is Professor at The New School for Social Research.

1999

Laura Gibbs is an online Instructor at the University of Oklahoma. Gibbs has been happily teaching fully online Humanities courses for almost 20 years and is glad to brainstorm about online teaching anytime! @OnlineCrsLady.

César Braga-Pinto is Professor of Brazilian and Global Lusophone Studies at Northwestern University. He is affiliated with the Programs in Comparative Literary Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies and African Studies.

Vered Karti Shemtov is a lecturer at the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University.

1998

Valerio C. Ferme is the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati.

1997

Barbara E. Mann is a Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. 

1996

Tze-Lan Deborah Sang is a Professor of Chinese Literature and Media Studies at Michigan State University.

Katharine Streip is an Associate Professor of the Liberal Arts College at Concordia University.

Rochelle Tobias is a Professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Christopher Larkosh is a Professor of Portuguese at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He is an Editor for the Portuguese in the Americas Series on the Tagus Press(UMass Press). 

1995

Anne Anlin Cheng is a Professor of English, Director of American Studies, and affiliated faculty in the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Committee on Film Studies.

David L. Eng is a Richard L. Fisher Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. 

George Handley is a Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities at Brigham Young University. 

1994

Michel Chaouli is a Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Indiana University

Maud McInerney has been the Laurie Ann Levin Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature at Haverford College since 1996.  Her next book, on Medieval versions of the Troy Story, is due out in 2022.

1993

Sibel Erol is a Professor of Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University.

Karen Sullivan is an Irma Brandeis Professor of Romance Culture and Literature at Bard College. 

1992

Sonia Van Ballaert is a Global Client Director at IBM Global Markets. After completing her Ph.D. Sonia returned to Europe and started her career first working with PwC and now with IBM. 

1991

Kathleen Harris is the CEO of Thrive Academic Planning. She has won the Fulbright award - Peru and Argentina (2004), Oman and Jordan (2009), India (2011, declined).

Bonnie D Irwin is the Chancellor of the University of Hawai'i at Hilo. She was previously the Provost and VPAA at CSU, Monterey Bay.

Sharon L. James is a Professor of Classics at UNC Chapel Hill. 

Naomi Yavneh Klos is a Professor of Languages and Cultures at Loyola University, New Orleans. She is currently a Fulbright scholar at Windesheim Honours College in the Netherlands.

Olga Grlic is a Senior Research Fellow at Duke University. 

1989

Angela Pao is an Associate Professor Emerita in the Department of Comparative Literature at Indiana University. 

1987

Carolyn Tipton teaches in the Fall Program for Freshmen at University of California, Berkeley. 

Eric Downing is a Professor of German and Comparative Literature and an Adjunct Professor of Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Leslie Bary is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

1986

Sharon Kinoshita is a Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the co-director of The Mediterranean Seminar (mediterraneanseminar.org).

Jim Porter is the Irving Stone Chair in Literature, and Professor of Rhetoric and Classics at University of California, Berkeley. He would like to add that it is such a thrill to be back at Berkeley, which has changed in every way but in spirit.

1985

Victor Udwin is an Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Tulsa.

1983

Lynn R. Wilkinson is an Associate Professor of Germanic Studies, Comparative Literature, and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

1982

Dr. Bonnie Pavlis is a Retired Professor of Humanities & English at Riverside Community College District.

1981

Joseph Carroll is an English professor at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. 

1980

Gail Finney is a Professor of Comparative Literature and German at University of California, Davis.

John Eric Bellquist is an Editor and Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing and College of Education.

Walter Cohen is a Professor of English at the University of Michigan. From 1980-2014, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature and a university administrator at Cornell University.

1979

Kenneth Asher is a Professor Emeritus of English and Philosophy at SUNY-Geneseo in New York.

Lisa Gerrard is a lecturer at the Writing Programs of University of California, Los Angeles.

Judith Kellogg is Professor Emerita at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

1978

Raquel Scherr is a Professor at University of California, Davis where she teaches a Summer Abroad Comparative Literature course, “Americans in Paris.”

1977

Lois Parkinson Zamora is a Professor in the English Department of the University of Houston. Her fields of expertise are contemporary U.S. and Latin American fiction, magical realism, and New World baroque art and architecture.

1976

Olivia Eielson is a self employed painter.

Judy Wells is a poet. She helped start Women's Studies in Comparative Literature in the 1970s. Her dissertation title is Madness and Women: A Study of the Themes of Anger and Insanity in Modern Literature by Women. 

Gloria L. Bowles is retired. She was a Founding coordinator of the UCB Women's Studies.

1974

Bridget Connelly is a Professor Emerita of Rhetoric at the University of California Berkeley. She is one of the founders of the Bancroft Library Women’s Studies Movement Archive created in the 1970s by the alumni of the Comparative Literature Women’s Caucus.

Chris Knipp is a self employed film critic. He is a teacher, translator, and a distance runner. He was a Fulbright Lecturer in Rabat, Morocco 1979-80, then taught ESL in 1980-1984. As an artist, he worked in printmaking and also created paintings and wall pieces.

Bogdana Carpenter is a Professor Emerita at the University of Michigan.

Michael Oborne is the Retired Director of the Strategic Foresight Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) in Paris. 
 

1972 

Steven G. Kellman is a Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Kellman's latest book, Nimble Tongues: Reflections on Literary Translingualism, has just been published by Purdue University Press. 

John D. Niles is a Professor Emeritus at U.C. Berkeley and University of Wisconsin-Madison. Niles describes his fiive-year experience at U.C. Berkeley as a graduate student in Comparative Literature as priceless. He gives credits to that experience for launching his career as a scholar and motivating him to continue reasearching, learning and writing even during his quieter years now in retirement.