Daniel Armenti
Daniel Armenti joined the MA/PhD program in 2009. A native of Western Massachusetts, he hasn't travelled far in order to study in Amherst, but then, he doesn't wear that look of dismay that comes to mark other students who learn about the rural characteristic of their surroundings. In 2007 Daniel received his BA in Languages and Literature from Bard College, with a focus on Latin and Medieval Italian literatures. In his time at UMass, he has continued to focus on Classical and Medieval literature, and has also incorporated the study of Political Science and Theory. His current interest is on the confrontation of lyric poetry and authority, and how the poet and the reader are able to assert their existence in confrontation or accordance with the state.
Xuefei Bai
Xuefei Bai (xbai@complit.umass.edu) is a doctoral student in the program with a variety of work experiences and publications. She has been doing research work in the areas of Translation studies, Women studies, Fantasy and Asian American Literature.
David Bendiksen
David Bendiksen, a native of Texas, received his BA in both English and Romance Languages at Carleton College, where double majors are a rare phenomenon. Director of the Student Photography Cooperative at Carleton and a three year member of the Carleton College Competitive Ballroom and Latin Dance Team, Bendiksen curated an exhibit of Sandburg’s “Chicago” poems and early 20th century photographs of Chicago at the Carleton Library. His scholarly interests lie in the areas of 20th century American and French Literature and Photography & Film Arts. David will serve as a TA in Comparative Literature.
Emir Benli
Emir
Benli (ebenli@complit.umass.edu)
was born in Ankara, Turkey in 1981. He received his
B.A in English from the Western Literatures and Languages
Department in Bosphorus University, Turkey, where he
also worked in the film center of the university, and
wrote articles for the Turkish film magazine
Altyazi. Besides German literature and thought, and
philosophy of art, Emir is
interested in cinema studies, and has already begun
making films himself. Emir
works as a TA, and as a part-time adviser in the Film
Studies Program. He is
currently grieving his girlfriend’s recent move
to Barcelona, Spain, and is
trying to deal with his severe Jack Bauer withdrawal
(until the fifth season of
24 starts in the winter).
Nicole Calandra
Nicole Calandra (ncalandr@complit.umass.edu)
received her BA and MA from Bryn Mawr College, majoring in
French. Her academic interests include French women writers, Francophone
Literature
from the Caribbean (especially Maryse Condé) and comic writing
ranging from Colette's biting irony to sketch comedy (but
most recently in the form of Zadie Smith's novels). Since beginning
her studies at UMASS, she has also become interested in translation studies
and begun
learning Italian. Currently, she is in the process of completing
her coursework and preparing for her comprehensive exams.
Antonia Carcelén
Antonia Carcelén-Estrada is finishing her PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst (UMass), where she is an instructor for Social Thought and Political
Economy. Her latest publications are “Covert and Overt Ideologies in the Translation of the
Wycliffe Bible into Huao Terero.” In Translation, Resistance, Activism. (Ed. Maria Tymoczko.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011); “Latin American Historiography in
Emerging Capitalism: Afro-Indigenous Palimpsests at the Birth of Spanish Modernity.”
In Ethnicity from Various Angles and Through Varied Lenses: Yesterday´s Today in Latin
America. (Eds. Leon Zamosc and Christine Hunefeldt. New York: Sussex Academic Press,
2011); and “Tierra, riqueza, cuerpos, diferencia: la construcción ontológica de la feminidad
y su persistencia.” Actas del I Congreso Internacional de Literatura Comparada. (Valencia:
Universitat de Valencia Press, 2011). Carcelén-Estrada is a translator and interpreter for the
Translation Center at UMass, a member of Runapacha, and a collaborator for the Migrants’
National Bureau of Ecuador (SENAMI) in Barcelona. She has received fellowships from
UMass to conduct archival research in Spain (Spanish Program; the Center for Latin American,
Caribbean, and Latino Studies). Her research interests include postcolonial literature, colonial
and contemporary Latin America, translation studies, philosophy, cultural studies, art history,
anthropology, and oral literature.
Fatma Betul Cihan
Fatma Betul Cihan will enter the PhD Program
funded by a TA. She holds a BA in English and an MA in History
from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. She is interested
in historiography, autobiography, Ottoman women and Turkish
literature, and worked as assistant for a Fulbright-sponsored
collaborative summer institute in English and American literature
and cultural studies. Her MA thesis is "A Comparative
Analysis of the Representations of the West in Ahmed Midhat's
Novels and Travel Writing."
