Gina Luria Walker, Director
Professor Walker is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at New School University where she teaches Women’s Intellectual History. Project Continua is an independent initiative of the Female Biography Project, a collaborative feminist enterprise formed in 2009 when Gina was invited to become editor of the Chawton House Library Edition of Mary Hays’s Female Biography (1803) to be published by Pickering & Chatto (2013, 2014). Gina received degrees from Barnard College, Columbia University, and New York University where she was given the Founders’ Day Award for doctoral studies. These included discovery of primary documents by and about Hays in private hands, now part of The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle at The New York Public Library. Gina has held faculty appointments at Rutgers University, Sarah Lawrence College, and The New School. Her areas of research include the history of learned women, women and Rational Dissent, late Enlightenment Feminisms, and women’s autodidactic production of new knowledge. In 1974, she edited The Feminist Controversy in England 1788-1810 for Garland Publishing, 44 works in 89 volumes by and about women with new introductions that proposed a new female canon for scholarly investigation. She is the author of Mary Hays (1759-1843): the growth of a woman’s mind (2006), editor of The Idea of Being Free: A Mary Hays Reader (2006), co-editor of Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (2001) and Rational Passions: Women and Scholarship in Britain 1702-1870 (2008). From 1999-2001, she participated in the Feminism and Enlightenment Project. With G. M. Ditchfield (University of Kent), she co-edited Intellectual Exchanges: Women and Rational Dissent, Special Issue, Enlightenment and Dissent (2010).
Penny Whitworth, Strategic Development
Penny works on building support for the Project Continua and before that for the Female Biography Project. This includes raising funds that have enabled valuable groundwork including biographical research, pedagogical exploration, workshops, conference presentations, website concepts, overall program development and a celebration of International Women’s Day in 2013 at the New School University. Her professional experience includes international fundraising and resource mobilization, building working relationships between national and international constituencies in the non-profit and private sectors, many times collaborating with volunteers. Penny received her BA in Liberal Studies from the New School University.
Linda Xue, Director of Digital Applications and Design
Linda is a dual degree student pursuing Integrated Design with a focus in Sustainable Cities at Parsons School for Design and Philosophy at Eugene Lang College, with a minor in Art and Design History and Theory. Her creative practice is grounded in ancient handicrafts, critical theory, and research on the philosophical and political implications of history, display, and invention.
Caroline Powell, Creative Director and Design Strategist
Caroline is an undergraduate student at Parsons The New School for Design, majoring in Integrated Design with a focus in Design Studies and Sustainable Cities. She is also pursuing a minor in Culture and Media Studies at Eugene Lang with specific interests in socially engaged art, curating, and documentary film.
Evdoxia Ragkou, Research Director
Evdoxia studied musicology at the Department of Music Studies, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. After graduation (2011), she enrolled in a postgraduate program at the Music Department, University of Huddersfield (UK) and graduated the following year (2012). Currently she is a graduate student at the New School for Social Research in New York (fall 2014), where she also works as a Research and Teaching Assistant. Because of her growing interest in marginalized people and practices she participates in two research groups that focus on that particular issues. One is Critical Music Histories, a cross-level research group for critical music historiography, based in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, that discusses issues regarding dominant music history narratives, highlighting marginalized musical practices and unexplored relationships between sound and everyday life (co-founder/ coordinator). The other is Project Continua where she contributes as Research Director. This connection emerged through her assistantship and collaboration with Gina Luria Walker. Also, she focuses her interest in sound-making by participating into experimental music ensembles, and, at the same time, she explores electronic sound, using object oriented programming language.
Mary Spongberg, History Editor
Professor Spongberg is Dean of Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at University of Technology, Sidney, Australia. Prior to her appointment at UTS Mary Spongberg was Professor of Modern History and Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University. Mary was formerly Head of the Department of Modern History and the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations, and was Interim Executive Dean of the new Faculty of Arts when it was established. Prior to being at Macquarie she was an NHMRC postdoctoral fellow in Women’s Studies at the University of Sydney.
Mary has taught Australian History, European History and Women’s Studies at Macquarie and the University of Sydney. She is editor of the international journal Australian Feminist Studies, and on the editorial board of Women’s History Review. She is author of Feminizing Venereal Disease (1995), which was shortlisted for the Premier’s History Prize in 1998, and Writing Women’s History Since the Renaissance (2002). With Barbara Caine and Ann Curthoys she edited the groundbreaking Companion to Women’s History (2005) and is currently working on the Female Biography Project with colleagues at the New School, New York.
