Our graduate students commit to excellence

By Nicolas Noé

Last academic year, our graduate students once again demonstrated their academic and pedagogical excellence, whether by obtaining prestigious scholarships and teaching awards, presenting their research work at major conferences, publishing in quality journals, or contributing to the scientific community by organizing a graduate conference. Let’s have a closer look at the outstanding contribution of our graduates to IU’s teaching success and renowned research activity.

All through the past academic year, all the FRIT concentrations have been particularly active research-wise. In French linguistics, Kai Owens (MA, 2023) gave several talks and presented multiple posters last year. They presented a paper at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting entitled “Musical genres exhibit distinct sociophonetic targets in Quebec French,” which will be published in the Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America. They were the “Best student poster” award recipient at the Annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association, May 31st-June 2nd, in Toronto, Ontario (Canada). Their poster re-evaluated the role of duration in Laurentian French high vowel laxing.

Jennifer Cox (MA, 2022) was awarded a Foreign Language and Area Studies award to study Arabic over the Summer of 2023. Last June, she presented online a paper entitled “The influence of nation-state ideologies on minority language standardization and policy” for the British Association of Applied Linguistics conference in London, England, and two papers about Picard in the spring at the 7th Forging Linguistic Identities Conference: Language in the Nation, the Region & the World in Towson, Maryland, and the International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation in Honolulu, Hawaii.

For her part, Jane Gilbert presented two posters this semester at the Acoustical Society of America and Manchester Phonology Meeting and returned to France to take part in IU Honors pro- gram in foreign languages dedicated to high school students during the summer. She is part of Prof. Laurent Dekydtspotter’s processing lab with fellow graduate student Decker Pope and presented at the lab’s spring colloquium. She also co-chaired Share Fair with French and Francophone Studies PhD candidate Jade Liu (MA, French and Francophone Studies, 2019).

He is collaborating on a Call for Papers with alumna Victoria Lagrange (PhD, French and Francophone Studies, 2022), Assistant Professor of Game Narrative (Department of English, Kennesaw State University) for the South Atlantic Modern Language Association 95th conference “(In)Security: The Future of Literature and Language Studies” (Nov. 9th -11th 2023).

This spring, she gave two talks at international conferences. One was entitled “Gen-Z and Multilingualism in Italian Social Media” and presented at the American Association of Applied Linguistics Conference in Portland, Oregon (March 2023), and the other, “Tweeting on thin ice: Climate Change Public Engagement with Scientists on Twitter during COP26” was presented at the International Communication Association Conference in Toronto, Canada (May 2023).

Moreover, Alvise Stefani (MA, 2020) presented at the Renaissance Society of America conference in Puerto Rico, San Juan, in March. He volunteered to take part in the Student Academic Appointee Council in the College of Arts & Sciences for the next academic year (2023-2024).

In French and Francophone studies, Claire Fouchereaux (MA, 2020) recently received a prestigious Graduate Student Scholarship from the International Council for Canadian Studies/Conseil international d’études canadiennes. This funding supported her summer research trip to Montréal, Québec, to explore collections related to her dissertation on rap in Québec and the genre’s relationship to cultural institutions.

This past October, she also participated in the American Council for Québec Studies’ biennial conference, where she had the pleasure of meeting FRIT alumnae Dr. Antoinette A. Barffour (MA, French Linguistics, 2012), Dr. Olga Amarie (PhD, French and Francophone Studies, 2011), and Dr. Erin Edgington (PhD, French and Francophone Studies, 2013), the latter two pictured below with Claire (from left to right).

For his part, Nicolas Noé (MA, 2023) gave a talk in June 2023 for the 64th Society for French Studies annual conference at Newcastle University, England. He is part of the IU Share Fair organizing committee and a member of the IU Graduate and Professional Student Government Health and Wellness committee. He is currently writing an article on Caribbean writer and philosopher Edouard Glissant with Prof. Panaïté.

Our graduate students have also collectively shone at this year’s FRIT Graduate Conference, “Patterns & Singularities” (March 31-April 1), organized by graduate student organizers Corentin Mazet (MA French Linguistics, 2022), Nicolas Noé, and Alvise Stefani. Twenty-six students from the department and six different universities engaged with the topic from the standpoint of different disciplines, from second language studies and linguistics to musicology, film studies, and literature to history. The graduate conference featured two brilliant guest lectures. One was delivered by alumnus Michael Dow (French Linguistics, PhD, 2014), now a Professor of Linguistics and Translation at the University of Montreal, “Applying Twitter data to linguistics research: case studies in sound, form, and meaning.” The second was given by Rocco Rubini, Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Chicago, entitled: “The Making of the Italian Philologist: from Petrarch to Timpanaro.”