Graduate Students and Exchange Teaching Assistants

Joshua Armstrong

Joshua Armstrong is currently a PhD candidate whose dissertation will attempt to sort out the modalities of so-called “projects of attention” (Sheringham) or “methodological writing projects” (Veivo) in contemporary French prose literature—projects where the content comes not from a fictitious plot but constitutes instead a kind of literary report or log of the writer’s experience as he or she sets out into an environment following a pre-established program that allows for digression and open-ended results (examples include Jean Rolin’s La Clôture, Jacques Réda’s Le méridien de Paris, François Bon’s Paysage fer, Philippe Vasset’s Un livre blanc). Armstrong also serves as Associate Director of the UVa in Lyon Study Abroad program. His paper, "Window Crossings in Jean Rolin, François Bon, Raymond Bozier, and Olivier Rolin" was awarded the Prix Recherche au Présent at the 2012 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium and will be published in Contemporary French and Francophone Studies: SITES (forthcoming). His article, "The Glorified Woman: Abstraction and Domination in Le Livre du voir-dit," will be published in the Romanic Review (forthcoming). He’s also published book reviews in Rattle, VQR and The French Review, His creative writing—often dealing with themes of French culture or literature—has been published in The Modern Word, Quiddity International Literary Review, and The Hook.
Whitney Bevill

Whitney Bevill took quite a circuitous route to the Ph.D. program at UVa. After earning her B.A. from Clemson University, she spent a year and a half teaching English in China. Her next adventure took her to Istanbul, where she taught English to adults for over a year. After completing an M.Ed. in Second Language Education at the University of Charleston, in South Carolina, she won a year-long teaching fellowship to the Universite de Versailles and then stayed in France another year to teach at Universite deCergy-Pontoise, near Paris. She just received her M.A. in French from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst where she wrote on "Subversive Representations of Education in Francophone Literature of the Colonial Maghreb" for her Master's Thesis.She continues studying Francophone literature from the Maghreb in her doctoral studies here at UVa.
Katell Bourhis

Katell Bourhis is a French citizen and joined the graduate program in the French department in fall 2010. During the summer 2011, she taught at the Summer Language Institute at UVA. Katell possesses the French equivalents of a bachelor’s degree in teaching methods and English language, and a master’s degree in English language instruction (CAPES). She taught ESL in France for five years prior to moving to Charlottesville where she taught French gifted children from 2005 to 2010. Her main interests are American and French relationships, particularly cultural gaps and their consequences, and 20th century francophone literature and cinema. She believes that learning her own culture abroad, changing perspectives and switching her system of references, has been a very constructive experience. She loves biking and walking as means of transportation and yoga.
Marissa Brown

Originally from Pennsylvania, Marissa started the doctoral program at UVa in 2007. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Modern Languages (French and Spanish) from Pace University in New York and studied for a year in Aix-en-Provence. She was able to work as a student interpreter at the United Nations during her senior year. Marissa earned a Master of Arts at the University of Georgia where she completed a thesis entitled "La notion de l'Autre dans L'Invitée de Simone de Beauvoir." She is interested in transnational studies and the relationships between female novelists of France, Africa and the Caribbean.
Nathan Brown

Nathan is a current PhD student at the University. His academic interests include Enlightenment thought, questions of identity and nationality in 18th century France, and Quebec nationalism.
Jen Burstein

Jen Burstein is a second year M.A. student at UVA (BA in French and History, Michigan State University 2008) originally from Farmington Hills, Michigan. She enjoys French (and non-French) literature, philosophy, jazz,and galavanting around Europe in search of the above and other such bohemian pursuits. She also enjoys alliteration, long walks on the beach, over-priced coffee and Scrabble. Jen has lived and studied in France (Nantes and Tours) and in Ireland, where she has furthered her medievalist armory, adding Latin and Celtic studies, and learned to appreciate a good pint of Guinness. She is particularly interested in French medieval courtly literature, medieval autobiographical writings, and Celtic studies. She is also interested in 18th century literature, the history of philosophy, existentialism, and gender and sexuality studies. She is currently on a one-year leave from grad school in order to pursue various non-academic life goals.
Danielle Carlotti-Smith

