University of Michigan, Ann Arbor l College of Literature, Science and the Arts
department of
romance languages and
literatures
Graduate Program
Ph.D. in Romance studies know? What should you be able to do with a Ph.D.? RLL is a community of scholars researching traditional and newer areas of specialization, while also evaluating the function of advanced intellectual work in the literatures and cultures of the Romance world.
Why do your graduate study in Romance languages at the University of Michigan?
RLL encourages graduate students to shape their own intellectual paths, while working closely with individual faculty through mentorship. A unique component of the program is the number of faculty interested in issues that cut across the divisions usually separating the sections of a Romance department. Many RLL faculty members hold joint appointments with other departments within the University. The University of Michigan (UM) is considered one of the top universities in the country and is ranked among the top 20 best universities in the world. Almost two centuries old, UM has a long history of diversity and student activism. It has produced seven Nobel Prize winners, 116 Olympic medalists, and many prominent company founders, including one of the founders of Google. * UM is ranked third in the nation for the quality of its graduate programs. The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures (RLL) draws students and faculty from Italy, Spain, Latin America, France and Francophone countries, as well as the United States and other countries around the world. The graduate program in RLL is designed to explore old and new answers to the questions: What should someone with a * Sources: U.S. News and World Report online college and university ranking and the National Rearch Council.
Our graduate program in Romance Languages and Literatures has two fundamental goals: to provide students with a rigorous critical and cultural foundation and to prepare them for interdisciplinary work in their specific fields of study. The flexibility of our program’s requirements encourages students to take advantage of the breadth of resources which UM offers, without sacrificing depth of study in a particular field. The courses offered reflect the variety of our faculty’s interests: cultural studies, gender studies and feminism, postcolonial studies, philosophy and political thought, psychoanalysis, subaltern studies, philology, history, history of art, linguistics, etc. Our students have many opportunities to participate in interdisciplinary work both within RLL (across languages, national traditions and fields of study) and in other departments (taking classes in anthropology, art history, comparative literature, film and video studies, history, Latin American and Caribbean studies, political science, sociology, women’s studies, etc.). While students will be exposed in our program to a variety of traditional and non-traditional disciplines and their particular approaches, they will also acquire a strong formation in the literatures and cultures of Francophone countries and France, Italy and its ex-colonies, and Spain and Latin America. Additionally, students have the opportunity to acquire a certificate in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Screen Arts and Cultures, and Women’s Studies while pursuing the graduate program in French, Italian, and Spanish. Our program also coordinates with the Department of Linguistics to offer a joint Ph.D. program in Romance Linguistics. Students in our program assume a high degree of student responsibility in shaping their individual courses of study. They enjoy regular, critical, and open contact with RLL’s diverse and distinguished faculty. They benefit from the constant challenge of relating one’s intellectual interests to one’s personal and professional goals beyond graduate school. All of these features combine – along with the stimulating intellectual and cultural environment of the Detroit metropolitan area– to offer an imaginative, flexible, and uniquely challenging graduate school experience. In addition to their classes, our students organize an annual graduate student conference, participate in workshops, and are very active in giving papers at international conferences. The excellence of our faculty and current students has made us successful in recruiting outstanding undergraduate students from the very best universities in the U.S. and from abroad. Moreover, RLL’s excellent placement record attests to its commitment to the professional as well as to the intellectual formation of its graduate students. Our recent graduates are teaching at such institutions as Arizona State University; Barnard College; Bowling Green State University; Claremont McKenna College; Colby College; Colorado College; Cornell University; Dartmouth College; Davidson College; Denison College; Indiana University; James Madison University; Princeton University; The State University of New York (SUNY); The University of Arizona; Università di Bologna; University of Southern California; UC San Diego; Universidad de Puerto Rico; and the College of William & Mary.
What is unique about RLL’s graduate program?
Application Materials Application materials for the program must be received by January 1st of each year. A Master of Arts can be obtained while working toward a Ph.D. However, admission to the program is granted only for the pursuit of a Ph.D. degree. All RLL Ph.D. programs operate under the UM Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies. Therefore, some of the application materials are required by Rackham and others by RLL. Please visit the RLL website to view the application requirements for the program and to see where you must send your materials, http://www.lsa.umich.edu/rll/gradprogram/admissions.html. The Ph.D. program in linguistics is a joint program between RLL and the Department of Linguistics. Please consult the Department of Linguistics website for more information about the application materials to the joint program in Romance Linguistics: http://ling.lsa.umich.edu/home/.
