{"id":4833,"date":"2026-10-02T09:56:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T16:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/fren-ital\/?page_id=4833"},"modified":"2026-10-07T14:13:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T21:13:23","slug":"alumni-and-placement","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/fren-ital\/alumni-and-placement\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni and Placement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n \n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Our graduates pursue careers across higher education, cultural institutions, nonprofit organizations, and other fields. Their research and professional paths reflect the interdisciplinary training of USC\u2019s French and Francophone Studies PhD.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n Melek Chekili\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Assistant Professor of Francophone Studies, Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, Illinois. Melek\u2019s work focuses on the singing voices of Kabyle women in film, audio recordings, and literature. She is author of Listening to Taos Amrouche, a Kabyle Woman\u2019s Singing Voice in a Context of Exile and Immigration: Between a Search for Intimacy and Independence<\/a> published in the Journal of Amazigh Studies in 2026. Her dissertation title: \u201cSinging Matters: Women\u2019s Voices as Survival in Colonial and Postcolonial Tamazgha.\u201d (PhD 2026, Advisor: Olivia Harrison)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n Jesus Garcia\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Visiting Assistant Professor, Occidental College. Jesse\u2019s research focuses on connections between metaphors of consumption and representations of men and masculinity in Senegalese literature, film, and poetry. Dissertation title: \u201cTasty, Comestible Men: Metabolic Poetics in Senegal\u201d (PhD 2023, advisor: Lydie Moudileno)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n Alvin Chuan\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Alvin\u2019s research focuses on Qu\u00e9becois and Franco-American cultural productions and representations of migration and labor. Dissertation title: \u201cColonial Ventures: The Poetics of Migration, Colonization, and Labor in Francophone North America\u201d (PhD 2023, advisor: Lydie Moudileno)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n Brieuc G\u00e9rard\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Grants Manager, Los Angeles LGBT Center. Brieuc is author of the article \u201cSous les pav\u00e9s, l\u2019hiver: Hocquenghem, transparence, et politiques queers radicales dans le sillage de Mai 68\u201d<\/a> in Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 23.2 (2019). He co-edited and wrote the preface to To Think Is to Say No<\/a> by Jacques Derrida. Dissertation title: \u201cX-human: Radical Queer Politics in the wake of May \u201968 France\u201d (PhD 2023, advisor: Panivong Norindr)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n Katherine Hammitt\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Dornsife Fellow in General Education, USC. Her article \u201cReconnecting Sight and Site: Reterritorialization in Chantal Spitz\u2019s Cartes postales\u201d<\/a> appears in the April 2023 issue of the Australian Journal of French Studies<\/em>. Dissertation title: \u201cBeyond the Sea that Separates: Francophone Voices of Oceania\u201d (PhD 2023, advisor: Olivia C. Harrison)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n Richard McLaughlin\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Richard\u2019s work considers how filmmakers and thinkers have explored and experimented with dynamics of the everyday in post\/colonial France. He is author of \u201cThe Archivist of Protest: The Attention Economy and Chris Marker\u2019s Use of D\u00e9tournement in Chats perch\u00e9s<\/em>\u201d<\/a> in Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 27.3 (2023). Dissertation title: \u201cSeeing Where There\u2019s Nothing to See: French Filmmakers and Writers and Everyday Life in Postwar Social Space.\u201d (PhD 2022, advisor: Panivong Norindr)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n Kristen Besinque\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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French Instructor, World Literatures, Flintridge Sacred Heart, just outside Los Angeles, CA. Kristen\u2019s dissertation research focuses on the legal history of nationality from post-1945 to the present in relation to France’s former colonies. Dissertation title: \u201cIdentity Trouble: National Bodies and French Hospitality.\u201d (PhD 2021, advisor: Panivong Norindr)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n Ingrid Leventhal\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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English Teacher, Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, just outside Los Angeles, CA. Ingrid\u2019s dissertation research focuses on national identity in relation to aristocratic decadence and French colonial history. Dissertation title: \u201cL\u2019autre chez nous: Defining the National Body in French Literature, 1800-1848.