We are pleased to congratulate the talented graduate students in the Department who won awards for excellence in conference presentations and theses this past summer.
Among them, French/Francophone Studies Ph.D. candidate Amanda Vredenburgh won the Maria A. Salgado Graduate Student Award for her paper entitled “The Fantastic Beastialization of the Biopolitical Subject in Marie Darrieussecq’s Truismes”. Vredenburgh presented her paper at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Conference for Romance Studies, the theme of which was Utopia and Dystopia. As part of the award, Vredenburgh will receive a $100 prize and her paper will be published in the UNC-Department of Romance Studies’ magazine, Romance Notes.
Italian Studies Ph.D. student Carlotta Vacchelli won the Young Graduates Prize from the International Association of Dino Buzzati for her Master’s thesis entitled “‘The Towered Clouds of Eternity’. Myths and Obsessions in Buzzati's imagery,” which she completed at the University of Pavia in 2015. Vacchelli received a $500 prize, and was hosted at the Buzzati Archive in Feltre, Italy for four days. During her stay at the archive, Vacchelli examined a selection of Buzzati’s personal writings and will prepare a study on Buzzati’s works to present to the Association.
At Les français d’ici conference at Concordia University this summer, French Linguistics Ph.D. candidate Laura Demsey won Le Prix France-Martineau for best student presentation. The award, which is named after Professor France Martineau at the University of Ottawa, includes a prize of $500 (Canadian). Demsey’s paper, entitled “Qui perd sa langue perd sa foi: Contact-Induced Change in the Functional Categories of New England French,” presented the research from her pilot study for her dissertation, which examines potential English influences in New England French.
The College of Arts