Graduate Programs’ Accomplishments

In addition to our graduate student news below, undergraduate news can be found in this section.

French Linguistics:

The French Linguistics program was delighted to welcome four new students in the academic year 2024-2025: Noah Christilles (M.A. in French, University of Kansas), Océane Rousseau (M.A. in FLE Literature and FL Education, University of Worcester and Université de Pau), Justina Eshun (M.A. in French, Mississippi State University) and Moseti Michael Onsongo (B.A. in French and Religious Studies, Kenyatta University). Two of our students completed their PhDs, both during the summer of 2024: Scott Evans (July 16, 2024) and Charlene Gilbert (August 2, 2024). After graduation, both Scott and Charlene secured positions in industry in the area of foreign language technologies. French Linguistics graduate students presented their work during the year in an amazingly broad range of professional meetings and conferences including those of the African Studies Association, Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition, American Association for Corpus Linguistics, Mid-Continental Phonetics and Phonology, New Ways of Analyzing Variation, l’Association Française de Linguistique Cognitive, Linguistic Society of America, Multidisciplinary Approaches in Language Policy and Planning, American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) and the Canadian Linguistic Association, among numerous others. The breadth and quality of venues reveals the very high level of scholarly contributions to the field that our students are already making and their high level of engagement with the discipline.

French and Francophone Studies:

Amid unprecedented political and financial stress, our French and Francophone Studies graduate cohort enjoyed an unusually productive 2024-25. Beyond their standard duties serving as instructors of record for the courses they teach (an unusual responsibility among Student Academic Appointees at IU) and managing their own coursework, our students presented their research at conferences too numerous to list, organized academic events on campus, and engaged in collaborative projects with FRIT faculty. This year we welcomed three new students (Julie Malet, Una Mijatovic, and Edouard Roche), while three PhD candidates successfully defended theses that highlight the program’s depth and breadth. Consistent with his position as a journalist in Rome, Antonio Marvasi completed an intellectual history of literary reviews comparing conceptions of European culture and literature in Italy, France, Spain, and England during the 1920s and 30s. Claire Fouchereaux, supported by a College of Arts & Sciences Dissertation Completion fellowship, finished her project on identity and language politics of rap music in Québec, and secured a post-doctoral teaching fellowship at Wabash College for 2025-26. Elke Defever, drawing on a research travel grant awarded by the American Association of Teachers of French, wrapped up her thesis on competing representations of women and historical memory in graphic narratives by French and Algerian authors about the Algerian War of Independence, which continues to generate controversy in both countries. In August, Elke will begin a three-year position teaching at the State University of New York, Binghamton. In addition, PhD candidate Hicham Bouhlal accepted an instructorship in French and Arabic at Towson University (Maryland), and Evie Munier (PhD, 2023) secured a tenure-track assistant professorship at the University of North Georgia after completing one-year visiting appointments at Saint Mary’s College of Maryland and Middlebury College. Such success in an exceptionally competitive and ever-shrinking academic job market is a substantial achievement. Looking ahead to 2025-26, we are happy to welcome another talented and diverse class of four incoming graduate students from Europe, South America, the United States, and Africa.

Italian Studies:

The 2024–25 academic year has been an eventful one for the graduate students in Italian Studies. We had the pleasure of welcoming three new students: Holly Fizer (B.A. in Italian and Classical Studies from Indiana University), Sofia Lo Ciacio (Laurea Specialistica in Didattica dell’italiano per stranieri from the Università per Stranieri di Siena), and Anne-Marie Lucchese (M.A. in Italian from SUNY Stony Brook). Taive Muenzberg completed her M.A. in May 2025, and three of our students completed their PhDs between June and August 2024: Pantalea Mazzitello, now Assistant Professor of Teaching in Italian and European Studies at UC Irvine; Lucia Casiraghi, appointed Assistant Professor of Teaching at the University of Rochester after serving for a year as a Teaching Assistant at Harvard; and Nicolò Salmaso, who is currently pursuing postdoctoral and teaching opportunities in Europe. Our students also presented their research at prestigious conferences—including the American Association of Italian Studies, the American Association of Teachers of Italian, the Renaissance Society of America, and the Newberry Library—and have contributed significantly to the intellectual life of the department and the university. Their active involvement in the departmental graduate conference on “Traditions and Innovations” and in interdisciplinary programs such as the Medieval Studies Institute and Renaissance Studies underscores their scholarly breadth. These accomplishments are all the more noteworthy given the ongoing challenges facing the humanities and the study of languages and cultures.

