2021-07-14
- Professor Eda Derhemi is the organizer of the FEL XXV “Endangered Languages and Diaspora” international conference held by the Foundation for Endangered Languages and The Center for...
2021-01-22 - On Friday January 22, the French and Italian Basic Language Programs started their last day of pre-semester orientation with a discussion with Assistant Dean of Students Anne Marie Morgan from the Office of the Dean (LAS). Dean Morgan presented a lecture followed by a Q&A on resources and best practices working with students during these demanding times of confinement and online teaching....
2020-09-27 - LAS Alumna and ESPN sports anchor Michele Steele got the idea of taking a job as a teacher of English in France after she took a Francophone literature in the Department during her senior year. “When French professor Dr. Alain Fresco (Emeritus, French) inquired what I would be doing after graduation, and I replied, “putting off a fabulous career,” he quite seriously said I...
2020-09-18 - Amelia Reggi (M.A. student, Italian Studies) and Robin Turner (PhD student, French Linguistics) are holding FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) fellowships in the academic year 2020-2021. FLAS fellowships are very competitive and typically awarded to advanced language learners of second and third foreign languages. Amelia will be putting her fellowship in Italian towards her research and...
2020-09-10 - Congratulations to Tricia Thrasher (PhD candidate, French SLATE) for receiving one of the five Duolingo Research Grants in Language Learning with Technology in the country in 2020 for her Ph.D. thesis project “Social Virtual Reality’s Impact on Language Anxiety and Interpersonal Oral Production by French Learners”. This nationwide recognition draws attention to cutting-edge...
2020-08-28 - Welcome to this year's incoming graduate students Étienne André, Willie Asamoah, Elena Broscritto, Océane Felisaz, Aaron Koroghlanian, Ari Theodoropoulos, and Jessica Wikle who come to us from Italy, France, Ghana, and the United States! Étienne André (M.A. French Linguistics) is a native of Bourgogne, France, and a former exchange students in FRIT...
2020-08-21 - Many thanks to our wonderful Directors of Basic Language, Dr.-s Amy Clay and Laura Hill, for organizing our first ever online Orientation and New Student Meet & Greet on August 19. We took advantage of the breakout rooms of a joint Zoom session to meet our six incoming graduate students: Williams Asamoah, Océane Felisaz, Aaron Koroghlanian, and Jessica...
2020-05-15 - Congratulations to Julie Gaillard, Assistant Professor of French, who was awarded a two-year Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory Junior Faculty Fellowship for her project, "Who, We? Pronominal Politics, Citizenship, and the Rights of the Other in Hashtag-Era France". The fellowships includes ...
2020-05-15 - The Department of French & Italian is proud to celebrate Matthew Schultz who is about to graduate with three majors (French, Spanish, and Political Sciences), as well as a minor in Global Studies. Matthew just received two prestigious distinctions: the Charlotte Kambarian McMillian Award for French Excellence, recognizing French majors with a 3.9 GPA or more in...
2020-02-24 - Camille Méritan, PhD candidate in SLATE, and Gyula Zsombok, who recently defended his PhD in French Linguistics, accepted tenure-track positions in French starting in fall 2020. Camille, directed by Prof. Aurore Mroz (FRIT), is...
2020-01-16 - The National Endowment for the Arts awarded professor emerita Armine Kotin Mortimer a Literature Translation Fellowship for the translation of a novel by Catherine Cusset. She is one of 24 Literature Translation Fellows in 2020. Cusset's novel Un brillant avenir (2008)...
2020-01-16 - Julie Gaillard and François Proulx each had a new monograph out at the end of 2019. In Réalités pseudonymes (Brill 2020), Gaillard explores the question of reality through the prism of proper names and their referentiality in literature and art at ...
2019-12-18 - FRIT alum Chris Carignan (PhD 2013, French Linguistics) has joined the Department of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College London earlier this fall after appointments with the North Carolina State University, the University of Western Sydney, Australia, and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich...
2019-12-18 - Tricia Thrasher, a second-year Ph.D. student, received a research grant from the Program in Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education (SLATE) to support her research on the impact of social virtual reality on language anxiety. Tricia's thesis project is entitled "Social Virtual Reality’s Impact on Language Anxiety in Oral Production of L2 French Learners" and her latest experiments were...
2019-10-11 - The use of Virtual Reality is taking hold of UIUC classrooms and basic language courses in French are at the forefront of this innovation.