Dr. Jill Beckman is the Director of the Division of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (DWLLC) and Associate Professor of Linguistics.

Roxanna Curto is an Associate Professor of French and Spanish at the University of Iowa.

Sohair teaches a variety of 3rd and 4th year French courses in the department of French and Italian. She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from University Lumière Lyon II, in France. Her career focus is on teaching French as a Foreign Language and French for Specific Purposes. She has a 20-year experience of teaching the French language in multiple settings and diverse cultures

Graduate from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, with an MPhil in French (Literature and Society). PhD candidate in French and Francophone World Studies. Research interests include Feminism, Gender, and Space in relation to contemporary African literature.

Dr. Ben Romdhane is a Fulbright Almuna and an advocate of Integrated approach to Arabic language Instruction. One of her main research interest focuses on how to simultaneously teach the two varieties of the language successfully in a way that reflects the authentic practice of native Arabic speakers. In the spring 2015, she received a Stanley Grant for International Research and a university-wide Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award from the University of Iowa. In 2019, she served as a judge at the US Universities Arabic Debating Championship in Harvard University, organized by Qatar Debate Center in the United States of America. In the past few years, she has been dedicated to helping Arab refugees integrate and assimilate in the new culture through her translation and interpretation skills.

Professor Blum teaches courses in Italian language, literature, and culture. She is a literary scholar and translator. Her main research interests include futurism, modernism, contemporary Italian women writers, and migration studies. She is author of Rewriting the Journey in Italian Literature: Figures of Subjectivity in Progress, and The Other Modernism: F. T. Marinetti’s Futurist Fiction of Power. Her work is also published in volumes of collected essays on futurism and Italian colonialism and in journals such as Italica, Philological Quarterly, and South Central Review. She is currently working on a research project exploring developments of the fantastic narrative mode in Italian literature.

Hello, my name is Guilhem, I'm a French exchange student and a Teaching Assistant here at the University. I like to play music and to listen to it. I also enjoy discovering new things about other cultures.

Deborah Contrada taught Italian Language and Literature. Her research includes Medieval Lyric Poetry, Italian Women Writers, and Italian-American Studies.

Marie received her Bachelor of Arts in French and English from Fordham University in 2011. From 2011-2012, she worked as an English assistant for TAPIF at a primary school in Milhaud, France. She returned to her native Providence, Rhode Island to teach French and English at La Salle Academy. During the summers, she pursued a Masters in French at Middlebury College, which she completed in 2017. She arrived at the University of Iowa in 2018 to begin a PhD in French and Francophone World Studies. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, cooking, making music, and reading.

Dr. Anny-Dominique Curtius is Professor of Francophone Studies. She is also the Director of the working group “Museum Futures” at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. Her interdisciplinary work interweaves cultural theory and cinematic, visual, and performing arts of the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and Sub-Saharan Africa; post/de/colonial museum studies; tidalectical ecocriticism; the defacement and toppling of the iconography of slavery in the public space.

Meredith Mahy Gall is the senior academic advisor for the Division of World Literatures, Languages, and Cultures (including all world languages, International Studies, linguistics, and translation) and global health studies students.

Ph.D. Candidate, French & Francophone World Studies

Before joining International Programs, Russell served as the director of the UI’s Division of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures from 2011-2019, where he worked to extend and deepen study abroad and other partnership opportunities in East Asia, Europe, Russia, and Latin America. He also served as chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 2001-2011, where he oversaw numerous study abroad programs and served a term as head of the University’s International Affairs Advisory Committee.

Blandina Kaduma Giblin was the first instructor of Kiswahili at the University of Iowa.  She taught Kiswahili in the Department of Linguistics from 1991 to 2006, and since August 2006 has taught courses at all levels as Lecturer in Kiswahili in the Department of French and Italian.  She has been co-director of several Study Abroad programs in Tanzania.  She has served as an external examiner at several colleges and universities, including the University of Alabama and Grinnell College.

Katie is a Ph.D. student in French & Francophone World Studies. Her research interests focus on questions of community building and representation in the hierarchized language contexts of the Caribbean and Indian Ocean, as it is done through literature, film, and other cultural production. She holds an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa, and is passionate about promoting translation in the classroom, as well as teaching the French language and the different cultures and literatures of the francophone world.

Wendelin's areas of graduate teaching expertise included: 19th-century French literature and culture, especially Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism; the novel, non-fictional prose (the travel narrative, the preface, the salon, the letter); aesthetics and interarts discourse; the relationships between literature and the plastic arts, technology and cultural expression.

David Hagan teaches French language and language and literature in the first- through fourth-year levels of the curriculum. He also teaches graduate courses on the French Enlightenment.

Geoffrey maintains interests both in foreign language teaching and in Renaissance literature. He is working slowly on a pedagogic anthology of French poetry from the Middle Ages to Apollinaire, writing up discussions of some of these poems. His goal is to help advanced readers of French who can only read poetry at what might be termed a novice or intermediate level move to a more advanced level of that set of skills.

Course Management for Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literatures, Department of French & Italian, Translation Programs, BTAA CourseShare, and WLLC courses. Graduate Coordinator for French and Literary Translation

Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Michel Laronde has directed a good number of graduate students’ dissertations. He was the winner of the 2013-14 Graduate College Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award for the Humanities and Fine Arts. His book-length publications include Résurgence de l’Histoire dans la fiction. Les massacres du 17 octobre 1961 à Paris (2021), Rethinking Reading, Writing, and a Moral Code : Postcolonializing High Culture in the Schools of the Republic (Lexington Books, 2014), his own translation of Postcolonialiser la Haute Culture à l’Ecole de la République (2008), Autour du roman beur. Immigration et Identité (1993), and two edited volumes, Leïla Sebbar (2003) and L’Ecriture décentrée. La langue de l’Autre dans le roman contemporain (1996).

Andy has an M.A. in Linguistics with a focus on teaching English as a second language from the University of Iowa. His professional interested include language instruction, the promotion of inclusive learning environments, and instructional technology and design. He has studied Russian, French, Italian, and German in the classroom and enjoys working with faculty and students in the division to aid, promote, and enhance the learning of languages.

Katja Liimatta is a lecturer in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Iowa since 2000. She has been teaching a variety of Italian classes for 21 years at the University of Iowa, including Elementary Italian, Intensive Italian, Intermediate Italian, Conversational Italian, Contemporary Italian Poetry and Theatre, and Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature. Besides teaching, she co-organizes and takes part in departmental activities, such as Tavola italiana and Giornata italiana. Her goal is to teach students the Italian language and increase their familiarity with many aspects of Italian culture, such as history, social life, music, and the arts.

Irene Lottini teaches Italian language, literature, and culture, and serves as course supervisor for the Elementary Italian I and II sequence. Her main research interests focus on Italian silent cinema, contemporary cinema, and the relationship between film and the other arts. Her most recent publications include essays on 1910s cinema and contemporary film. She has presented papers on silent, modern, and contemporary cinema at numerous national and international conferences.