Danielle is a Ph.D. candidate in French and New World Studies. As an undergraduate at Washington State University, she spent one year on exchange at Université Montpellier III. Danielle earned an M.A. in French Cultural Studies from Columbia University, where she wrote a thesis titled "Yeux de chat, paupières de porcelaine: Le Japon dans l'imaginaire de Pierre Loti et Roland Barthes" (Director: Professor Françoise Gaillard, Paris VII). At U.Va., she has taught beginning, intermediate, and advanced-level French language and conversation courses, French Literature of the 19th and 20th Centuries (French Department Teaching Fellowship), Introduction to French Cinema (TA for Professor Cheryl Krueger with the support of a Teaching and Technology Initiative Grant), and Introduction to Brazilian Portuguese (through the School of Continuing and Professional Studies). In 2009, she was recognized with both the French Department GTA Award and the All-University Outstanding Teaching Award. Danielle's teaching and research interests include Francophone New World literature and culture; 19th, 20th, and 21st-century French literature; French cinema; 20th and 21st-century Francophone women writers of Africa and the Maghreb; comparative Caribbean and Latin American literature; and critical theory (especially postcolonialism, cultural studies, ecocriticism, and performance studies). Her dissertation, "A Field of Islands: The Intertextual Geography of the roman de la canne" (Director: Professor Emeritus A. James Arnold), examines the novels of Martinican author Raphaël Confiant in the broader cultural, geographic, environmental, and literary context of the French and Spanish-speaking Caribbean and Brazil. Recent publications include “La novela de la caña: Insular or International Phenomenon?” in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature (2008), "Sugar's Sequels: Inventing Traditions in the Plantation Saga Novels of Martinique and Brazil" in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature (2011), and a translation of Professor Stéphanie Bérard's article, "Pour une littérature-monde and Éloge de la Créolité: Two Manifestos, Two Incompatible, Competing, or Consecutive Visions?" in The Literary Politics of Twenty-first-Century France, Lexington Books (forthcoming). She has also written book reviews for The New West Indian Guide, The American Book Review, Forum for Modern Language Studies, and Symploke (forthcoming, 2012).
Aline Charles

Aline is from "le" Paris, France. She studied American Civilization at La Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III. During her "maitrise" she spent a semester at Middlebury College, VT, researching her thesis concerning the Equal Educational Opportunity Act, a law regarding the way education is financed in Vermont. After obtaining her degree, she spent two years at Middlebury as the TA of the French Department, Director of the French House and Instructor of FREN101-103. Now a Master of the French language and literature from UVA, she is in her second year of the PhD program. Her main interests are in francophone Africa, the Arab world, women writers and documentary films.
Peter Chekin

Peter entered the M.A. program in 2011 after receiving his B.A. in Modern Foreign Languages from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. He was born in Ithaca, NY, but also grew up in Russia and Germany. Peter is primarily interested in Romance linguistics, the history of the French language and its dialects, and the various roles that France’s Roman heritage played in its cultural and linguistic development.
Shannon Connolly

Shannon graduated from Kansas State University in May 2009, receiving a BA in Modern Languages and a BA in Anthropology. Her emphasis within anthropology is archaeology and ethnohistory; during the summer of 2007, Shannon participated in the excavation of a Seneca village site in the Finger Lakes region of New York, in association with Cornell University. Shannon earned her MA in 2011 from the University of Virginia Department of French Language and Literature, and is now a first year doctoral student. Her research centers on the Essais of Michel de Montaigne, and how his writing and philosophy engages with and reflects culture contact between the Old World and the indigenous peoples of the New World. Shannon had the honor of visiting France for the first time during the summer of 2008 as a Pi Delta Phi Joseph W. Yedlicka national scholarship recipient; she enjoyed studying in Avignon and experiencing French heritage and culture. Other interests include music and dance – Shannon has been a performing violinist and ballerina for most of her life. In her spare time, Shannon also enjoys doing Tae Kwon Do and writing creatively.
Leah Darkes

Leah is a first-year MA student from Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her BA in French from Elon University, and is particularly interested in Francophone and New World literature. She spent spring of 2009 in Paris and goes back whenever she has the chance. Besides traveling to visit friends from around the world, Leah enjoys doing triathlons, being outside and in the ocean, and teaching English to non-native speakers.
Tanya Déry-Obin

Tanya Déry-Obin is originally from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She received a BA in Literature Studies at l’Université du Québec à Montréal and an MA in Francophone Literature at Concordia University. In her MA thesis, she explored the discourse of nationhood in the work of Wajdi Mouawad, a playwright born in Lebanon who now lives and works both in Quebec and France.

