Biography
Dr. Boll’s personal and professional experiences have afforded her the opportunity to live, work and do research in a number of countries and continents. In addition to studying abroad in Spain as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware, she spent an academic year teaching English in China and later studied Turkish language and culture at two different universities in Istanbul as part of her doctoral studies. Dr. Boll continues to travel frequently for both work and pleasure, having presented at conferences in Hungary, Cyprus, Germany, Spain and Turkey in recent years. She has also developed programs and/or traveled with Carroll students to Spain, Peru, Costa Rica and Cuba.
Scholarly and Professional Achievements
Publications
“Irony made manifest: cultural contention and Córdoba’s Mosque-Cathedral” Journal of Cultural Geography (available online 1/17; print version forthcoming: 10/17)
“Imagining Istanbul: Sentiment and Subversion in La gran sultana” eHumanista: Journal of Iberian Studies (Volume: Cervantes 2 (2013), pp. 130-145), Fall 2013
“A Tale of a City: Travelling Images of Urban Space in Early Modern Spain and the Ottoman Empire” Travelling Concepts & the Metaphor of Travelling in Literary and Cultural Studies, Spring 2012
“Violating the Harem: Manipulation of Spatial Meaning in Cervantes’ La gran sultana” The International Journal of the Humanities (Volume 9, Issue 5, pp. 137-148), Fall 2011
“The Experience of Enemy Space: Istanbul through the Eyes of the Spanish Other” The International Journal of the Humanities (Volume 6, Issue 6, pp. 53-58), Fall 2008
“East, West and Everything In-Between” High End Magazine, featured travel article, Fall 2008
Conferences Presentations
Don Quijote and the Mediterranean, “From Enchanted Inn to Besieged Castle: Quixotic Influence in Pamuk’s The White Castle”, Univ. of Texas-Austin, Fall 2015
Attending to Early Modern Women, “Commanding Concubines: Historic and Literary Women of Imperial Influence,” Milwaukee, WI, June 2015
CIEPO-21: 21st Symposium of the Comite International des Etudes Pre-ottomanes et Ottomanes, “Istanbul in Iberia: Impressions and Implications in Early Modern Spain,” Budapest, Hungary, October 2014
Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, “Istanbul as Embodiment of Geographic Good,” New Orleans, LA, October 2013
Eastern Resonances I: Ottoman Empire and Persia – 16th-18th c., “Istanbul Re-accentuated: Ottoman Impressions in Early Modern Europe,” Montpellier, France, May 2013
Shared Spaces and their Dissolution: Practices of Coexistence in Cyprus & Elsewhere, “Altered Alterity: The Shared Spaces of Early Modern Istanbul and the Hagia Sophia,” Nicosia, Cyprus, October 2011
9th International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, “Violating the Harem: Manipulation of Spatial Meaning in Cervantes’ La gran sultana,” Granada, Spain, June 2011
Hermes Consortium for Literary & Cultural Studies, “A Tale of Two Cities: The Image of Urban Space in Early Modern Spain and the Ottoman Empire,” Univ. of Giessen, Germany, June 2010
Middle Eastern History & Theory Conference, “Narrating the City: Istanbul as Embodiment of Geographic Good in Viaje de Turquía,” Univ. of Chicago, May 2010
17th Colloquium on Hispanic & Luso-Brazilian Lit. & Linguistics, “Life in Other Space: Istanbul in the Spanish Literary Imagination” Univ. of Texas-Austin, Fall 2008
6th International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, “The Experience of Enemy Space: Istanbul through the Eyes of the Spanish Other,” and Chair of multiple conference panels, Istanbul, Turkey, July 2008
Invited Presentations
Invited Speaker, “Texts and the City: Impressions of Istanbul in Early Modern Spain,” Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN, March 2012
What is your teaching style?
Sharing anecdotes and relating my personal language adventures has proven to be an effective way to create a comfortable learning environment and a means to convince students that they can become fluent in a language with practice and determination. Having learned Spanish in the classroom and having spent time in recent years studying Turkish and Chinese, I can relate well to the anxieties that accompany mastering a new language. By explicitly encouraging students to make mistakes, doing introductory activities at the beginning of the semester to acquaint students with one another, and building trust through small group work, learning is facilitated and students can have more fun with the language.