Esther Cuesta
Esther Cuesta, a native of the fluvial city of Guayaquil, Ecuador, is
a PhD Candidate. Her dissertation (working title) “Documenting the
(Un)Documented: Narratives of Diasporic Andeans in
Southern/Mediterranean Europe” examines diasporic Ecuadorian
narratives in Italy and Spain, informed by world-historical analysis,
subaltern and postcolonial studies, as well as decolonial and feminist
theories. At UMass, she has taught Comparative Literature, Women’s
Studies, and Honors courses. At Smith College, she has taught Spanish
as a second language at the elementary and intermediate levels. At the
Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja-Milán, she has taught English
at elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Since December 2009,
she is Consul of Ecuador in Genoa, Italy.
Lara Curtis
Lara joined our PhD program having received her
MA degree from the French Program at UMass Amherst.
Laras specialization
is French Literature.
Kanchuka Dharmasiri
Kanchuka Dharmasiri (kdharmas@complit.umass.edu)
started her fourth year in the
M.A/Ph.D. program. Her interests include postcolonial theory,
travel literature,
women's studies, visual culture, translation, and theatre,
particularly modern
Sinhala theatre from the fifties to the present. Kanchuka
is from Sri Lanka
where she was actively engaged in theatre with her translations
and productions
of plays.
Shannon Farley
Shannon Farley (skfarley@complit.umass.edu) is in year 5 of her Master's degree, which she started while teaching high school full time at Eagle Hill School,
a boarding school for students with learning disabilities and ADD in Hardwick, MA. Along the way she also got married, moved,
taught for a new school and quit that new school after 4 months, and had a daughter, Cassie. So that accounts for the 3
semesters she took off. Shannon received her BA in Classics and History from Williams College in 97.
Her honors thesis in Classics there, Dionysos: The God Brings Moderation, was but the first step in what
is still an abiding obsession with Euripides' Bakkhai. Nowadays, her interest is in a post-colonial reading of
the different translations of said play, and especially of the word sophrosune. However, she is setting her
sights on reading all of Ancient Greek literature through a postcolonial lens. Which she really ought to publish on. Soon.
Shannon reads Greek, Latin, English and some French. Her favorite non-Greek author is Salman Rushdie, but she is also
a big fan of SF and Fantasy fiction.
Maria Gimenez
Maria Gimenez, born in Caracas, Venezuela, joins the MA Program in Translation Studies with a BA in Spanish from Concordia University, a BA in French from Carnegie-Mellon, and a Certificate in Spanish-English Translation from McGill. She currently works as a professional freelance translator and professional proofreader, and will receive a Research Assistantship from the Translation Center.
Matthew Goodwin
Matthew Goodwin is entering the PhD Program
with a TA. He earned the MA in Comparative Literature from
the University of Arkansas, and is interested in applying
Wittgenstein's philosophical and psychological critiques
to literature. He is the founder of an immigrant legal aid
organization with which he is engaged as consultant and case
worker. He has studied Latin American and Arab immigrant
narratives in the US, as well as Turkish immigrants in Germany.
Christine Gutman
Christine Gutman, who joined our MA Program in Translation Studies program in 2009, now joins our PhD program. She earned a BA in French at Simmons College. Her interests and work in postcolonial translation theory and literature of the Maghreb have already earned favorable attention here, and she is now expanding her interests in Yiddish. Christine will serve as a TA in Comparative Literature.
Emily Heilker
Emily Heilker, a native of Georgia, joins our MA/PhD program. with a BA from the University of Georgia, where she majored in Comparative Literature, Emily has embraced the study of philosophy and science in literature along with the history of science and, at the same time, the study of poetry and translation. Last year she spent in Lyons and Paris; she works with texts in French, Spanish and English. Emily will serve as a TA in Comparative Literature.
Rio Hernandez
Rio Hernandez, a native speaker of English and Spanish, with fluency in Japanese, joins our MA Program in Translation Studies. He received his BA from Cornell University, where he majored in History and won the De Kiewiet Prize, which goes to the top student in each graduating class. He has been teaching English as a second language, grammar and conversation, for the past 10 years. He is a former resident of Japan, and for the past year has been doing fan translations of manga.
Yonjoo Hong
Yonjoo Hong (yonjoo@gmail.com) will
be entering our MA program, from Korea. Her specialization
is Translation Studies. She received
her MA degree in February '08 from Ewha Womans University
in Seoul.