Tanya is a first year Ph.D. student coming to U.Va to research Caribbean and Quebecois theatre, literature and culture. Her interests include theatre, Francophone New World Literature, gender and sexuality studies and critical theories. When she is not reading, writing or at the theatre, Tanya can be found either biking or with her friends, family or cats.
Helen Dunn

Helen grew up in Raleigh, NC, which explains her frequent use of such antiquated terms as "y'all" and "ma'am". She did her undergraduate studies at UNC-Chapel Hill (go Heels!) where she got BAs in French and Psychology. She arrived in Charlottesville in 2003 and got her MA from UVa in 2005. She then moved over the big blue ocean to participate in UVa's graduate teaching exchange in Nice, France for a year but just couldn't stay away from the French department. So she is back to continue her studies in the PhD program, where her main interest is in fashion in the 17th and 18th century novel.
Monica Ehrlich

Monica Ehrlich entered the PhD program in the fall of 2008 after completing both her BA and MA in French Literature at Florida State University in 2006 and 2008, respectively. Monica has been and still is enamored of the Middle Ages. She completed an MA thesis on the figure of the sibyl in the works of Christine de Pizan. Currently, she is working on hermits and their environment(s) in medieval French literature. Her theoretical research interests include ecocriticism, posthumanism and animal studies.
Caroline Gates
B.A. French, University of Arizona (1997), M.A. French, University of Virginia (2005). Originally from North Carolina, Caroline has lived in France and Turkey among other places, including four years in New York City where she worked for a publishing house specializing in foreign languages. In addition to sixteenth and twentieth-century French literature, her interests include Medieval and Renaissance art, architecture, and cross-cultural literary and artistic exchanges, as well as modern fiction on the early modern period. Her dissertation examines representations of travel in sixteenth-century French poetry and narrative fiction.
Rachel Geer

Rachel Geer is originally from Lubbock, Texas, but has recently started calling herself a Virginian. She completed her BA in Literary and Cultural Studies at William and Mary in 2003. Her degree in cultural studies included a specialization in ‘visual and verbal poetics’ that she was largely able to explore during her junior year at the Université de Montpellier III, in France. From 2004-2005 she spent time as an English teaching assistant at a lycée in Nimes, and she is currently participating in the exchange between UVa and the Université de Nice as a ‘lectrice d’anglais’. After completing her master’s degree at the University of Virginia in May of 2008, Rachel is now pursuing her doctoral studies with a particular interest in late medieval literature, although she also maintains secret and passionate love affairs with Montaigne and Proust.

Bonnie Gill

Bonnie is a first year Ph.D. student pursuing her interests in francophone studies, translation, and conflict resolution at UVA. She received her M.A. in Cultural Translation from the American University of Paris in 2011, writing about the role cinema plays in understanding political conflict (with particular reference to the relationship between France and Algeria.) Before Paris she lived in New York and in Boston, where she received a B.A. in English from Boston University. Aside from academic pursuits, Bonnie likes running, good books, exploring new cities, fireplaces, sunshine, and hot chocolate. She is originally from Montclair, New Jersey (or as she calls it, “just outside NYC.”)

Brandon Guernsey

Originally from Greenville, Michigan, Brandon received his MA in French Literature from UVA in May, 2009. He completed his undergraduate work in 2003 at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, majoring in French and International Studies. While at Hope, he also spent an academic year abroad in programs with IES in Paris, France, and SIT in Bamako, Mali. Upon receiving his Bachelor’s degree in May 2003, Brandon went on to serve as an agroforestry volunteer for the U.S. Peace Corps, working for three years in Selibaby, Mauritania (West Africa). To accentuate his graduate studies, he has enjoyed participating in UVA’s French Summer Program in Lyon, France, in 2007, and working as the graduate assistant for the UVA in Morocco Summer Program in 2009. Thanks to the department's annual TA exchange program, his most recent adventures abroad include teaching as alecteur d'anglais at the Université de Provence, Aix-Marseille, during the 2010-2011 academic year. Currently pursuing his doctoral studies, Brandon’s main areas of interest are the literature and culture of francophone Africa and the influence, past and present, of French colonialism in North and West Africa.
Michelle Harris