Graduate Students’ Personal Accomplishments

Miriam Burrascano found the 2024–2025 academic year to be deeply rewarding. In the fall, she taught M112: Italian Through Music, an accelerated elementary course that integrated Italian grammar and culture through a wide range of musical genres. The experience was particularly enriching, as her class included both undergraduate and graduate students. In the spring, she served as a Teaching Assistant for COLL-C103: Laughter, Humor, and Wit in the Italian Renaissance, taught by Professor Massimo Scalabrini. Miriam was honored with the Associate Instructor Award, and she also received Travel Awards to support her participation in academic conferences. Over the course of the year, she presented her research at several major events, including PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association) in Palm Springs, AAIS (American Association for Italian Studies) in Philadelphia, and AATI (American Association of Teachers of Italian) in Princeton. Additionally, she presented her dissertation project at the Renaissance Studies End-of-Year Roundtable at Indiana University. She served as a Writing Group Coordinator, supporting fellow graduate students in their research and writing goals, and also contributed as a Host Nation Consultant at the Annual Global Gateway for Teachers Workshop at IU.

In the Fall 2024, Sonia Cani served as a Teaching Assistant for COLL-C103: A Tabletop revolution, taught by Professor Marco Arnaudo. She also published an article on contemporary Italian poetry on Esperienze Letterarie. In the Spring, she participated in two different conferences: NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) in Philadelphia, and AATI (American Association of Teachers of Italian) in Princeton. She was honored with the Olga Ragusa Award and received Travel Awards to support her participation in academic conferences. Finally, she received a Research award to assist her during the summer in her dissertation research.

This year, Jennifer Cox conducted dissertation fieldwork in northern France and Belgium and taught at the University of Lille through FRIT’s exchange program. She also gave her first invited talk at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg, Germany, and presented her research at conferences in Poland, Canada, Germany, and Spain. Her first single-author journal article, “Revisiting authenticity in the Breton lexicon: An empirical approach” was recently accepted for publication in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language. In addition, she was awarded a Future Faculty Teaching Fellowship to teach at Butler University during the 2025-2026 academic year. 

In Fall 2024, Vincenzo Dimaggio taught M300 “Italy through Cinema,” for which he developed updated instructional materials. In Spring 2025, he organized a panel on “Education and Repression” and presented his paper, Fabellae, Anecdotes, Examples: Narrative Insertions in Early Modern Italian Educational Treatises, at the Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting in Boston, with support from the Peter Bondanella and Julia Conaway Bondanella Travel Grant. His dissertation, Representation of Linguistic Alterity in Romance Medieval Poetry, will be defended in Fall 2025. In the 2025–26 academic year, he will begin a position as a Teaching Assistant in Italian at Harvard University.

During the 2024–2025 academic year, Angelo Grossi successfully completed both phases of the PhD exam (the written exam and the dissertation proposal) and finished all the required coursework for his minor in Media Arts and Sciences. In the Fall semester, he also taught two Italian language courses at different levels (M100 and M250). At the same time, he served as a GSO representative alongside his colleagues Audrey Halley and Geoffrey Tacinelli. Together, they organized the annual GSO conference, titled “Beyond the Horizon(s): The Co-Existence of Tradition(s) and Innovation(s),” which took place on April 4–5. In the Spring semester, he had the opportunity to serve as a teaching assistant for a general education course taught by Professor Filippo Petricca, titled “Monetary Fictions.” The course explored economics as a literary theme through a comparative lens, spanning various time periods and cultural contexts. Finally, he was awarded the Primary Partner Graduate Student Grant, which will allow him to conduct research at the University of Bologna during the Fall semester of 2025.

Additionally, fall 2024 brought the beginning Devin’s pursuit of an additional, concurrent MA in African Studies. Projects such as: 1) A Newfound Sense of Community: YouTube Comment Sections As “Safe Spaces” For Conversations On The Sociocultural Constraints of Senegalese Women; 2) Ecolinguistic Framing Practices in Rwanda’s (Eco)Tourism Sector: Conservation as ‘Metaphor’, ‘Erasure’, and ‘Evolution’ of Narrative For The 21st Century; and 3) From Instructor to Student: An Autoethnographic Review of Encountered Juxtapositions in African Language Pedagogy and Potential Steps Forward, span the African continent and were the source of several conference proceedings:

• American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November, 2024
• African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, December, 2024
• Women and Gender Studies in/and the Romance Languages, U. of Chicago, Chicago, IL, February, 2025
• Graduate Students of African Studies Conference, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, March, 2025
• Conference on Romance and Arabic Languages and Literature (CRALL), University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, April, 2025
• African Language Teachers Association (ALTA), University of Pittsburgh, Bloomington, IN, April, 2025
• Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, April, 2025

In April 2025, Devin was awarded a “Certificate of Merit” by the department of African Studies in recognition of academic excellence in African Languages and/or African Studies area coursework. In the same month, Devin was also awarded as a Disinguished Pol-IU-glot Scholar, which is a selective award given to students who demonstrate knowledge and linguistic mastery of 2 or more world languages and a strong interest and passion for personal and professional multilingualism. Devin was awarded two additional FLAS awards for Summer 2025, for the study of Advanced Akan-Twi to be completed at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, and the 2025/2026 academic year for the study of Elementary (Ki)Swahili. In addition to intense and immersive language study under the supervision of Provost, Dr. Charles Ofosu Marfo, Devin will be doing collaborative fieldwork with Dr. Nuria Otero de Juan by observing college-level Spanish language courses at KNUST in an upcoming project that is tentatively titled, Spanish Instruction in Ghana’s Ashanti Region: The State of the Art. Devin hopes this project will add to previous Accra-centered studies in gathering insights into student demographics, course experiences, and overall perceptions of Spanish language and culture to better conceptualize the state of Spanish in Ghana more broadly.

