Elena Past announced as associate chair of CMLLC

Associate Professor Elena Past will be the new associate chair of the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, which was formed in 2007 from four different departments.

Professor Past brings to the job the kind of innovation characteristic of her scholarship. In 2012 she published Methods of Murder: Beccarian Introspection and Lombrosian Vivisection in Italian Crime Cinema, and her most recent work focuses on ecocriticism, posthumanism, and ecomedia studies. She has co-edited a volume, Thinking Italian Animals: Human and Posthuman in Modern Italian Literature and Film, which appeared in 2014, and she is currently working on a book-length project on Italian ecomedia studies.

Given her commitment to undergraduate education, Professor Past was a recipient of the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2009, and she has been essential to the Wayne in Abruzzo Summer Study Abroad program. For several years Professor Past has served as a faculty adviser for the CMLLC Graduate Forum, which organizes professional development workshops and an annual graduate student conference. Every April she co-organizes the Italian Film Festival USA, working with the Italian Consulate, the Detroit Film Theatre, and the local Italian community.

As associate chair, Professor Past is interested in fostering undergraduate research and developing recruitment for the languages. Her inspirational style and positive energy will help a relatively new department find creative ways to continue building excellent programming and develop exciting opportunities for Wayne State University students.