A first year MA student at UVa, Michelle is originally from San Antonio, Texas. She finished her BA in French with a minor in Spanish at the University of Texas, where she had the opportunity to study abroad in Rennes during the fall of 2007. While at UT, she wrote an undergraduate honors thesis over Jacques Cazotte's usage of dream imagery. After graduating in 2008 and spending nearly two years working at Apple, Inc., Michelle ventured into the French countryside for a year as an assistante d'anglais at a lycée in Vendée. Once she returned from France, she spent the summer working with 136 ballerinas as one of the coordinators for the American Ballet Theatre Summer Intensive at UT. At the moment, her academic interests primarily center around dream imagery and the study of literature of the fantastic.
Elizabeth Head

Elizabethis a PhD candidate from outside of Richmond, Virginia. Before coming to UVA in 2004, she attended Furman University in Greenville, SC, where she completed her BA in French in 2004 and spent a semester in Versailles, France.She received her MA from UVA in May 2006. She then took a year off from studying to teach English in Lyon, France, through the UVA exchange-TA program. She has served as a TA, teaching elementary and intermediate French, for five years at UVA.She is currently a PhD candidate specializing in Medieval French Literature. Her dissertation is called "When Saints Speak: Direct Discourse and Authority inThirteenth-Century French Lives of Martyr Saints" and treats the role of what saintly characters are quoted as saying in thirteenth-century hagiographic texts. She spent the last year in Paris, France, doing manuscript research for her dissertation in various libraries and teaching English at the Univeristé Paris-Est-Créteil (UPEC, formerly Paris-XII) through UVA's exchange program. She is returning to Paris in September for a second year at UPEC and will continue writing her dissertation. Last year,Elizabeth was awarded a travel grant from the French Department which allowed her to visit manuscripts held in Carpentras, France; Budapest, Hungary; and Oxford, England. In her free time, Elizabeth enjoys travel (possible travel destinations for this next year in Paris are Berlin and Vienna), spending time with friends, movies, and reading current popular fiction in French or English. In Paris, she has especially enjoyed taking long walks around the city to discover new neighborhoods and sampling new pastries.
Jennifer Holm

Jennifer, originally from Omaha, Nebraska, is a first year PhD candidate. In 2009, Jenn earned her MA in French literature from the University of Virginia. She received her BA in French and political science from Grinnell College in 2004. While an undergraduate student, she studied in Nantes, France. For three years, Jennifer taught high school French and Spanish with Teach for America in Baltimore, Maryland. While in Baltimore, she earned an MAT from Johns Hopkins University. During the summer of 2008, she participated in the UVA Summer Program in Lyon, France. Her interests lie primarily in the 17th century, 20th century and contemporary French literature.

Hannah Holtzman

Hannah received her BA in English from the University of Michigan, during which time she studied at the Paris IV-Sorbonne. After graduation, she worked in Fukuoka, Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher through the JET Programme and then spent a year working as an au pair in Paris. In 2008, she moved to Charlottesville to attend the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, where she taught creative writing and an academic writing course on food and politics. She served as editor of the literary journal Meridian, and her fiction has been published in The Gettysburg Review. Current academic interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, film, and cultural history; the relation between politics and aesthetics; and questions of space, time, and encounter.

Christopher James

Chris is a doctoral student focusing on 19th century literature and the novel throughout all periods of French literature. He received a B.A. in French and Telecommunications and an M.A. in Linguistics and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from Ball State University. He spent a semester studying at Université Laval in Québec, and has spent two years teaching in France (one year each at the Université Nancy II and Université Lyon II). He is now concentrating on finishing coursework and preparing for qualifying exams in Fall 2008.
Gayle Jones

Gayle Smith, originally from Temple, Texas, entered UVa as a PhD student in 2005. In 2003, she graduated with a B.A. in French and Economics from Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina where she also competed for four years as a member of the varsity tennis team. She earned a M.A. in French (2005) at the Middlebury College French School in Middlebury, VT and in Paris, France. Before continuing her studies at the University of Virginia, she taught beginning French at North Mecklenburg High School in Huntersville, North Carolina. Gayle’s research interests include post-WWII French and African Francophone literature and film. In addition to her passion for research and teaching, she also enjoys learning other languages, spending time in Chicago, competing in triathlons and middle- to long-distance running races and playing tennis.
Anna Keefe

