Romance Studies

Field Description

The Field of Romance Studies includes faculty members from the Departments of Romance Studies, Comparative Literature, English, History, Anthropology, Near Eastern Studies, and from the Africana Studies and Research Center. It offers interdisciplinary programs in Romance languages and literatures.

Students in Romance Studies select a track in one of the literary and cultural traditions the faculty specialize in (French, Italian, or Hispanic literatures and cultures ) and choose a minor in one or two other areas from any field.

French, Hispanic, or Italian literatures and cultures. The field offers a full complement of courses in French, Hispanic, and Italian literatures. It seeks to incorporate current, speculative, and theoretical views of literature alongside historical and linguistic training.

Students choose one literature and culture track as their main field of study and research. They are expected to acquire a working knowledge of the general history of that literature, to become conversant with the social and intellectual history, and to speak and write their major language fluently. They are trained in bibliographical, linguistic, and analytical skills that will allow them to teach, conduct research, and interpret in the largest sense of the word the literature and cultural context of their choice.

Students are encouraged to study foreign languages other than the language of the track they have chosen to focus on, but such study is not required unless special linguistic competence is necessary for the student’s research. Such need is determined by the student’s Special Committee.

Students focusing in French, Hispanic, or Italian literatures and cultures usually teach at least one year of literature/culture and one year of language as part of their professional training; numerous teaching assistantships are available; teaching a Freshman Writing Seminar for the Knight Institute is also a possibility. A methodology course in language teaching, to be taken the spring semester before they begin teaching, allows beginning teaching assistants to observe and participate in classroom teaching and to attend lectures and discussion on theory and practice of teaching.

Research and study opportunities:
Students are encouraged to spend a term or year abroad to improve their language skills and/or to advance their research. Opportunities include assistantships and study opportunities at various universities abroad, and numerous archives both national and international. Funds are available for students to engage in research, language study, and conference participation, both through the Department of Romance Studies and the Graduate School.

Cornell's excellent research library has renowned collections of books, with some special collections of interest to students in the field, such as those pertaining to Dante, the French Revolution, the Witchcraft Collection, or digital archives of Latin American journals. The field also benefits from the interdisciplinary Medieval Studies Program, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, the Society for the Humanities, the Feminism and Gender Studies Program, and the Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large program.

Contact Information

Website: https://romancestudies.cornell.edu/graduate
Email: romance_studies@cornell.edu
Phone: 607 255-4264

K161 Klarman Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY  14853

Data and Statistics

• Professional Master's Program Statistics

Subject and Degrees

Romance Studies

• Romance Studies (Ph.D.) (Ithaca)

Concentrations by Subject

Romance Studies

• French literature
• French studies
• Hispanic literature
• Hispanic studies
• Italian literature
• Italian studies

Faculty

Gerard L. Aching

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies; Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: Caribbean literature

Elbern H. Alkire III

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies; Italian literature; Italian studies
• Research Interests: French linguistics; Romance linguistics; Italian linguistics and dialectology; social and situational variation; semiotics; translation studies

Kevin D. Attell

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Italian literature; Italian studies

Anindita Banerjee

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: Science Fiction, Environment, Borders and Migration, Media and Politics

Ernesto E. Bassi Arevalo

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: late colonial/early national Latin America

Ross Brann

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: Hispanic literature, Medieval Iberian Studies

Timothy Colin Campbell

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Italian literature; Italian studies
• Research Interests: modern Italian literature and culture; poststructuralist theory

Debra Ann Castillo

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: modern Hispanic literature; comparative literature; literary theory; women's studies

Julia Haeyoon Chang

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: modern Spanish literature & literary theory, gender studies, feminist criticism, history of medicine

Liliana Colanzi

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: creative writing, speculative fiction, short-story, animal, machine, human interactions, Latin America

Raymond B Craib

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: southern cone, Mexico, Twentieth Century

Naminata Diabate

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies; Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: postcolonial theories, biopolitics, neoliberalism, gender and sexuality, race, African-American, Afro-Hispanic literary fiction, visual art, film, new media, Malinke, English, French, Spanish

Laurent Dubreuil

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
• Research Interests: 19th and 20th century French literature; post-colonial theories and francophone literatures; French and American comics and cinema; interdisciplinary practices

Carolyn Fornoff

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: Mexico, Central America, environmental studies, film, literature, race and indigenous studies

Paul Friedland

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French studies

Mitchell D Greenberg

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
• Research Interests: Baroque and classical literature; modern (psychoanalytic) critical theory

Vanessa M. Gubbins

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: Econometrics, Machine Learning, and Statistical Decision Theory

Cary S. Howie

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies; Italian literature; Italian studies
• Research Interests: French literature studies; Italian literature studies

Patricia M. Keller

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: peninsular Spanish literature

D Medina Lasansky

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Italian literature; Italian studies
• Research Interests: Italian literature

Kathleen Perry Long

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
• Research Interests: French Renaissance literature; French baroque literature; cultural studies

Philip A. Lorenz

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies

Tracy K McNulty

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
• Research Interests: twentieth-century French literature and theory; psychoanalysis; Jewish studies

Natalie Anne-Marie Melas

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
• Research Interests: twentieth-century literature and colonialism; Francophone literature, especially Antillean

Marilyn Migiel

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Italian literature; Italian studies
• Research Interests: Italian literature, especially medieval and early modern; feminist criticism

Jonathan Beck Monroe

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies; Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: modern and contemporary poetry of Europe and the Americas; postcolonial Caribbean; critical theory, literary history, philosophy of language, political theory; media studies, genre theory, cross-genre writing, writing and disciplinarity

Timothy Conway Murray

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
• Research Interests: seventeenth-century French literature; film; art and theater; poststructuralism

Alex M. Nading

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: Medical Humanities, Environmental Humanities, Central America

Jose Edmundo Paz-Soldan

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: Andean literature and culture; media studies; modern and contemporary Latin American literature

Simone Pinet

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: medieval studies; early modern studies; cartography and theories of space/place; economics and fiction; sound studies; literatures in Spanish from 13th-16th centuries.

Karen E. Pinkus

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies; Italian literature; Italian studies
• Research Interests: Italian literature; cultural studies

Imane Terhmina

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
• Research Interests: Francophone African Literature and Culture, Postcolonial theory, Affect Theory, Political Philosophy, Afropolitanism, Petrofictions/Ecotopias

Enzo Traverso

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French studies; Hispanic studies; Italian studies
• Research Interests: Contemporary social and cultural history; European intellectual history; Political theory

Irina Raquel Troconis Gonzalez

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: Latin American literature and culture, digital humanities, new media, performance studies, memory studies, border studies, queer studies, Latino studies, literature and exile, virtual realities

Marie-Claire Vallois

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
• Research Interests: eighteenth-century French literature; semiotics and narratology; French and Francophone theories; practices of feminism