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Research + Teaching

ABOUT AMY VIDOR
Amy Vidor recently completed her Engaged Scholar Initiative postdoctoral fellowship with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her dissertation (2019), “Testifying to Auschwitz and Algeria,” analyzed writing by Germaine Tillion, Charlotte Delbo, and Marguerite Duras about the atrocities committed during the Holocaust and Algerian War.

ABOUT CAROLINE BARTA
Caroline Barta recently completed her dissertation, “Julia’s Cookbook Readers: 1948-1963,” which discovers and celebrates the cookbook readers behind Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) by Julia Child, Simone Beck, and Louisette Bertholle. Her work was supported by a dissertation fellowship from the Harry Ransom Center in 2019.

ABOUT DIANA SILVEIRA LEITE
Diana Silveira Leite is a doctoral candidate in the Program in Comparative Literature and Graduate School Continuing Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation, “Romanticism’s Discontents: Writing Black Personhood in Nineteenth-Century Brazil,” examines Afro-Brazilian literature from the Romantic period, focusing on slave narratives and abolitionist texts. She holds a M.A. in British Studies from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and B.A. degrees in English and History from The University of Texas at Austin.

ABOUT GAILA SIMS
Gaila Sims is a doctoral candidate in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation, “Imprimatur of the State: Interpretation of Slavery at American History Museums,” explores how state history museums exhibit on the history of enslavement in the United States. Originally from Riverside, California, she received her M.A. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and her B.A. in History and African American Studies from Oberlin College.