Below is a representative sample of job placements from the Comparative Literature doctoral program.

2020

Palita Chunsaengchan
Dissertation: “Competitive Aesthetic Regimes: Intermedial Translations and Early Thai Cinema (1880-1942).”
Director: Sangita Gopal
Current Position: Assistant Professor, Southeast Asian Cinema; Dept. of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies; University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Tera Reid-Olds
Dissertation: “The Cross-Currents of Exilic Storytelling: Multilingual Memory and the Maritime Shift.”
Director: Michael Allan
Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellowship; Department of Literature; University of California, San Diego

Daria Smirnova
Dissertation:  “The Language Zone: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet.”
Director: Jenifer Presto
Current Position: Instructor of Russian; Portland State University

2019

Bess Myers
Dissertation: “Speaking After Silence: Presidential Rhetoric in the Wake of Catastrophe”
Director: James Crosswhite
Current Position: Lecturer, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

2018

Baran Germen
Dissertation: “The Melodramatics of Turkish Modernity: Vurun Kahpeye [Strike the Slut] and its Cinematic Afterlife”
Director: Sangita Gopal
Current Position: Assistant Professorship in Film Studies, Colorado College

Ying Xiong
Dissertation: “Herbs and Beauty: Gendered Poethood and Translated Affect in Late Imperial and Early Modern China”
Director: Yugan Wang
Current Position: Research Associate and Editorial Director of International Comparative Literature (ICL), Research Center for Comparative Literature & World Literature, Shanghai Normal University

2017

Sunayani Bhattacharya
Dissertation: “Dear Reader, Good Sir: The Birth of the Novel in Nineteenth-Century Bengal”
Director: Sangita Gopal
Initial Position: Assistant Professor of English, St. Mary’s College, Morago, CA.

2016

Ramona Tougas
Dissertation: “Performing Work: Internationalism and Theatre of Fact between the U. S. A. and the U. S. S. R”
Director: Mark Whalan
Current Position: Access Counselor and Consultant, Disability Resource Center, Portland State University

2015

Andrea Gilroy
Dissertation: “Origin Stories: Narrative, Identity, and Comic Form”
Directors: Benjamin Saunders and Elizabeth Wheeler
Initial Position: Visiting Director, Comic Studies, University of Oregon

 Amanda Cornwall
Dissertation: “The Tension of the Real: Visuality in Nineteenth-Century British Realism”
Director: Forest Pyle
Current Position: Associate Director of Graduate Student Professional Development, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2014

Chet Lisiecki
Dissertation: “Lyric Poetry, Conservative Politics, and the Rise of Fascism”
Director: Jeffrey Librett
Current Position: Assistant Professor of German, Colorado College

Monica McLellan
Dissertation: “Translating the Afterlives of Qu Yuan”
Director: Yugen Wang
Current: Program Coordinator, Global Studies Institute, University of Oregon

Yvonne Toepfer
Dissertation: “Afterlives of the Sandman: Re-Figuring the Fantastic-Sublime”
Director: Dorothee Ostmeier
Current Position: Instructor in the B.A. in Humanities, The Arts and Social Thought, Bard College Berlin

Jamie Richards

Dissertation: “La Vita agra-dolce: Italian Counter-Cultures and Translation During the Economic Miracle”
Director: Massimo Lollini
Current Position: Independent Translator and Editorial Consultant based in Milan, Italy

Emily McGinn
Dissertation: “The Science of Sound: Recording Technology and the Literary Vanguard”
Director: Paul Peppis
Initial Position: Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities, Lafayette College
Current Position: Digital Humanities Coordinator, Wilson Digital Humanities Center, University of Georgia

Meyre Ivone Santana da Silva
Dissertation: “Narratives of Desire: Gender and Sexuality in Ugul, Aidoo and Chizane”
Director: Lisa Gilman
Current Position: Researcher, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain

2013

Jeong Chang
Dissertation: “The Melodrama of Care in Contemporary Global Cinema”
Director: David Liwei Li
Current Position: Professor, Center for Global Communication Strategies, University of Tokyo

2011

Max Rayneard
Dissertation: “Performing Literariness: Literature in the Event in South Africa and the United States”
Current Position: Co-Creator; Director of Research and Outcomes, The Telling Project

https://thetellingproject.org/

2010

Moshe Rachmuth
Dissertation: “The Speculative Ethics of Modern Comedic Work: Mark Twain, Italo Svevo, Charlie Chaplin and Lenny Bruce”
Director: Kenneth Calhoon
Current Position: Senior Instructor in Hebrew, Portland State University

Roger Adkins
Dissertation: “The Monstrous Other Speaks: Postsubjectivity and the Queering of the Normal”
Director: Ellen Rees
Current: Director of International and Cultural Education, Gustavus Adolphus College

2009

Blair Orfall
Dissertation: “Bollywood Retakes: Literary Adaptation and Appropriation in Contemporary Hindi Cinema”
Director: Sangita Gopal
Current Position: Interactive Learning Center Coordinator, Lewis & Clark College

Emily Taylor Meyers
Dissertation: “Transnational Romance: The Politics of Desire in Caribbean Novels by Women”
Director: Karen McPherson
Current Position: Professor of English, Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC

2008

Hongmei Yu
Dissertation: “The Politics of Images: Chinese Cinema in the Context of Globalization”
Director: Tze-lan Sang
Current Position: Associate Professor of Chinese, Luther College

Kathryn Olsen
Dissertation: “Regenerative Illusion in the Novels of Faulkner, Nabokov, and Proust”
Director: Louise Westling
Current: Senior Lecturer in English, Auburn University