Romance Studies

Field Description

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

Students in Romance Studies select a major in an area of literature (French, Italian, or Spanish literature) and choose a minor in one or two other areas from any field.

French, Hispanic, or Italian literature. The field offers a full complement of courses in French, Hispanic,or Italian literatures. It seeks to incorporate current, speculative, theoretical views of literature, often reflected in the review Diacritics, which since 1971 has been edited and published by faculty members and students in the Field of Romance Studies.

Students choose one national literature as their major concentration. 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 basic to teaching and research in the interpretation of literature.

Students are encouraged to study foreign languages other than the language of the major concentration, 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 with a major in French, Hispanic, or Italian literature usually teach at least one year of literature and one year of language as part of their professional training; numerous teaching assistantships are available. A summer course in language teaching allows beginning assistants to observe and participate in classroom teaching and to attend lectures and discussion on theory and practice. An orientation program on the teaching of literature is held shortly before the semester begins.

Research and study opportunities:
Students are encouraged to spend a term or year abroad to improve their language skills or advance their research. Opportunities include assistantships and study opportunities at various universities abroad. Small subsidies are provided for some students to study abroad.

Cornell's excellent research library has renowned collections of books pertaining to Dante, Petrarch, and the French Revolution. The field also benefits from the interdisciplinary Medieval Studies Program, the Renaissance colloquium, the Society for the Humanities, the Women's Studies Program, and the Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large program. Cornell also has national resource centers in Latin American studies and in Western Societies.

Contact Information

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

K161 Klarman Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY  14853

Data and Statistics

• Doctoral 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

Anne Emanuelle Berger

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French literature; French studies
• Research Interests: eighteenth-century French literature and philosophy; modern poetry; feminist and psychoanalytic criticism; cultural politics of the Maghreb

Ross Brann

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

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

Abigail C Cohn

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French studies
• Research Interests: French linguistics; phonology; phonetics

Jonathan Dwight Culler

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

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

Pedro Erber

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature; Hispanic studies
• Research Interests: Brazilian intellectual history, literature, and visual culture; theories and histories of modernism and the avant-garde; art and politics; critical theory and political thought

Mitchell D Greenberg

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

William John Kennedy

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

Shawn McDaniel

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: Hispanic literature
• Research Interests: hispanic caribbean; latin american and diasporic literature and culture

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

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; Renaissance Spanish studies

Karen E. Pinkus

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

Diane S. Rubenstein

• Campus: Ithaca
• Concentrations: Romance Studies: French studies
• Research Interests: contemporary French theory: deconstruction; psychoanalysis; semiotics; French sociology; French politics and institutions; the French Right and fascism

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

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