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.

Emilie Maurel-Destruel's primary research explores the semantic and pragmatic underpinnings of sentence structure variation and how the principles that govern this variation are manifested in French, but also across languages. She has worked on a range of topics in the field of pragmatics and the syntax/semantics interface, including the semantics and pragmatics of focus, the prosodic realization of focus in French and its acquisition by native french children, and existential constructions and the definiteness effect. She worked collaboratively on focus in ASL and in English.

Gabbie holds a bachelor’s degree in English. She taught English Language Learning in the Clear Creek Amana School District and worked in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Office of the Dean prior to becoming Division Administrator for the Division of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures in 2023. Her interests include building sustainable staffing and communication structures; fostering a strong multicultural community; and supporting the Division in its mission to advance interdisciplinary research, artistic creativity, global awareness, and the study of languages, literatures, linguistics, societies, regions, and cultures. She collaborates with the staff team and faculty leadership to facilitate administrative operations and strategic planning.

Beatrice Mkenda is a Swahili professor of instruction in the department of French and Italian at the University of Iowa. Beatrice joined the Swahili program in fall 2014, where she teaches courses in Swahili language and culture. Her research interests span both foreign language pedagogy and cultural studies. Most of her work has been on material development in less commonly taught languages, culture, literature in foreign language classrooms, intercultural connections in foreign language learning, and foreign language teaching standards. She has published book chapters, book reviews, and serve at Swahili Journal editorial board. She is also an active member of African Languages Teachers Association as well as Global Association for the Promotion of Swahili, where she served as a secretary.

Suzy Nkurlu is a Swahili Lecturer in the Department of French & Italian. Her areas of expertise include adult learning and instruction, multicultural issues in education and leadership. Suzy integrates adult learning principles and strategies in her language instruction, thereby cultivating student-centered learning practices. In her teaching, she utilizes authentic materials, and application-based activities to encourage creativity and active learning. Suzy is a certified expert in Qualitative Research Methods in Interdisciplinary Studies (IQS) and a vivid advocate for multiculturalism, and international education.

Racevskis served as chair of the Department of French and Italian (2008-2013) and the Department of German (2009-2013) and as a founding Associate Director of the Division of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (2008-2013). He has served on numerous collegiate and university-wide committees and advisory groups, including the Undergraduate Educational Policy and Curriculum Committee, the Graduate Educational Policy Committee, the Humanities Advisory Board, and the AHI and CDA review committees. He is currently serving as the Associate Dean for the Arts and Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Yasmine Ramadan is an Associate Professor of Arabic and the Director of the Arabic Program focusing upon Arabic language, literature, and culture. Her research and teaching centers upon cultural production from the MENA region, particularly upon the intersection between nationalism, artistic production, space, and resistance in the contemporary period.

Claudia Sartini-Rideout has been teaching as a lecturer at the University of Iowa since 2012. During her time at the University, she has been teaching elementary and intermediate level Italian language courses and a course on Italian Food Culture. She has also developed online Italian language courses through DOE (University of Iowa Distance and Online Education).

Rosemarie Scullion's research and teaching focus on twentieth-century French literary and cultural studies, French women writers and feminist/gender theory, contemporary European literary theory, French cinema, and modern French history and historiography. She offers a wide range of interdisciplinary courses that bring literary, cinematic, cultural texts into critical dialogue, exploring how contemporary theories of history and   and subjectivity help us understand how modern French identities (national, ethnic, racial, gender and political) are ideologically and discursively shaped. In her research, she has focused on French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline, on the history and memory of the 1930s and the Nazi Occupation of France. She has also written on Duras, Perec, Ponge, Michel Foucault and topics in French cinema. Her current scholarly work is centered on the literary and film production of the Cold War period in France.

Jan is a translator and critic of literature written in Afrikaans, Dutch, English, and French. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University. His academic work focuses on translation theory, critical contemporaneity, and world literature. He is the editor of Translation: Crafts, Contexts, Consequences (Cambridge University Press 2022). And he is currently working on a monograph entitled World Literature for the Times: How Translations and Adaptations Create Contemporaneity. 

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

As Professor of French, the bulk of Downing Thomas' scholarship in early-modern French studies can be divided into three interdisciplinary areas, with a considerable amount of overlap between areas: music and opera, theories of language, and aesthetics. Music and opera are central to my first two books, both of which were published in (different) series devoted to issues in musicology. He also began exploring the developing field of sound studies and is currently writing on the “soundscapes” that the French described during the reciprocal embassies that were part of the diplomatic opening between France and Siam in the 1680s.

Steven Ungar teaches Cinema, French Studies, and Comparative Literature. His book-length publications include Roland Barthes: The Professor of Desire (1983), Scandal and Aftereffect: Blanchot and France Since 1930 (1995), Popular Front Paris and the Poetics of Culture (2005, with Dudley Andrew), and Cléo de 5 à 7 (2008). He has written essays on Jean-Paul Sartre, Francis Ponge, Jean Rouch, Jean Vigo, Patrick Modiano, W.G. Sebald, René Vautier, André Bazin, and Jean-Luc Godard.

Suzan is from Oss, the Netherlands. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in French language and Culture at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. Her Bachelor's Thesis focused on the potential effect of subtitles in the language learning process. She is now a graduate student in the French and Francophone World program at the University of Iowa.

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.