Jade Liu chaired the organizing committee for the IU Foreign/Second Language Share Fair, where she worked alongside CeLT and language instructors from all departments to put together an event themed “Integrating Well-Being Education in the Language Classroom.” This year’s Share Fair boasted twelve attendees from FRIT and FRIT affiliates, including co-organizer Micah McCauley and presenters Elke Defever, Nicolas Noé, and Melissa Lapalus (MAFI 2023). 

Clara Miller-Broomfield recently moved to San Diego, where she will continue her dissertation work remotely while also working full time as a Language Tutoring and Training Lead for Rosetta Stone—a job that her experience as a French linguist, AI, and Course Coordinator undoubtedly helped her to get. This past year, she presented her research on contested languages at the AGSA Symposium (hosted by the IU Anthropology Dept.) and had a co-authored article (with Jennifer Cox) accepted for publication.

In 2024–2025, Nicolas Noé presented two conference papers: “Metabolizing Realism: Caribbean Narratives Beyond Western Aesthetics in Chamoiseau’s Texaco and Pineau’s La Grande drive des Esprits” at the American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting (online, May 29–June 1, 2025), and “Prosopopée et poéthique : Gisèle Pineau face au défi d’écrire l’injuste justement” at the 20^th & 21^st Century French & Francophone Studies International Colloquium (UNC Greensboro, March 27–29, 2025). Two articles are forthcoming: “Généalogie, spectres et Histoire dans Zoonomia : un récit hanthologique” (Convergences francophones, Vol. 9, No. 1, October 10, 2025) and “La langue est un tableau abstrait : L’oiseau schizophone de Frankétienne” (Nouvelles Études Francophones, Vol. 40, No. 2, 2025). He also published a book review of Sophie Maríñez’s Spirals in the Caribbean: Representing Violence and Connection in Haiti and the Dominican Republic in The French Review (Vol. 98, No. 4, 2025), and contributed to the podcast Terre des érudits (“Frankétienne, spirales et écritures de l’excès,” Institut français en Haïti, April 8, 2025). His interview “Entretien avec Nicolas Noé : regard sur l’œuvre de Frankétienne” appeared in Le Nouvelliste (February 25, 2025), and he was invited to deliver a text in Haitian Creole, “Sou zèv ki make nou,” as part of a commemorative rasanblaj honoring Frankétienne, organized by the Haitian Studies Association (online, March 7, 2025). 

This year, Kai Owens presented at multiple conferences, such as New Ways of Analyzing Variation, Linguistic Society of America, and Canadian Linguistic Association. Their article “Clusters and complex segments in Strict CV: Insights from Gascon and Languedocien” was published in February in Isogloss. Additionally, Kai has been invited to contribute a chapter on sourcing linguistic data from popular music to the upcoming 2^nd edition of Routledge’s Sociophonetics: A student’s guide, projected to be published in 2027. In March, Kai was invited back to their undergraduate university, Truman State, to give a series of lectures while taking a semester off from teaching on the Weathers-Young dissertation fellowship. Additionally, they spent this past year studying Occitan through Lo Collègi d’Occitania on a fellowship from the John and Meta Dennis Fellowship from the College of Arts and Sciences. Kai will spend the 2025-26 academic year working in the Department of Linguistics at IU as the Research Assistant to Prof. Monica Nesbitt

Ye-Ye Xu is studying the effects of language contact in St. Lucian Creole, a French-based Creole that interacts closely with English. She received support from the FRIT Albert Valdman Research Fund in Spring 2025 and will be presenting her work at the 55^th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages this September, to be held at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

IU Honors Program for Foreign Languages

This summer, five FRIT graduate students in French taught on the prestigious IU Honors Program for Foreign Languages (IUHPFL) in France. Founded in 1962, the program sends Indiana high school students to France, Austria or Spain for 5 weeks to live with host families, take classes on language, literature and culture, relinquish the internet, and – most importantly – to speak only in the target language for the entire period. Corentin Mazet (PhD candidate in French Linguistics), Edouard Roche (PhD student in French and Francophone Studies) and Océane Rousseau (former student in French Linguistics) led a group of 27 students in Saint-Brieuc in the region of Brittany. Jane Gilbert (PhD candidate in French Linguistics) and Ye-Ye Xu (PhD student in French Linguistics) looked after 14 students in Saumur, a small city by the Loire River.

Besides teaching, the instructors played key roles in planning and implementing excursions in Paris and the host-city regions; facilitating positive relationships between students and their host families; and supporting student welfare and safety throughout the program. Both teams shared their adventures on site-specific blogs: IUHPFL Saint-Brieuc 2025 ; Saumur, France 2025 – IU Honors Program in Foreign Languages.