Welcome to this year's incoming graduate students who come to us from many locations on two continents!

Aisha (Sacha) Craig (Ph.D., French Studies) is a native of France and a trilingual speaker of French, Arabic, and English. She graduated from Loyola University Chicago (BA) and the University of Illinois in Chicago (MA). During her doctoral studies, she wishes to learn more about collegiate language learning and the various centuries and genres in our interdisciplinary French Studies program at Illinois.

Alix Jean Charles (M.A., French Studies) was born and raised in Haiti. He graduated from Clemson University, SC with a B.A. in French and served in the United States Army. He was attracted to the M.A. program in French studies due to its continued focus and diverse course offerings in French and the opportunity to learn theories and practices of collegiate language teaching.

Jesse Keruskin (Ph.D., French Studies) is a native of Appalachia who fell in love with the French language, literature, and culture early in her youth. Having graduated from our M.A. program a few years ago, she returns this year as a PhD student to explore the intellectual liberties of language and literary studies through a wealth of perspectives and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Costanza Vallicelli (M.A., Italian Studies) is from Italy. She is a former exchange student at the U of I and a graduate of the University of Bologna (BA). Following her studies at the University of Pavia (Italy) and University of Bamberg (Germany). She is joining our program to explore multidisciplinary approaches to Italian Studies, linguistics, SLA, and language and minorities in Europe.