Students The RLL graduate program is designed for innovative scholars pursuing a Ph.D. in French, Italian, Spanish, and Romance Linguistics. There are approximately 40-50 active students in the program at any given time working on a variety of topics. Some recent dissertations include: Material Friendship: Service and Amity in Early Modern French Literature; Reading the Ghost: Towards a Theory of Haunting in Contemporary Spanish Cultureand Promoting the “Minor”: A Figural Practice in Italian Literature and Film.
Our students create very individualized programs of study, often including interdisciplinary coursework chosen from the wealth of offerings within the entire university. Sample Graduate Courses for French Fall 2009 French 501 – Research in Old French Comparative Literature 770 – Interdisciplinary Approaches to Literature French 631 – Intellectual Trends in Modern French: The Long Enlightenment French 660 – Figuring the Artist in 19th Century France Winter 2010 French 652 – Studies in 16th Century French Literature French 855 – The Medieval Posthuman Philosophy 463 – Topics in the History of Philosophy, Descartes’ System Sample Graduate Courses for Italian Fall 2009 Italian 461 – Italian through Opera Italian 468 – New Italian Media Italian 510 – Italian Cities
Winter 2010 Italian 470 – Il romanzo della resistenza Italian 475 – Petrarch Italian 633 – Dante’s Divine Comedy Sample Graduate Courses for Spanish Fall 2009 Spanish 430 – Law and Literature Spanish 824 – Culture and State of Partisans and Guerrilleros Spanish 855 – Literature and Politics Spanish 830 – Film and Society: Contemporary Spanish Film Winter 2010 Spanish 487 – Afro-Hispanic Language Spanish 640 – Spain Minorities: Catalan Literature and Culture Spanish 829 – Think Anti-Humanist Testimony Spanish 881 – Theory and Culture: Razón de Estado: Fascismo y Cultura For more sample schedules please visit http://www.lsa.umich.edu/ rll/gradprogram/sampleschedules.html.
The city of Ann Arbor, founded in 1824, is located in Washtenaw County, 25 miles from Detroit Metro Airport. It is the sixth largest city in the state of Michigan, approximately 28 square miles, with over 114,000 residents. The University of Michigan central campus is located in the heart of the city. Ranked by Popular Science as one of America’s 50 “Greenest Cities,” Ann Arbor is served by a reliable bus system called “The Ride” and the UM bus system makes stops throughout campus.* It’s very easy to live in the city without a car and many residents choose this option. Downtown Ann Arbor is notable for being very walkable and features bicycle lanes throughout the city.
What about the city of Ann Arbor?
A wide variety of excellent restaurants, bars, and cafes can be found in Ann Arbor. In Midwest Living’s 2009 and 2010 “Best of the Midwest” issues, Ann Arbor ranked third as the “Best Midwest Food Town.” From authentic Taiwanese cuisine, a favorite among Chinese graduate students, to regional Indian to Cuban to organic Sicilian-style pizza, Ann Arbor has a place to suit every taste. It also boasts a thriving Farmer’s Market, located in historic Kerrytown, which is open every Wednesday and Saturday. A great time to try a new restaurant is during the city’s biannual Restaurant Week. “Taste of Ann Arbor” is another opportunity to try the best of the city each year in late spring. Beautiful year-round, there are a number of festivals and activities to enjoy. In summer, there is the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, started in 1984 and considered one of the leading performing arts festivals in the country. There is also the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair, established in 1960, drawing over 500,000 people from around the country each year. Winter brings the annual Ann Arbor Film Festival, “the longest-running independent and experimental film festival in North America,” which showcases avant-garde films, documentaries, and animation. In addition to its annual, biannual, and seasonal offerings, the city of Ann Arbor has great shopping year-round, with some of the most interesting stores being in historic Kerrytown. Briarwood Mall is conveniently located next to Interstate-94. There is also a thriving music scene. UM offers many free concerts during the year and artists from every genre can be found almost every weekend playing on campus and off. In 2010, Parenting magazine called Ann Arbor one of the “Ten Best Cities for Families.”* There are a number of museums, free and open to the public, as well as 157 city parks, that families can enjoy. There are also programs designed for children and young adults through the Ann Arbor Public Library system and the Ann Arbor YMCA. * Sources: Parenting magazine June 2010 issue; Popular Science 2008 issue
RLL French Faculty
David Caron. Professor. 20th-21st Century French Literature and Culture; Queer Studies; AIDS; the Holocaust and Jewish Studies. Alina Clej. Associate Professor. 19th-20th Century French Literature and Culture; Comparative Literature; European Studies; 20th Century Art and Architecture. Frieda Ekotto. Professor. 20th-21st Century Literature, Culture and Cinema; Africana Studies; Critical Race Theory; Comparative Literature. Michèle Hannoosh. Professor. 19th Century French Literature, Art, and Society; Art Criticism and Relations between the Arts; the City; Walter Benjamin; the History of Modernity; the Representation of History; Parody; Comparative Literature; the Mediterranean. Jarrod Hayes. Associate Professor. French and Francophone Literature. George Hoffmann. Associate Professor. 16th Century French Literature; Renaissance Studies. Peggy McCracken. Professor. Medieval French and Occitan Literature; Gender and Sexuality; Women’s Studies. Helene Neu. French Lecturer IV. Elementary Language Instruction; French phonetics; Second Language Acquisition. William Paulson. Professor. 18th-19th Century French Litera-
ture; Literary Theory; Contemporary Literature; Relations of Culture, Science, and Technology.
