Margaret E. Gray joined the Department of French and Italian in 1987, establishing herself as an era-making scholar on the works of influential French writer Marcel Proust. Throughout her career as Professor of French and Francophone Studies at IU, she has lent her generous advice and support to several generations of undergraduate and graduate students. Gray’s tireless work, unwavering dedication, and uplifting sense of humour, perfectly illustrated in her outstanding tenure as director of IU’s Aix Study Abroad program, a position which she held three times including at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in Spring 2020, have been crucial in sustaining FRIT through times both auspicious and challenging. 

Eileen M. Julien became Professor Emerita in 2020 after a distinguished career that started in 1992 as Professor of Comparative Literature, French and Italian, and African Studies at IU where she also held the position of director of the Institute for Advanced Study. Julien’s contributions to the profession and community reached well beyond Indiana and the US as she served as the 16th President of the African Literature Association, founding director of the West African Research Center in Dakar, Senegal, and co-founder and President of the New Orléans Afrikan Film and Arts Festival. Her groundbreaking scholarship, such as her work on the African “extroverted novel,” offers an active source of inspiration for students and scholars around the world, being honoured with a Carnegie Faculty Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant.

• 2024 - Hicham Bouhlal