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STUDENT NEWS |
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In August, Mark Ferguson successfully
defended his dissertation, entitled "Landscape, Alienation, and Politics
in the Work of Richard Foreman and Heiner Muller." He is now happily situated as the
Chair of the new Department of Theatre at Wofford
College in South Carolina. His new email address is
fergusonma@wofford.edu. He is now teaching, directing plays, and
administrating the department. |
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Manling Lou
and Jie Zhang will both be in
Normal, IL October 11th, presenting papers at the Annual Meeting of the
Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs.
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Daniel Medin is in New York writing
his dissertation. He is additionally organizing a celebration reading for
the 125th anniversary of Robert Walser's birth. Two reviews pertaining to
W.G. Sebald will be published this fall. |
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Sif Rikhardsdottir is
in Chicago, quite busy with a new baby girl and learning
Old French. (Although she says sleep deprivation is making the latter
a challenge!) She will be presenting a paper entitled "The Awakening
of an Ancient Prophetess: A Discussion of the Translation of Völuspá"
at the International Studies in Medievalism Conference being
held at St. Louis U this month. Sesselja Picchietti was born on
July 10th and everything went well. She weighed 6 pounds 9 ounces and
measured 20 inches and had a full head of hair. "She is doing wonderfully
and things are coming along well. The big brother is taking well to his
little sister and being very affectionate." Sesselja is the Icelandic
equivalent of Cecilia. The picture was taken of her when she was 1 day
old. |
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Kamaal Haque
is spending this year in Munich conducting dissertation research through a
grant of the German Academic Exchange Service. |
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Jie Zhang passed her dissertation proposal in April.
Her dissertation will focus on the seventeenth-century Chinese writer Li
Yu. She has also devoted much time to teaching. She spent nine weeks
at Princeton this summer, teaching intensive Chinese for students of the
Princeton in Beijing program. She's now teaching a 300-level
University College class, "Self and Society in Chinese Literature and
Culture". She will also take over two Chinese classes at University of
Missouri in St. Louis in middle October. |
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Robert Neblett
recently had an article published in the July-August issue of American
Theatre Magazine ("'Shrew'
Takes a 1950s Spin in Music City, U.S.A.") regarding his experiences as a dramaturg at the Tennessee Repertory Theatre in
Nashville in March 2003. His article "'Nobody Sings About It': In Defense
of the Songs in Caryl Churchill's Vinegar Tom" will be published in the
next issue of New England Theatre Journal; this article is based on his
production of Churchill's feminist play at Washington University in 1997.
Currently, he is completing a commission by the Tennessee Repertory
Theatre to write a 1940s film noir stage adaptation of Bram Stoker's
Dracula, which runs October 29-November 9, 2003. |
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Anastasiya
Lakhtikova moved recently but is staying in St. Louis, trying
to accomplish the following: 1) Getting her dissertation proposal approved;
2) Getting on with writing ("I have actually started already"); 3)
Preparing the sesquicentennial issue of THEATRON which, among other
things, encompasses editorial work for publishing one of Tennessee
Williams' early plays that has not been published before; 4)
Conceptualizing a course on translation to teach for U College next year;
5) Writing short stories in Russian and trying to get them published;
6) Translating a book of fiction (something similar to "Alice in
Wonderland") from Russian called "Between Two Stools" by Evgeni Kluev.