Katherine Lundy
Katherine Lundy, a native of Georgia, joins the MA in Translation Studies Program. She received her BA from Washington University St. Louis, majoring in Japanese language and literature, and earning a Fulbright in 2007 to continue her studies there, where she also served for an additional year as a language teacher in Kobe. Her interest in comics has played a critical role in her academic career; the work of underground Japanese artists of the 1960’s and 1970’s is not yet well known in Western circles, and it is this work with its moments of “subtle greatness” that Katherine has set about translating.
Patricia Matthews
Patricia Matthews received her BA in Comparative Literature and French from the University of Rhode Island. She is currently serving as an English-language Teaching Assistant at the Lycée de la Mer in Bordeaux, France, and will join our PhD program supported by a Teaching Assistantship. Her interests are in critical theory, feminist theory, psychoanalysis, linguistics and semiotics, aesthetics, sexuality and gender studies.
Lara Matta
Lara Matta (matta@complit.umass.edu)
joins us from Lebanon and has been teaching at Mount Holyoke over
the past year. She received
her undergraduate degree from the Lebanese University in
2000 and a DEA in
English from l'Université Paul Valéry in France. Her
specializations are Postcolonial Studies, Francophone Literature
and Arabic Literature
and Media.
Cristiano Mazzei
Cristiano Mazzei (camazzei@complit.umass.edu) earned
his MA in Translation Studies at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst before
joinging the PhD program in Comparative Literature.
With a BA in Translation and
Intepreting from the Unibero University
in São Paulo,
Brazil, Cristiano Mazzei has built a solid career in translation
(English and Portuguese) in his native country. After having
worked as a translator
in different companies, Cristiano opened his own business
in 1997, providing translation and interpreting services
to major multinational corporations in Brazil. In 2000,
after passing the board examination, he became
a Certified Translator in Brazil. He is now pursuing his
MA in Translation Studies at the.
Madalina Meirosu
Madalina Meirosu, from Romania, will be joining our MA/PhD program. She received her BA from Transylvania University of Brasov majoring in both English and German, winning prizes for her work in both languages, while also maintaining fluency in French, building a solid foundation in Latin and Spanish and helping to revise the third edition of the Romanian Academy’s German-Romanian Dictionary. She has published translations of essays by Hans Bergel and an article on Thomas Brussig. Psychoanalytic approaches to myth and literature are among her preferred pursuits, along with photography, travel and teaching. Madalina will serve as a TA in Comparative Literature.
Daniel Nevarez Araujo
Daniel Nevarez Araujo (nevarerz.daniel@gmail.com)
is joining our PhD program from the University of Puerto
Rico, Rio Piedras where he
will receive the MA this spring. Daniel's special interests
are in comparative
film theory. He has been awarded a Diversity Fellowship
for his first year in the doctoral program.
Nahir I. Otaño
Nahir I. Otaño (notano@complit.umass.edu)
comes to UMass from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras,
where
she has been an assistant director on a local independent
film and has worked on an animated music video for a local
band, as well as with children affected by AIDS. She is a
poet and editor and publisher of Tonguas, an annual compilation
of poetry and short fiction.
Joshua Owsley
Joshua Owsley, a Massachusetts resident, has joined our MA in Translation Studies program. He received his BA from Antioch University Yellow Springs, majoring in English. Joshua also attended the Institut Catholique de Paris for a year majoring in French.
Alix Paschkowiak
Alix Paschkowiak (apaschkowiak@complit.umass.edu) is
currently writing her dissertation on medieval women
warriors. Her
interests include medieval literature, feminist/queer/psychoanalytic
theory, cross-dressing (figurative and literal), and
food as a metaphor for language.
Daniel Pope
Daniel Pope (daniel@complit.umass.edu)
earned
his Bachelor's degree in English literature, then
studied poetry in Peru with a Fulbright scholarship.
His interests include word/image narratives,
tropes of travel, transnational cinemas, documentary
film, Caribbean literature, and rhetorics of narrative.
Inci Sariz
Inci Sariz, born and educated in Turkey, joins our PhD Program with an emphasis on Translation Studies, following a major in that field at Bogazici University and an MA in Comparative Literature with high honors from Istanbul Bilgi University, where at a conference this past May she presented a well-received paper entitled “Tradittore Non Traduttore: A Meta-criticism of the Discourse of Translation in the Turkish Literary System.” Borrowing from Franco Moretti’s seminal essay on “distant reading,” she has also been reexamining the relation between Comparative Literature and Translation Studies. Inci has published translations of short stories from English into Turkish and has had six years of experience in language instruction. Besides her native language, Turkish, and the language in which she was educated, English, Inci reads French, Spanish, and Ottoman Turkish. Inci will serve as a TA in Comparative Literature.