Originally from Minnesota, Anna is a 2nd-year doctoral student at UVa. She received her B.A. from the University of Minnesota, Morris in French and Music, where she also spent a semester in Montpellier. She received a UROP grant to write an undergraduate thesis on French and Francophone Rap, combining her two main interests. After graduation, Anna taught for a year in Brittany as an assistante de langue. The following year, she taught various subjects at a non-profit school for Appalachian youth in eastern Kentucky. Feeling a need to re-enter the intellectually stimulating world of academia, Anna entered the M.A. program in French Literature at Boston College. She extended her program for one year in order to study at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. Her final research project explored the adaptation of the role of women in two of Sembène's novels and films. Anna's research interests include Sub-Saharan African literature, culture, and film; colonialism in France during the interwar period; and the intersection of music and culture in 20th-Century France.
Jessie Labadie

Jessie is a PhD student from Staunton, VA. She received a BA in French and Spanish from Mary Baldwin College in 2007 and completed the MA in French at UVA in 2010. Her current interests include translations, adaptations and the travel motif in the Early Modern period. When she's not reading, writing or thinking about doing those things, she loves learning new languages, going on long hikes and saving up for plane tickets.
Kate Lakin

Kate is a PhD student from Mathews, Virginia, a lovely rural community on the Chesapeake Bay. She received a BA in Comparative Area Studies (focusing on Western Europe and Africa) from Duke University. While at Duke, Kate was a member of the Varsity Women's Rowing team, but took full advantage of her summers to study in Paris and work as an au pair in Narbonne. After graduation, she was an assistante d'anglais in a primary school in St. Denis, La Réunion. She returned to the U.S. in May 2004 and after a brief and uninspiring stint in sports marketing, she came to UVA. She received her MA in 2007 and has participated in UVA's Summer Program in Lyon twice, first as as a student and second as a Teaching Assistant. Kate loves teaching and is specializing in Francophone African literature and civilization.
Loisa Landragin
Loisa is a French Exchange Teaching Assistant, visiting from the University of Aix-en-Provence.
Lise Leet

Lise comes to UVA after three snowy undergraduate years at Wellesley and one blissfully gastronomical year in Paris at la Sorbonne Nouvelle. Although Paris was inoubliable, Lise always dreamed of returning to her beloved South where she could ride and compete her horses while pursuing a doctorate in French in the center of the equestrian universe: Charlottesville. After spending her master’s thesis in a deep, tortured love affair with Kateb Yacine and his Nedjma, she looks forward to exploring other aspects of francophone literature. That said, the possibility of studying human-animal relationships in literature does combine both of her passions and may be impossible to resist…
Aline Macke

I am originally from the North of France, near the border with Belgium, but I moved to Paris after graduating from high school. I received my MA in American Studies last month, in June 2011, with a concentration on Islam in the United States. My field of research revolves around young American Muslims and their relationship to Islam. My MA thesis was about writer Michael Muhammad Knight and the taqwacores, some young Muslims who created punk rock bands to express their feelings and opinions about Islam in the United states and abroad. I have spent the academic year 2009-2010 as a TA at Kenyon College, in Ohio. I have decided to return to the USA after completing my MA in France, being away from the USA made me too nostalgic! I enjoy never-ending discussions with friends about music, politics, or the news, nice cocktails during happy hours, and sharing cooking tips with my dad.
Joshua Mason

Josh hails from the booming metropolis of Rachel, West Virginia. After earning a B.A. in French at West Virginia University in 2007, he stuck around to complete his M.A. in French in 2009 and his M.A. in Secondary Education in 2010. During this time, he was also a Tennis and Cross-Country coach at North Marion High School. He recently had his first article published in Popular Culture Review, entitled "Soap for Sartre: Cleansing the Existential Dilemma in Fight Club." His academic interests include 20th and 21st century French literature. Outside of French World, he's an avid runner and tennis player and possesses a wealth of knowledge in all things baseball.
Kelly McConnell

Originally from Eugene, Oregon, Kelly McConnell received a B.A. in French from Dartmouth College in 2000 where she also spent a semester studying in Toulouse. She spent two years as a management consultant in Boston before returning to Dartmouth to pursue a M.A. in Comparative Literature, concentrating on the early 20th-century French romance novelist Delly. After completing her first M.A. in 2003, Kelly taught math at a public high school in New Hampshire for two years. Before entering the M.A. program at UVa in 2006, Kelly taught French language and literature at Norwich University in Northfield, VT. Kelly has also led French language programs for high school students in both Tours and Arles with Rassias Programs. Kelly's current academic interests include 17th century female authors, contemporary popular literature, and autobiographies. Kelly enjoys spending her free time with her son, Jordan, and her husband, Steve.
Sage Morghan

