Lucia Casiraghi (Italian Studies)

Lucia Casiraghi received a College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship for the academic year 2023/2024. In October 2023, she presented her paper “Italian Gen-Z: Languages and Identities on TikTok” at the AAIS Graduate Student Research Symposium. Later that same month, she was invited by the Italian Program at James Madison University to present her research “Italian Memes Be Like: Gen-Z and the Languages of Social Media in Italy.” In November 2023, she participated in the International Conference on the Image with the paper “Memes For Future: How New Generations Shape Climate Change Debate on Social Media.” In March 2024, she presented the course she developed with Prof. Colleen Ryan and Nicolò Salmaso, “Italia Slow Tour: A Sustainable Journey through Italy,” at NeMLA. The paper “Tweeting on Thin Ice: Scientists in Dialogic Climate Change Communication with the Public,” which she wrote with Eugene Kim (Media School) and Prof. Noriko Hara (Information Science), will be published in the peer-reviewed journal First Monday in June. In the same month, she will present her dissertation in the panel on Minority Languages, Multilingualism, and Italian Language Education at the CAIS Conference. The defense of her dissertation, written under the guidance of Prof. Andrea Ciccarelli, is scheduled for July 2024.

Sonia Cani (Italian Studies)

On April 6^th she participated at UPenn FIGGS Conference. On April 20^th she also presented at KFLC (Kentucky Foreign Language Conference) in Lexington, KY. Sonia received a travel grant from the French and Italian department. Finally, she has a forthcoming book review on Alberto Bertoni’s last book in Italica.  

Alvise Stefani (Italian Studies)

In the Spring 2024 Alvise Stefani obtained the Primary Partner Graduate Student Grant from IU, which will allow him to spend the Fall 2024 semester in Bologna and conduct research as well as focus on his dissertation project.

Miriam Burrascano (Italian Studies)

Throughout the year, Miriam Burrascano served as the GSO representative for the Italian Department. She also found immense fulfillment in teaching M300 Italian Conversation & Diction, a course she developed from scratch, with a unique focus on Sicilian Mafia Cinema. She also reviewed "Federico Della Valle. The Queen of Scots," for Quaderni d’Italianistica. Attending prestigious conferences like NeMLA, KFLC, and the AATI International Conference in Italy further enriched her academic journey. She is grateful for the support received through the Bondanella Fund Fellowship and the French/Italian Enrichment Fellowship, easing expenses for these conferences.

Nicolas Noé (French and Francophone Studies)

This year, Nicolas Noé presented his paper “Spirals of Emancipation” at the 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium in Philadelphia in February, winning the ‘Center for Theoretical Inquiry in the Humanities’ William  Slaymaker Graduate Essay Prize. In March, he discussed “Derrida, Glissant, Garcia, towards a metabolic critique” at NeMLA in Boston. In June, he explored Frankétienne’s artwork as abstract painting in Moncton, Canada. Additionally, Nicolas submitted an article about Bessora to Convergences francophones, a paper about Chamoiseau and Frankétienne to NEF, and co-wrote an article on Glissant with Prof. Panaïté, now under review.

Kai Owens (French Linguistics)

Kai Owens presented at various conferences throughout the academic year, such as at the Linguistic Society of America and New Ways of Analyzing Variation on the relationship between intelligibility and attitudes in French, and at the Annual Meeting on Phonology and the Acoustical Society of America on the palatal lateral in Occitan and Breton. They will present this summer at the Les Français d’Ici conference as well as at the Canadian Linguistics Association. Kai also received a fellowship from the College of Arts and Sciences to study Occitan through Lo Collègi d’Occitania, and they had three proceedings accepted for publication.

Clara Miller-Broomfield (French Linguistics)

This past academic year, Clara Miller-Broomfield presented her joint research with Prof. Barbara Vance on object clitic placement in Old Occitan at the International Association of Occitan Studies conference in Munich, Germany. She also presented her work on Breton language activists’ attitudes toward the Gallo language at the Symposium About Language and Society in Austin, Texas. She received travel grants for these conferences from the Medieval Studies Institute, College of Arts and Sciences, and Department of French and Italian. She successfully defended her dissertation proposal in April and is now working on her dissertation.

Jennifer Cox (French Linguistics)

After defending her dissertation proposal in fall 2023, Jennifer Cox presented the results of her pilot study, “Agents of standardization in Picard: Attitudes and ideologies surrounding diverse community approaches,” at the American Association for Applied Linguistics conference in March 2024. She also obtained external grants to support her May 2024 dissertation fieldwork in northern France, including awards from the Pi Delta Phi National French Honor Society and the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations. In addition, she became the second graduate student at IU to complete all three levels of the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning’s Graduate Teaching Apprenticeship Program in December 2023.