Brandon Shaw
Brandon Shaw (bwshaw@complit.umass.edu). Resolving to
put his underappreciated talents as a wise-arse to use,
Brandon
is concentrating on comedy, particularly satire in ancient
Greek and Roman literature and French enlightenment drama,
hoping eventually to compare the satirical techniques
of bygone authors to the work of contemporary comedians
such
as Dave Chappelle and Stephen Colbert. Brandon also teaches
the Argentine Tango Club at UMass and dances with Blaze
Dance Group in Northampton, MA. Brandon's academic interests
include
comedy, tragedy, and tragi-comedy; the intersections
of literature with dance, music, and philosophy.
Barry Spence
Barry Spence (bspence@complit.umass.edu) is in the PhD program and has a teaching assistantship. His primary areas of concentration are ancient Greek and Latin tragedy and epic, James Joyce, the aesthetics of literary and cinematic modernism and postmodernism, art-house cinema, and the material culture of the book. His research interests include semantics, narratology, paratextuality, theories of metaphor and figurative language, and cognitive approaches to literature and film. Recently, he has given papers on conceptual metaphor in Sophocles, on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film and semiotic theory, and on modes of polysemy in James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Anna Strowe
Anna Strowe began studying Italian at Smith College
and has spent time living in Italy. She graduated from Smith in 2003
with a BA magna cum laude in Italian Language and Literature, and received
her MA with honors in Translation Studies from the University of Warwick
in Coventry, England, in 2006. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Comparative
Literature at UMass. Her areas of interest include translation studies
and medieval and Renaissance literature.
Hongmei Sun
Hongmei Sun (maysun@complit.umass.edu)
is from China and graduated from Peking University with
an M.A in Comparative Literature. Her interests include
Asian American literature, Translation studies, and Asian
mythology. Above all, she thinks she loves monkeys,
and at present is trying desperately to convert this
animal into six comprehensive exam topics. She hopes
she can cage it into her dissertation too. She also
hopes this will happen in the very near future.
Yuko Takehashi
Yuko Takehashi is currently a graduate student in Political Science at UMass Amherst where she is a Teaching Assistant. She earned her M.A. at the University of Tsukuba in International Politics, and her B.A. at Meiji Gakuin University, majoring in International Studies.
Eyal Tamir
Eyal Tamir earned a BA from Tel Aviv University, Israel in English/Psychology and his MA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in English and American studies, as well as a second MA from Brandeis University in English and American Literature. His specialization is literary theory, film, and popular literature; he is currently a visiting lecturer in Modern Hebrew at Indiana University, and joins our PhD program with a Teaching Assistantship.
Una Tanovic
Una Tanovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina) joins us from Sarajevo where she received her BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Sarajevo. While spending a year at Smith College, majoring in American Studies, she served as a conversation partner for undergraduates studying Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian
Rhona Trauvitch
Rhona Trauvitch, originally from Haifa,
Israel, joins our doctoral program having earned the BA as
a government major at Smith College, the MS in Social & Public
Communication at the London School of Economics, and spent
her junior year at Oxford University. She has been awarded
the UMass Graduate School Fellowship for Incoming Students
and wishes to pursue her interests in literature and social
philosophy.
Scott Vangel
Scott Vangel (svangel@complit.umass.edu) is interested
in philosophy, film studies, and French language and
culture. He received his BA in English/Film from Framingham
State
and his MA in Religion/Literature from the University
of Chicago.
Andres Amitai Wilson
Andres Amitai Wilson joins our MA/PhD Program as both New Englander and New Yorker, a literary scholar and poet who, as an accomplished musician as well, is also drawn to the study of the interplay between text, image, and music. Earning two B.A.’s, one from Harvard University Extension with a major in Liberal Arts, the other in music from the Berklee College of Music, and an M.A. in Medieval Studies from Columbia University, he has for the past year embarked on an intensive study of canonical texts in Hebrew at Yeshivat Hadar in New York. While described in print as “the best guitarist in Boston,” he has delivered papers on Old English philology (at Yale) and on “Jewish Mysticism and Aesthetics” at a Limmud conference in New York and has completed a study “Dante’s Chariot: Ezekiel and Prophetic Mimesis in an Exile’s Eden” for his MA thesis on Dante’s Commedia. Andres will serve as a TA in Comparative Literature.
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