Magdalen Livesey, Editor
Magdalen received a BS in Languages from Georgetown University and an MA in Education from Fairfield University. She is Managing Editor at Cortina Learning International, Inc., publishers of distance learning materials in foreign languages, ESL, art, and writing. She also runs writing workshops at several senior centers in Connecticut. After studying Women’s Intellectual History with Gina Luria Walker, she became an editor of biographical material for Project Continua.
Koren Whipp, Website Designer
Koren developed, designed, and produced the project website and administered the production of content for the project from it’s inception until August, 2015, through her design firm, Black Tank Design, She is an Independent Scholar focusing on Women’s Intellectual and Political History and has contributed numerous biographies to Project Continua.
Kaitlin Sansoucie, Social Media Manager
Kaitlin is a graduate of Eugene Lang College of The New School, where she earned a degree in Culture and Media Studies. She has a passion for film, writing, and art.
Hannah Ashkinaze, Research Associate
Emily Quartarone, previously the Program Administrator of Project Continua, is now attending The George Washington University where she is working toward an MA in American Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies. She holds a BFA in Theatre from Columbus State University, and graduated from the William Esper Studio. Emily has interned in the Education department at Manhattan Theatre Club where she worked with Stargate Theatre, a professional theatre company for court involved young men, along with other educational programs. Emily has also worked at Primary Stages as an assistant on the Off-Broadway Oral History Project, and as an intern at The Einhorn School of Performing Arts. She served as a co-producer/curator of Scarlet Fox Letterpress, a monthly art salon in Brooklyn that curates up and coming local writers and artists. Her research interests include Theatre History, Media Studies, and American Cultural Studies – specifically the role of the arts in activism and women’s studies.
Lindsay Smith is Researcher and Archivist for the Female Biography Project. She earned a BA in History from New School University where she focused her research on the development of women’s higher education in America. Lindsay earned an MS in Information from The University of Michigan with a concentration in archive management and preservation. Her professional experience includes work in various archives and libraries including the Grand Rapids Public Library, The Sindecuse Museum of Dentistry at the University of Michigan, The Ann Arbor District Library and the Flat River Community Library. She is currently Senior Curatorial Technician with the Harvard College Observatory Astronomical Plate Collection.
Julieta Almeida Rodrigues’s current project is Scents from Afar, A Memoir, an historical fiction based on the biographies of three distinguished personalities of the European Enlightenment who illustrate the craving for freedom in the pursuit of modernity: Abbé Correia da Serra, a diplomat: Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel, a revolutionary woman; and Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage, a poet. She is the author of two collections of short fiction, On the Way to Red Square (2006), and The Rogue and Other Portuguese Stories (2014). She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in Sociology and Education, where her dissertation, Continuity and Change in Urban Portuguese Women’s Roles: Emerging New Household Structures (1995), was primarily supervised by Margaret Mead. She was a Visiting Scholar at the New School University, New School for Public Engagement, in the spring of 2014 and of 2015, working as Consultant for Iberia and Latin America for Project Continua.
Elizabeth Pallitto is the author of Sweet Fire: Tullia d’Aragona’s Poetry of Dialogue and Selected Prose (NY: Braziller, 2007), the first book in English on this author. She is also the editor of the anthology Leaves of Autumn, just published in May, 2015. For six years, Elizabeth taught in Istanbul, Turkey, at Boğaziçi, Fatih, and Kadir Has Universities. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature with distinction from the CUNY Graduate Center.
Elizabeth’s academic focus is upon the history of ideas, their transmission from the classical period, and the education of women in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. She has published articles on Tullia d’Aragona and other women of the Renaissance and Baroque eras (such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Elisabetta Gonzaga). Her contributions to the Female Biography Project include annotated entries on four Renaissance women, Tullia d’Aragona’s biography for Project Continua, and an essay in The Invention of Female Biography. Her scholarly writing has appeared in books and journals, including Renaissance Quarterly, Philosophical Forum, Differentia: A Review of Italian Thought, Comitatus: Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and Hybrido Cultural Project.