\u201d (PhD 2017, advisor: Natania Meeker)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n Katy Le Bris\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Freelance cultural and educational consultant in Portland, OR. Katy\u2019s dissertation research explores how French literature, from the Revolution to the 1980s, engages in a critique of capital punishment. Dissertation title: \u201cLaw and Disorder: Literary Case Studies of the Great Criminal in the Shadow of the Guillotine.\u201d (PhD 2015, advisor: Peggy Kamuf)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n Emilie Garrigou-Kempton\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Professor of French, Pasadena City College. She has several published articles, including \u201c<\/span>Les hyst\u00e9riques par elles-m\u00eames : \u00e0 la recherche des mots de la Salp\u00eatri\u00e8re<\/span><\/a>\u201d appearing in <\/span>Corps <\/span><\/i>in 2020. Dissertation title: \u201cHysteria in Lourdes and Miracles at the Salp\u00eatri\u00e8re: The Intersection of Faith and Medical Discourse in Late Nineteenth-Century French Literature.\u201d (PhD 2016, advisor: Natania Meeker)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n Laurence Clerfeuille\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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World Language Department Chair, The Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles, CA. Laurence is the author of \u201c<\/span>Marronnage au f\u00e9minin dans Rosalie l\u2019Inf\u00e2me d\u2019Evelyne Trouillot<\/span><\/a>\u201d which appeared in <\/span>Contemporary French and Francophone Studies <\/span><\/i>in 2012. Dissertation title: \u201cR\u00e9voltes sans t\u00e9moin: la trac\u00e9e du marronnage dans la litt\u00e9rature ha\u00eftienne.\u201d (PhD 2015, advisor: Panivong Norindr)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n Lucille Toth<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Associate Professor of French, Department of French, The Ohio State University. Author of <\/span>Danses et pand\u00e9mies. Du sida \u00e0 la covid-19<\/span><\/i><\/a> (Varia Qu\u00e9bec, 2023), and co-editor of <\/span>Embodied Narratives in the Health Humanities and Literary Studies<\/span><\/i><\/a> (University of Toronto Press, 2025). Dissertation title: \u201cDanser la maladie, contaminer la beaut\u00e9: a viral approach to the (choreo)graphed body.\u201d (PhD 2014, advisor: Natania Meeker)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n Olivier Roland\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Freelance film producer in Belgium. Olivier is author of \u201cL\u2019autographie mareysienne: ou comment s\u00e9parer les corps pour les rapprocher d\u2019eux-m\u00eames\u201d published in <\/span>Paroles gel\u00e9es<\/span><\/i>. Dissertation title: \u201cLa galvanisation du corps: le cin\u00e9ma fran\u00e7ais et la biopolitique.\u201d (PhD 2013, advisor Akira Mizuta Lippit)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n James Rowlins\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Director of Brighton Rocks International Film Festival. His articles include \u201cCinema as Translucent Reality: The Actuality Aesthetic in the French New Wave\u201d published in <\/span>Post-scriptum: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Literary Studies <\/span><\/i>Dissertation. Dissertation title: \u201cDeadly deviations, subversive cinema: the influence of Hollywood film noir on the French new wave.\u201d (PhD 2012, advisor: Karen Pinkus)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n Oana Sabo<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature, Tulane University. Author of <\/span>The Migrant Canon in Twenty-First-Century France<\/span><\/i><\/a> (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). Her published articles include: <\/span>\u201cDisjunctures and diaspora in Kiran Desai\u2019s The Inheritance of Loss\u201d<\/span><\/a> appearing in <\/span>The Journal of Commonwealth Literature<\/span><\/i> and \u201c<\/span>Documenting the undocumented: Valeria Luiselli\u2019s Refugee Children Archives<\/span><\/a>\u201d published in <\/span>Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture<\/span><\/i> in 2020. (PhD 2011, advisor: Panivong Norindr)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n

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\n Claire Nettleton\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Academic Curator at Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in Claremont, CA.<\/span> Dissertation title: \u201cPrimal Perception: The Artist as Animal in Nineteenth-Century France.\u201d (PhD 2010, advisor: Ant\u00f3nia Szabari)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/div>\n \n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4833","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAlumni and Placement - Department of French and Italian<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/fren-ital\/alumni-and-placement\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Alumni and Placement - 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