Jenny Rhodes

Jenny Rhodes' research centers upon sites of interchange between literature and the visual and performing arts, with a specialization in opera and the novel. She is particularly interested in the ways in which stories cross the porous borders of medium, culture, and time.

Her current book projects include an exploration of avant-garde creative practices from Dante through the twenty-first century and a monograph that traces the influence of Richard Wagner on modernist prose, with a particular focus on the novels of Gabriele d’Annunzio, Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf, and Clarice Lispector. She is also at work on a large-scale translation of Wagner’s theoretical and theatrical works.

Jenny has taught in Columbia College’s Core Curriculum since 2013, leading courses in Music Humanities, Literature Humanities, and the Core as Praxis. In 2017, she founded Core Studio, a studio arts program that enables students to explore the material worlds of the Core Curriculum through workshops in an expansive range of historical practices and materials.

In nine years of workshops, Jenny has led sessions that encompass more than fifty artistic practices, from fresco portraiture to bookbinding, printmaking to silverpoint, spinning to plaster casting, and cuneiform tablets to airbrush. The 2026-2027 academic year will see the launch of a new series of workshops that incorporate sound, including experimental notation, instrument building, and recording practices with an unusual selection of historical and contemporary instruments. The program functions as an in-house atelier for the Core, welcoming all students to drop in for any session of interest. Core Studio is the recipient of a Large-Scale Teaching and Learning Grant from the Office of the Provost.

At Columbia, Jenny is the recipient of the Meyerson Award for Excellence in Core Teaching for Literature Humanities and the Robert Belknap Core Faculty Fellowship; she has also served as a Lead Teaching Fellow and a Pine Tree Fellow. Her work has received additional support from the Modern Language Association’s Connected Academics Program and the United States Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship.

Active as a translator for performance, Jenny spends summers on the staff of The Santa Fe Opera, where she writes and runs subtitles and presents public programs on opera and drama. She also serves as titlist for the Dallas Opera and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s vocal series.

Education

PhD, Italian and Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University, 2017
MPhil, Italian and Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University, 2012
MA, Italian and Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University, 2010
BA, Comparative Literature, Columbia College, Columbia University, 2000