This year's incoming graduate students again come to us from a variety of places to study French and Italian literatures, cultures, linguistics, and language pedagogy. From left to right and top to bottom on this picture, meet:

Michele Prudence Djemwel Biscene (md58@illinois.edu), M.A. Student in French Studies (B.A. Illinois State University). Her interests lie in French and Francophone literature and culture with a comparative interest in African studies and African diaspora.

David Folger (dfolger2@illinois.edu), Ph.D. Student French Studies (M.A. University of Arkansas), interested in French and francophone literature, works by queer writers, especially Fin-de-siècle decadent and symbolist authors and poets and their precursors.

Laura Lestani (lestani@illinois.edu), Ph.D. Student in Italian Studies and Art Historian (B.A. in Art from Trieste, Italy). She has a deep passion for exploring and sharing the captivating world of old master paintings and excited to support Italian language-learning by sharing her enthusiasm for art and history.

Jude Mensah (judedm2@illinois.edu), Ph.D. Student in French Slate (M.A. Texas Tech University), focusing on computer- and mobile-assisted and -mediated language teaching and Machine Translation, such as Google Translate, Linguee.

Welcome to our programs, Michele, David, Laura, and Jude!