Graduates of the French PhD program at Pitt are researching, teaching, publishing, and working at the highest levels of university administration in academic institutions throughout the US and abroad. Of the PhDs who have graduated in the last ten years, close to 90% (14 out of 16) found full-time academic jobs; nearly two-thirds of these jobs were tenure-track positions.
Pitt's PhDs in French teach or have taught full time at such institutions as Georgetown University, Ball State U, Barnard College, California State U at Long Beach, Florida Institute of Technology, Gettysburg College, Hood College, Iowa State U, U of Glasgow, U of Missouri-Kansas City, U of New Mexico, U of Vermont, Purdue University, and Washington College. Find out more about some of our French success stories.
2023
Caitlin Dahl
Visiting Lecturer, Univ. of Pittsburgh
Don Joseph
Post-doc, University of Missouri
2021
Emmanuelle Ben Hadj
Lecturer in French, Purdue University
“Making Room for Horror: The Adversity of Genre in the French Film Industry”
Director: David Pettersen
R. Cole Cridlin
Writing Studio Coordinator at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, Richmond, VA
"Redrawing the Lines: Queer Metronormativity in French Contexts"
Director: Todd Reeser
Emily Bryan
"Imagining Justice Since 1944: Origins, Order and Orientation in the Literatures of the Francophone and Hispanic 20th-Century"
Director: Giuseppina Mecchia
Jonathan Devine
Grants officier, the University of Queensland, Australia
"From Paintings to Pornography: (Re)Animating Archives in French Documentary"
Director: David Pettersen
2020
Pat Nikiema
Assistant Professor, Univ. of Miami (Florida)
Dissertation Title: “Rethinking Exile: The Imaginary of the Return in 20th and 21st Century Francophone Literature of the African Diaspora”
Director: John Walsh
Maxime Bey-Rozet
Assistant Professor, University of California, Irvine
Dissertation Title: "Irredeemable: Céline, Extreme Cinemas, and the Opacity of Trauma"
Director: David Pettersen
Paul Wallace
Network Developer, Google Pittsburgh
Dissertation Title: "Enlightenment Assemblages: Mapping Material Relationships in 18th-Century France"
Director: Chloe Hogg
2019
Jennifer Boum Make
Assistant Professor, Georgetown University
Dissertation Title: "Copresences: 20th-21st Century Encounters in the Mediterranean and Caribbean"
Directors: John Walsh and Neil Doshi
2018
Sylvia Grove
Visiting Assistant Professor, Ursinus College
Dissertation Title: "Writing in the Kitchen, Reading at the Table: Gender, Nation, and Culinary Texts in Twenty-First Century France"
Director: Todd Reeser
Paulina Tomkowicz
French Teacher, Copper Canyon High School, Glendale, AZ
Dissertation Title: "Pataphysical Networking: Virtuality, Potentiality and the Experimental Works of the Collège de 'Pataphysique, the Oulipo, and the Mouvement Panique"
Director: David Pettersen
Kathleen E. Moriarty-de Biasi
French instructor, Waldorf School, Stuttgart, Germany
"DISORIENTATION: National Identity in French Cultural Productions of the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-first Centuries"
Director: Todd Reeser
2017
Eléonore Bertrand
Lecturer, Lauder Institute, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Dissertation Title: "Dérives du sujet sexué français: les instances fraternelles entre romantisme et modernité"
Director: Giuseppina Mecchia
Anna Dimitrova
Lecturer, Columbus State University
Dissertation Title: "Impasse in Multilingual Spaces: Politics of Language and Identity in Contemporary Francophone Contact Zones"
Director: David Pettersen
Delphine Monserrat
Free-lance Translator, Paris
Dissertation Title: “Que reste-t-il de l’anarchie ? Idées et idéaux anarchistes dans la littérature d’après-guerres”
Director: David Pettersen
2016
Karen Adams
Lecturer of French, University of Vermont
Dissertation title: “Reimagining Gender, Reimagining Kinship: Cross-Dressing, Sex Change, and Family Structure in Four Medieval French Narratives"
Director: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
Mert Ertunga
Instructor, University of Pittsburgh, Point Park University
Dissertation title: "Negotiating Literary Identity During the Divide Between the Philosophes and the Anti-Philosophes (1745-1765)"
Dissertation director: Giuseppina Mecchia
2015
David Spieser
Assistant Professor of French, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Dissertation Title: "Nation, Region and Immigration in Contemporary 'French' Culture"
Director: Giuseppina Mecchia and Neil Doshi
Maeva Mateos (McIlwain)
Training Instructor, U.S. Department of State, Arlington, VA
Dissertation title: “Scandales et Intimités: l’actrice française et la célébrité féminine au dix-huitième siècle"
Director: Chloe Hogg
2014
Andrea Jonnson
Assistant Professor of French, Georgia Tech University
Dissertation Title: " Performing Home: Affective Intervals in 20th- and 21st- Century French Theatre and Slam Poetry"
Director: Todd Reeser
2013
Jennifer Lawrence
Dissertation Title: "Sade-Omizing Sexuality: Deconstructing the Gender Binary Through the Sadian Sexual Predator"
Director: Todd Reeser
Normand Raymond
Instructor of Philosophy, Sudbury University
Dissertation Title: "Religious Differences: Subjectivity and Alterity in the Chanson de Roland"
Director: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
Charles-Louis Morand-Métivier
Associate Professor of French, University of Vermont
Dissertation Title: "Apprendre des Massacres: Emotions et Nation dans la littérature du Moyen-âge et de la Renaissance"
Co-Directors: Todd Reeser and Renate Blumenfield-Kosinski
