Profile

Jenna April Liuzzi is a doctoral candidate in the Department of French and Italian. She is passionate about the art of storytelling—how narratives are crafted, why they resonate with audiences, and what makes them both powerful and stylistically compelling. 

Her dissertation project broadly centers on the role that media plays in creating and shaping messages about victims of violent crime, thereby informing public perceptions. More specifically, she focuses on how contemporary French media (e.g., film, literature, podcasts, and social media) frames female victims of sexual violence. She examines how certain narratives employ innovative storytelling and rhetorical strategies to influence social attitudes, challenge harmful myths, and foster a more nuanced understanding of trauma and recovery. 

Jenna holds a M.A. in French from Princeton and a M.A. in French with a specialization in Literature from Middlebury College. She completed additional graduate coursework at the Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III. Jenna was awarded the Frieda Derdeyn Bambas Prize in French Literary Studies by the faculty at Middlebury for her M.A. thesis.

Jenna graduated summa cum laude from Agnes Scott College where she earned a B.A. in French with a minor in Art History and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Further, she completed studies in French culture and civilization at the Institut d’études françaises d’Avignon, under the auspices of Bryn Mawr College in Avignon, France. Her undergraduate research culminated in a thesis that examines the representation of the female body in a selection of nineteenth-century poems. As an undergraduate, her work was published and may be found here. 

In 2022-2023, Jenna held a Cotsen Junior Fellowship which allowed her to collaborate in the research, development, and implementation of a new undergraduate course (FRE 354) while strengthening her teaching skills at Princeton. For the 2023-2024 academic year, Jenna was awarded a Laurance S. Rockefeller Graduate Prize Fellowship through the University Center for Human Values (UCHV) at Princeton. 

In addition to her research, Jenna is passionate about health, wellness, and embodied movement practices. She is a classically trained ballet dancer and a certified yoga (RYT 200) and barre instructor.