Vanessa Weller
Program: Ph.D. – French and Francophone Studies
Position: Teaching Assistant Level II (FRN 102, AY22-23)
Research Interests: 19th and 20th century French literature, early cinema and media studies, Modernism, translation theory, Caribbean and Maghrebi postcolonial literature, poetry as political activism
Campus Address: Wells Hall B370
Email: wellerva@msu.edu
Vanessa Weller is a Ph.D. student and teaching assistant in French and Francophone Studies in the Department of Romance and Classical Studies at Michigan State University. She holds a B.A. in German Literature and French and Francophone Studies from Lawrence University in Appleton, WI, and an M.A. in Cultural Translation from the American University in Paris.
Vanessa has previously received research and teaching grants, including a Fulbright grant to Austria and a teaching assistantship with TAPIF (Teaching Assistant Program in France). She is the current editor-in-chief of TROPOS, the oldest graduate student-led academic journal in Romance Studies in North America. Her proposed dissertation topic centers on the role of mass media in the Parisian avant-garde movements of the early 20th century and the intersections of class, race, and gender within those movements.
Publications:
“Monsters, Mechanics, and Automatic Writing in E.T.A. Hoffman’s ‘The Sandman’ and Gérard de Nerval’s ‘Aurélia’” in The Human and the Machine in Literature and Culture: Cultures of Automation, edited by Kate Foster and Molly Crozier, Routledge, forthcoming 2025.
“Marguerite Porete: Between Language and Mysticism” in Magistra: A Journal of Women’s Spirituality in History, vol. 30 no. 1, 2024, pp. 56-79.
“Bird of Prosody: Poe’s The Raven and Baudelaire’s Le Corbeau” in Norwich Papers, vol. 22, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, 2014, pp. 86-103.
Courses Taught:
FRN 102: First Year French II, FRN 201: Second Year French I