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.

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.

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.

Anna Magavern is a student in the M.F.A. Literary Translation/M.A. French and Francophone World Studies dual degree program. She holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Brown University.

Sokhna graduated from the University of Dakar, Cheikh Anta Diop, with a MA in American Literature. She taught French at Colorado College during the 2021-22 academic year and was in charge of the cultural activities at the college’s French house. She is a PhD candidate in French and Francophone Word Studies and her research interests focus on Senegalese telenovelas and their roles as instruments of social critique

Emily Wieder (she/hers) came to the University of Iowa after earning her B.A. in French and history at Elizabethtown College, located in her home state of Pennsylvania. While working on her M.A. (2021) and her Ph.D. (projected completion 2026) at the University of Iowa, Emily has enjoyed teaching in the French department, presenting at conferences, and exploring Iowa City. She had the wonderful opportunity to teach in Pau, France during the 2022-23 school year and will happily talk about the exchange program! She is currently a graduate editorial assistant for Dance Research Journal. Emily's dissertation will tentatively focus on the women Surrealists who resisted the Nazis. She has additional interests in early-20th-century French cinema and in the use of periodicals, like Tropiques and La Ruche, to advocate for total freedom.