RLL Italian Faculty
Giorgio Bertellini. Associate Professor. Silent Cinema History; Transnational Visual Culture; Italian Cinema. Vincenzo Binetti. Professor. 19th-20th Century Italian Literature; Cultural Studies; Literary Theory. Alison Cornish. Associate Professor. Italian Literature; Medieval and Renaissance; Dante, Translation; Vernacularity; Science and Literature; Music and Literature; Renaissance Drama. Romana Habekovic. Senior Lecturer. Foreign Language Methodology; Contemporary Italian Literature and Culture. Karla Mallette. Associate Professor. Medieval Mediterranean Literature in Italian, Arabic, Latin; Translation between Greek, Arabic and Latin during the Middle Ages. Paolo Squatriti. Associate Professor. Italian History and Culture; Medieval European History; Landscape and Power; Technology and Resource Use; Environment.
RLL Spanish Faculty
Paulina Alberto. Assistant Professor. Modern Latin American
History and Historiography; Brazil; Ideologies of Race, Nation, and Citizenship; Intellectual/Cultural History; Afro-Latin America/Diaspora. Catherine Brown. Associate Professor. Medieval Literature; Literary Theory; Comparative Literature. Steven Dworkin. Professor. Linguistics; Medieval Spanish Linguistics. Olga Gallego. Spanish Lecturer III. Spanish Applied Linguistics. Enrique García Santo-Tomás. Professor. Early Modern Spanish Literature. Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola. Professor. Latin American Literature; Critical Theory; Comparative Literature; Trans-Atlantic Studies; the Politics of Publishing, Censorship, and Literary Markets. Juli Highfill. Associate Professor. 19th-20th Century Peninsular Literature; Latin American Poetry; Brazilian Literature; Literary Theory. Kate Jenckes. Assistant Professor. Contemporary Latin American Literature; Southern Cone; Literary and Cultural Theory; Visual Arts; Cultural Studies; Poetry; Testimony. Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes. Associate Professor. Latin American, Caribbean and US Latino/Latina Literature and Culture; Theater and Performance Studies; Queer, Lesbian and
Gay Studies; Women’s and Gender Studies. Cristina Moreiras-Menor. Associate Professor. Modern and Contemporary Spanish Literature and Film; Psychoanalysis; Cultural and Political Theory; Women’s Studies. Daniel Noemi. Assistant Professor. Latin American Culture and Politics; 20th-21st Century; Film; Social Realism; AvantGarde, Post-boom; Literary Theory. Jaime Rodríguez-Matos. Assistant Professor. Caribbean Literature; Latin American Poetry; Latino/a Culture; Political Theory; Philosophy. Javier Sanjinés. Professor. Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies. Teresa Satterfield. Associate Professor. Theoretical Linguistics; First Language Acquisition; Bilingualism; Generative Romance Syntax; Complex Adaptive Systems. Ryan Szpiech. Assistant Professor. Medieval Iberian Literatures; Sephardic Studies; Medieval Islam. Gustavo Verdesio. Associate Professor. Colonial Studies; Native American Studies; Pre-Contact Indigenous Societies; Material Culture; Popular Culture; Theory. Gareth Williams. Associate Professor. Contemporary Latin American Literature, Film, and Cultural/Critical Theory (Deconstruction, Subaltern Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Cultural Studies).
department of romance languages and literatures www.lsa.umich.edu/rll/gradprogram 734.764.5344 rll-admissions@umich.edu
Š 2010 Regents of the University of Michigan Regents of the University of Michigan: Julia Donovan Darlow, Laurence B. Deitch, Denise Ilitch, Olivia P. Maynard, Andrea Fischer Newman, Andrew C. Richner, S. Martin Taylor, Katherine E. White, Mary Sue Coleman ex officio.