Sage is a first-year Ph.D. student at UVA. She received a B.A. in French from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2003, after which she spent a year teaching at a lycée in Brittany. Upon her return to the U.S. in 2004, she joined the New York City Teaching Fellows, a recruiting program that enabled her to earn an MS Ed. with a specialization in TESOL, while teaching ESL in a high-needs, urban elementary school. Sage moved to Charlottesville in August of 2008 and spent a year teaching French at the International School of Charlottesville. In 2009, she spent a summer in France with the UVA Lyon Program. She completed her M.A. at UVA in 2011. Her academic interests include the “nouveau roman”, French Film, as well Francophone Literature and Film, with a focus on female filmmakers from the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her undergraduate Thesis was entitled: La femme dispersée: la transmission de l'image déformée de l'orientale à travers une géogrphie imaginaire.
Eglantine Morvant

Eglantine obtained a Maitrise de Lettres Modernes from Université de Haute-Bretagne, Rennes 2, France, and wrote a Mémoire de Maîtrise under the direction of Anne-Françoise Garréta, titled " Diderot, une écriture en marge - Stratégies argumentatives et rhétoriques ". She obtained a DEA in Littérature et Civilisation Françaises from Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III, and wrote a " Mémoire de DEA " under the direction of Hélène Merlin-Kajman, titled: " La réception des Provinciales inscrite dans le conflit jésuites-jansénistes de 1656 à 1703 ".Eglantine in currently in her fourth year of the Ph.D. program at UVa. Enjoying the All But Dissertation status, she's now working on her dissertation in the Seventeenth century under the direction of John D. Lyons.
Larkin Murphy
Larkin’s circuitous path to UVA's doctoral program in French Civilization has taken him from Charlotte, NC (hometown) to UNC (BA French) to UNCG (MA French) to Iowa State (Instructor) to Aix-en-Provence (lecteur d'anglais-UVA) before landing him in C-ville. He is currently writing his dissertation on the Lamartine Heritage Trail in Mâcon, France. Having been warmly received by members of the Academy of Mâcon during a recent research trip, he continues to be both excited and intrigued by the possibilities of studying the LHT from its inception as sites of pilgrimage to the current tourist enterprise in the Mâconnais.
Alexandra Natoli

Hailing from Rochester, NY, Alexandra is a first year MA student at the University of Virginia. She completed her BA at Syracuse University, where she majored in both French Language and Literature and Russian and Central European Studies. Her studies in Syracuse lead her to Strasbourg for a semester, where she earned a Diplôme Supérieur d’Études Françaises from the Université Marc Bloch. Her primary academic interests include the literature of the middle ages, the works of Victor Hugo, and the literature of the Occupation. She is particularly interested in representations of women and the supernatural in medieval literature. She is also interested in second language acquisition, having worked for three years with international graduate students through Syracuse University’s professional development programs. She was able to further develop this interest by teaching American English in Poland for a summer at a language camp for high school students. She is also interested in Slavic languages and literatures, most specifically those of Poland. In her free time, Alexandra enjoys cooking, travelling, and spending time outdoors.
Saskia Ould-Braham

Saskia is an Exchange TA visiting us from the University of Paris 12 - Créteil.
Casey Ostien

Originally from Newtown Square, PA (just outside Philadelphia), Casey entered UVa’s M.A. program in 2008. She completed a B.A in French with a minor in Italian at the University of South Carolina in May 2008. During her undergraduate years she seized any opportunity to study and travel in France, initially taking two class trips to the small alpine village of St. Jean de Maurienne, before spending a month in Tours in 2006 and a semester in Grenoble in 2007. This year Casey was glad to return to the Rhone-Alps region to participate in UVa’s Lyon summer program before officially beginning her studies in Charlottesville. She looks forward to pursuing her academic interests in 20th Century/Contemporary French literature and civilization. While studying recent history in search of explanations for contemporary French cultural and societal issues, she hopes to explore related fields, such as cultural and linguistic anthropology. In her free time she enjoys running, cooking, traveling, and spending time with family and friends.
Jacob Pease

Jacob received his B.A. from Kansas State University last millennium and currently has one foot in the French department and one foot in the philosophy department. As an undergraduate, he spent a year l'Université Paul Valéry (Montpellier III) before returning to bicycle across North America and shamelessly boast about it on this web page like a pompous jerk. He has non-simultaneously taught FREN 101, 105, 201, 202, and been a TA for "Intro to Philosophy", "Human Nature", "History of Modern Philosophy" and "Know Thyself". He is currently writing his dissertation in the Philosophy department on the notion of a meaningful life.
Cleo Rager