Amy Romanowski
French Teacher, Westminster High School, Denver, CO
Dissertation Title: "Subject/Abject/Object: Reconfiguring Desire in Contemporary French Cultural Production"
Director: Todd Reeser
2012
Yahya Laayouni
Associate Professor of Arabic and French, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation Title: "Redefining Beur Cinema: Constituting Subjectivity through Film"
Directors: Giuseppina Mecchia and Randall Halle (German)
Zach Moir
French Teacher, Dwight High School, New York City
Dissertation Title: "Sex With Wittgenstein: Language, Narrative, and Repetition in Duras, Sartre and Genet"
Director: Giuseppina Mecchia
Marina Starik
Study Abroad Administrator, Smith College, Geneva, Switzerland
Dissertation Title: "Morphologies of Becoming: Post human Dandies in Fin-de-Siècle France"
Director: Giuseppina Mecchia
2010
Cary Campbell
Instructor of French, Antioch College
Dissertation Title: "The Discursive Construction of the Ivorian Nation in the Period of Ivoirité"
Director: Roberta Hatcher
2009
Melissa Deininger
Associate Professor, Iowa State University
Dissertation Title: "After the Revolution: Terror, Literature, and the Nation in Modern France"
Director: Giuseppina Mecchia
Robert Fagley
French Faculty, Slippery Rock University
Dissertation Title: "Bachelors, Bastards and Nomadic Masculinity: a study of illegitimacy in Maupassant and Gide"
Director: Giuseppina Mecchia
Teresa Johnson-Evans
Dissertation Title: "History, Genre, Politics: The Cinema of Yamina Benguigui"
Director: Giuseppina Mecchia
2008
Amy Lynelle
Visiting Lecturer in French, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Dissertation Title: "Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects in the 19th Century Haiti"
Director: Giuseppina Mecchia
2007
Gabriella Baika
Associate Professor, Florida Institute of Technology
Dissertation Title: "Lingua indisciplinata: A Study of the Sins of the Tongue in the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy.”
Directors: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Dennis Looney (Italian)
Alison Halasz
Instructor, University of Pittsburgh and Chatham University
Dissertation Title: "Henri Michaux, poet-painter"
Directors: Roberta Hatcher and Daniel Russell
Nacer Khelouz
Associate Professor of French
University of Missouri-Kansas City, Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures
Dissertation Title:"Le roman algérien de langue française de l’entre-deux guerres à l’épreuve du politique: en lisant Robert Randau et Abdelkader Hadj Hamou"
Director: Philip Watts
2006
Aparna Nayak-Guercio
Associate Professor of French, California State University, Long Beach
Dissertation Title: “The project of Liberation and the projection of national identity. Calvo, Aragon, Jouhandeau, 1944-1945”
Director: Philip Watts
2005
Djehane Hassouna
Dissertation Title: “The Echo of Solitude in the Romantic Representations of the Sea: Multivalence of a Motif in Romance Literatures”
Directors: Giuseppina Mecchia and Yves Citton
2004
Noemie Parrat
Dissertation Title: "Zola’s Woman as Unnatural Animal"
Director: Giuseppina Mecchia
James Tarpley
Dissertation Title: "The Algerian Island in the Novels of Albert Camus: The End of the Pied-Noir Adventure Tale"
Director: Philip Watts
2003
Susan Dudash
Assistant Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Assistant Director of ACMRS Publications
Managing Editor of Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal
Dissertation Title: "Giving Voice to the People: Rhetoric, History, and Literary Representations of Social Conflict in the Late Middle Ages"
Director: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
2001
Pamela Pears
Professor of French, Washington College
Dissertation Title: "Women’s Words: Postcolonial Francophone Literature in Viet Nam and Algeria"
Director: Philip Watts
Rajeshwari Vallury
Professor of French, The University of New Mexico
Dissertation Title: "The Blind Spot in a Dream of Dissymmetry"
Director: Yves Citton
1999
Elisabeth Sauvage-Callaghan
Associate Professor of French, Clarion University
Dissertation Title: "Beyond the paradox of the nostalgic modernist: a study of temporality in the works of J.-K. Huysmans"
Director: Philip Watts
Janet Coccaro
Dissertation Title: “Illusions and disillusions: the search for truth in Jan Potocki’s manuscript found in Saragossa”
Director: Yves Citton
1997
Dolores Buttry
Assistant Professor (German), University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown
Dissertation Title: "Maistre wace : romancier malgre lui"
Director: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
Mark Sanford
Associate Dean of Graduate & Continuing Studies
Assistant Professor of Modern Languages, Muskingum College
Dissertation Title: "Raoul Lefevre, 'Le livre du fort Hercules' (ONB cod. 1586): A Critical Edition"
Director: Barbara Nelson Sargent-Baur
1996
Linda Rouillard
Associate Professor, University of Toledo
Dissertation Title: "Incest, marriage and penance in Philippe de Remi's La Manekine"
Director: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
1995
Didier Course
Professor of French, Hood College
Dissertation Title: "Le sceptre et le diamant: metamorphoses du pouvoir et genese d’un imaginaire moderne (1560-1685)"
Director: Daniel Russell
1994
Laurence Grove
Professor of French and Text/Image Studies, University of Glasgow
Director, Stirling Maxwell Centre for the Study of Text/Image Cultures
Dissertation Title: "Emblematics and seventeenth-century French literature: Descartes and La Fontaine"
Director: Daniel Russell