Elizabeth also holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from New York University. Her poetry and translations are published in The North American Review, Absinthe, Forum Italicum, and the Journal of Italian Translation. Her translations of 20th-century and contemporary poets appear in anthologies such as The Bread and the Rose (2005), A New Map: Migrant Poets in Italy (2011), and Aeolian Visions/ Versions (Milet: W Sussex, 2014). Her poetry collection, Mythography: Poems of Istanbul and the Aegean, is due to be published this fall.
Lotte Houwink ten Cate graduated from Amsterdam University College in 2012 with a BA in History and Literature. She spent the fall semester of 2011 at the New School in New York, where she took courses in Women’s and Middle Eastern Studies, her two fields of interest. Lotte has studied Arabic in Damascus, Syria and took courses in Middle Eastern history and Islamic Art at the University of Amsterdam. In April 2011, she participated on full scholarship in the Political Islam seminar at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Veronica Cassidy is a writer and educator based in New York City. She is completing an M.A. in Liberal Studies at the New School for Social Research, and teaches at CUNY’s Hunter College and Stella & Charles Guttman Community College. She manages The Universal Condition, a blog about gender, trauma and mental illness. Her research focuses on the impact of mental health issues within the classroom, and the transformative potentials of education. In addition, she is working on a children’s book called,You Always Have a Friend in You. She lives with her two beloved bulldogs.
Elena Testi is Video Producer and Defender Award Manager at Human Rights Watch. While a student at The New School, she pursued an Independent Study on “Laura Bassi: a pioneer in women’s education in Europe: A learned woman in Eighteenth-Century Italy and her scientific circle in Bologna,” under Gina Luria Walker’s supervision. In summer, 2006, she went to the University of Bologna to work with Marta Cavazza on producing the first English translations of several of Laura Bassi’s letters in the University archives.
Samuel Yelton is a graduate of St. John’s College, Annapolis and the Liberal Studies MA program at the New School for Social Research. His research interests include aesthetics, Platonism, and female intellectual history.
Stephanie Bedus received her BFA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College, double-minoring in Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies. She has contributed creative and opinion pieces to various independent literary magazines and blogs, and is now completing an MA program at The New School for Social Research with a focus on Gender Studies and Women’s Intellectual History.
Elizabeth Pearce is a graduate of the University of Michigan. She lives in Ann Arbor and works for the Ann Arbor Public Library System. Her many interests include women’s history, distance running, reading, traveling, gardening and knitting. She hopes to continue her education to pursue a graduate degree in either library science or horticulture.
Patti M. Marxsen is a writer, translator, and independent scholar whose writings have appeared in numerous journals including Fourth Genre, The French Review, Prairie Schooner, and the Women’s Review of Books. As a former French teacher with an M.A. in Art History, her long-standing interest in the culture and history of the Francophone world encompasses Schweitzer Studies, Haitian Studies, and Switzerland, where she has lived since 2007. Marxsen’s books include a collection of travel essays, Island Journeys: Exploring the Legacy of France (Alondra Press, 2008) and a collection of short fiction, Tales from the Heart of Haiti (Educa Vision, 2010). Her translation from the French of Albert Schweitzer’s Lambarene: A Legacy of Humanity for Our World Today by Jo and Walter Munz appeared in March of 2010. Her biography of Helene Schweitzer Bresslau (1879-1957), Helene Schweitzer: A Life of Her Own, will be published by Syracuse University Press in 2015. Patti Marxsen lives in Switzerland and travels frequently to Boston and Maine.
Marie Caruso is a teacher of music and art history at St. Vincent Ferrer High School in New York City and directs an all-girl choir there. She obtained her Doctorate in Music Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and continues to do archival research on women composers from 18th-century Italy. Her article “Ten Fugues Shed Light on an Old Debate” is published in Il Saggiatore Musicale. She is also the director of Angelica Women’s Chamber Choir.
Jennifer Cox graduated from Colby College where she earned a BA in History and Creative Writing. She currently works at Harvard University, where she is also earning her MLA in Literature and Creative Writing. Jennifer grew up in New Hampshire and is now based in Boston, MA.
Juliana Ossa Martinez was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia. After living in Paris, where she studied photography and French literature, she completed her BA in Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal. She has done extensive research on the history and philosophy of theology, a field she hopes to continue to explore. She earned a Masters degree in Liberal Studies from The New School for Social Research.
Troy O’Neill is an undergraduate student at Eugene Lang College, double-majoring in Culture and Media Studies and Philosophy. His research interests include speculative realism, post-internet aesthetics, and feminist technology.