Cleo is a French Exchange TA visiting us for the 2011 - 12 school year from the ENS in Paris.
Sherri Rose

Sherri Rose is a doctoral candidate whose research focuses on 19th and 20th century French literature and cinema. During her undergraduate studies she participated in an exchange program in Strasbourg and Besançon, and she received her B.A. from Centre College in 2004. She earned her M.A. in 2006 from the University of Virginia, and has spent a year teaching English at the Université Lumière Lyon II. Over the past few years, she has also enjoyed both teaching and coordinating activities for UVa’s summer program in Lyon. Sherri is teaching at the Université Paris-Est Créteil during the 2011-2012 academic term while she works on her dissertation entitled “Evading the Everyday: Fear, Fantasy and Novelty in the Late Nineteenth Century.”
Helene Sauvageot

Helene is a French Exchange TA visiting us from the University of Lyons II.
Erica Schauer

Erica completed her master’s degree in French literature in Lincoln, Nebraska and began work on her PhD at the University of Virginia in August of 2008. During her first year of study at UVa, she teamed up with other graduate students to form a Writers Group, which aims to identify and attack the numerous tasks of academic writing. Entangled with her passion for the post-revolutionary novel is her affection for history. Gender, its effects on the individual experience of society, and the mechanisms behind the transmission, inculcation and veneration of sexual dimorphism is another area of study that enriches her readings of 19th century French texts.The role of the ritual and the object in homosocial and homofamial settings, along with Zola’s and Duras fils’ literary representations thereof, will be taking the spotlight in her upcoming projects. She completed her qualifying exams in May of 2011 and is teasing out her prospectus this fall.
Nicholas Shangler

Nicholas received a B.A. in French from the University of North Carolina (2004) and an M.A. from the University of Virginia (2006). He passed his preliminary exams in 2008. He is currently living in beautiful Lyon, France, on the UVa teaching exchange program. He spends his days teaching “Structures de la langue anglaise” to first-year university students and working to define a dissertation topic. In general, his research focuses on sixteenth-century literature, and poetry in particular. He is also very interested in material history of early printing, and has worked extensively with the Gordon digitization project, part of the UVa “Renaissance in Print” initiative. In September 2008, he participated in an intensive course in Lyon devoted to the study of incunabula. Outside of department life, Nicholas enjoys exploring the outdoors, cooking and photography.
Nicholas Snead

Nick is a PhD student specializing in 19th and 20th century literature with a secondary specialization in 16th century literature. After completing a B.A. in French and English at the University of Georgia in 2002, Nick spent two years teaching English in public schools in the Vendée. He received his M.A. in French literature at UVA in 2007. Nick's academic interests include modern novels, Proust, literary representations of mourning and loss, and discussions of friendship in both modern and 16th century literature. Nick enjoys running and cooking, and if he weren't devoting himself fulltime to Montaigne, Balzac, and Proust, he would seriously consider trying his luck as a contestant on Top Chef.
Tiffany Stull

Tiffany Stull is a PhD student who received her B.A. in French from the University of Chicago in 2003 and her M.A. here at UVa in 2007. Between college and grad school, she worked as an English teaching assistant at the Lycée François Ier in Vitry-le-François, France and as a teaching assistant for fourth and fifth grade students at Quest Academy in Illinois. Tiffany's current research interests include medieval French literature, the transition from manuscript into print, hypertextuality and manuscript digitization. She enjoys making websites, drawing and painting, taking photos, writing poetry, and collecting a variety of items.
Elizabeth Voss

Elizabeth is starting her third year of doctoral studies in the French Department, where she received her MA in 2008. She received her BA in French from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005. She is interested in medieval travel literature and cross-cultural encounters, which she taught as a visiting instructor on Semester at Sea in 2009. She recently started research on Marco Polo’s Le Devisement du monde during PhD coursework and is currently preparing for her PhD exams. This year she is working as a research assistant with a Mellon grant and developing digital tools for manuscript study. Her study will focus is on Guillaume de Machaut’s La Prise d’Alixandrie. In her spare time she enjoys playing the violin with the Waynesboro Symphony Orchestra and hiking in the mountains with her basset hounds.