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Mei Chun
is doing her dissertation research at Tsukuba University, Japan. She
observes that it is some sort of surreal experience to look at the
physiognomic images in popular almanacs of late imperial China in the
library and then walk out to a world of dyed hair. Not being able to tell
the difference between cheap and expensive sushi, she has been taking
advantage of her unsophisticated taste bud. One more unscholarly
observation: Wasabi is good on basically anything! |
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Vicki Rapti continues this year as the co-editor-in-chief of
THEATRON (joined this year by Sam O'Connell, a graduate student in
the Performing Arts Department). The second issue has been
successfully distributed nationwide, and it has extended its calls for
papers to graduate students within the United States and overseas. Its
third issue will feature "Spot", a ten-minute play by Melanie Kenny that won
the Hotchener competition last year and a surrealist play by the
internationally acclaimed author Nanos Valaoritis. |
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AND MEET
OUR NEW GRAD STUDENTS |
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Katie
McNeill (Ph.D, Comp Lit and German) is from Doylestown,
Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia. She got her B.A. in 1998 in
French and German at the University of Pittsburgh. After that, she
spent two years working in schools in Europe - the first year as a
Fulbright teaching assistant at a Gymnasium in Magdeburg, Sachsen-Anhalt,
Germany, and the second year as a teaching assistant in a lycee in a tiny
village outside of Lille, France. She continued teaching after that
at an independent school in Portland, Maine, teaching French and Spanish
and some German here and there. "I decided that it was time to
return to school when I felt pangs of jealousy while helping my 9th and
10th grade advisees choose their courses for the following year.
Though I do miss my old students, I am truly enjoying being on the other
side of the classroom again." |
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Rumyana Cholakova
(Ph.D. Comp Lit and Chinese) was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She has translated
into Bulgarian and published four books and more than twenty scholarly
articles, most of them connected with Chinese culture and philosophy. She
has also published three short stories. "I love my family in Bulgaria, my
friends all over the world, good literature, theater, cinema, hiking, good
food, chocolate ice cream and red wine, in that order. Now you know all my
secrets!" |
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Yanning Wang
(Ph.D. Comp Lit and Chinese) was born in Nanjing, China, which is located
by the Yangzi River in East China. This beautiful city used to be the
capital of several dynasties in Chinese history. Nanjing and Saint Louis
are actually sister cities. In the Saint Louis Botanical Garden, you can
find the Chinese garden that honors the sister city relationship between
the two cities. She obtained her B.A. in English language and literature
at Sichuan University, China, and then her M.A. in comparative literature
at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her primary interest is in
pre-modern Chinese literature. As for hobbies, "I like traveling and
playing badminton. My most enjoyable trip in the United States was a
camping-road trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona with my friends. " |
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Emmanuelle Pourroy-Braud
(Ph.D. Comp Lit) is a native of France. In 1998, she received an MFA in
Creative Writing from Louisiana State University, where she studies under
and partied with poet, novelist, essayist, and commentator Andrei Codrescu.
For the last three years, she has taught English Composition, sophomore
Contemporary American Literature, Writing for International Trade, and
Poetry at Clemson University in South Carolina. |
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Chris Boehm
(MA Comp Lit) is from Shelbyville, a small town in central Illinois.
He did his undergraduate work at Lake Land Junior College in Mattoon, IL,
and Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, majoring in English.
His academic interests include psychoanalytic theory (Jacques Lacan and
Slavoj Zizek), the short fiction of Jorge Luis Borges, novels from Fydor
Dostoevsky and Franz Kafka (among many others), film, and the poetry of
William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (also, among many others).
When his face is not buried in a book, Chris enjoys spending time with his
girlfriend of five years, writing short fiction, watching quality films,
running, and playing guitar.
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Anne Fritz
(Ph.D. Comp Lit and German) received her B.A. from Wesleyan University's
College of Letters in 1998, having studied literature, history and
philosophy for her major and music (particularly cello) outside of the
department. The following year she went to Luebeck, Germany as a Fulbright
T.A., where she taught classes about American culture, but "also where I
had large amounts of unstructured time in which to work on photography,
practice cello and wander." Anne returned to the U.S. to a basement
darkroom before moving to Chicago to study photography at the School of
the Art Institute and work part-time jobs, the most rewarding being
teaching music in assorted public schools through a non-profit.
"Gradually, I came to realize that a number of questions lingering in my
head could not be addressed solely through visual art, and decided to
return to literature." |
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Andreas Triantafyllou
(MA Comp Lit) was born in Athens,
Greece. He is a classical pianist and is interested in the interaction of
literature and music. He studied piano, composition, and music theory at
the National Conservatory of Athens, and at the École Normale de Musique
de Paris-Alfred Cortot. He holds a M. A. in Piano Performance from New
York University. |
