This was also a year when many important scholarly projects came to fruition. At the College of Arts & Sciences’ Book Party in December 2023, FRIT was represented by three authors: Marco Arnaudo, Vincent Bouchard and Eric MacPhail, while two more books have been published since then (by Oana Panaïté and by Marco Arnaudo), with a third one announced for the early fall (by Nicolas Valazza). The year also saw the signing of a book contract for a monumental project by Kevin Rottet and Albert Valdman (alongside FRIT alumni Tom Klingler (PhD, 1992) and Marvin Moody (PhD, 1972)): Their Dictionnaire historique, étymologique et comparée du français de Louisiane, due for publication with De Gruyter in 2025. Moreover, the department has been honored by having among us the recipients of prestigious grants: Elizabeth Hebbard was the co-winner of a 3-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities on behalf of the IU Book Lab, while Vincent Bouchard received a residential fellowship from the Institute of Advanced Study in Nantes, where he will spend the coming academic year. This intellectual vibrancy found its natural outward-facing outlet in a flurry of events throughout the year: talks, seminars, roundtables in all three sections of the department, with broad attendance from not only faculty and students, but also by alumni and community members.

On the graduate student side, this was a particularly busy year in terms of conference participation, publications and dissertation completions. Despite the weight of a heavy teaching load and the demands of their own course work, our graduate students are continuing to find their way out in the world to share and discuss the results of their cutting-edge scholarship at national and international conferences in their fields, enabled by alumni-funded travel and research grants. This year also saw a very fruitful and well-attended professionalization workshop, flawlessly organized by the tireless GSO representatives Miriam Burrascano, Nicolas Noé, and Kai Owens, with strong contributions not only from FRIT faculty and advanced graduate students but also from our own alumni in panels on how to navigate the academic job market and on different paths to a job in academia and beyond.

The graduate student achievements are too many to mention here, but I would like to emphasize one recent piece of news from each section of the department: Claire Fouchereaux (PhD Candidate, French and Francophone Studies) has received a College Dissertation Completion Fellowship for the coming academic year; Pantalea Mazzitello (PhD Italian Studies, Summer 2024) will start in a position as Assistant Professor of Teaching in Italian and European Studies at UC Irvine this fall; Ludovic Mompelat (PhD French Linguistics & Computational Linguistics, Fall 2023) has already started in a position as a Research Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the Modern Languages and Literatures Department of the University of Miami. Finally, a special shout-out is due to our first ever MAT graduates! Elise Tiller (Oct. 2023; B.S., French Education, IU School of Education, 2003) and Lauren White (Dec. 2023) were the first to graduate from our online Master of Arts in Teaching French program, geared towards current high school teachers of French, and we seize this as an occasion to congratulate not only them but also Prof. Kevin Rottet who has been instrumental in getting the program up and running, in collaboration with other IU campuses and administered by IU Online.

Anyone who has spent time at FRIT knows that we are masters of the art of coming together and celebrate as a community: the rhythm of the year is marked by award ceremony, honor society induction, commencement reception, not to mention our traditional fall and holiday parties. All these occasions were certainly duly celebrated this year too, but the largest gathering of the past year was not any of these traditional events, but the second instantiation of a new tradition: the FRIT Open House. While the first Open House took place at the IU Walter Center, we met this time in our own house, in the departmental open space on the third floor of the Global and International Studies Building and were very pleased (but also slightly over-whelmed) when around 200 people turned up. Undergraduate guests learned about all aspects of the department’s offerings and the many enriching and surprising paths an education at FRIT can lead to, while we all enjoyed French and Italian treats and music while making new friends. The highlight of the evening was an alumni panel (organized in collaboration with and with a grant from the College Advancement Office) with four recent graduates from the department. I encourage you to consult their testimonies elsewhere in this newsletter, alongside many other reports from the many activities surrounding our undergraduate programs: Circolo Italiano, French Club, Les Chevaliers de la Table Française, Italian Culture Week, the Week of Francophone Cultures, French and Italian Undergraduate Programs Coffee Hours, and much more still.

On the staff side, this was a year of transition. After the arrival of our new Faculty and Undergraduate Services Coordinator Amber Turner in February and our new Department Manager Maria Sánchez Steenberger in May, alongside Graduate Student Services Coordinator Miki Weisstein, we now have a very strong team in place as we face a new academic year that promises to be even busier than the past one.

In closing, I would like to express my gratitude to editor Karolina Serafin and graduate student assistant Clara Miller-Broomfield for their tireless work on this year’s instantiation of the FRIT Newsletter. Thanks are also due to the staff for their assistance, as well as to faculty, graduate students and alumni for their contributions.

It is a true pleasure to review the impressive accomplishments of our students, alumni and faculty in these pages, as we get ready for the challenges of the new academic year. I wish each and every reader a good year and invite you to reach out and stay in touch!