Co-founders and Co-chairs
Siham Bouamer, PhD
Siham Bouamer is currently an Assistant Professor of Global French at the University of Cincinnati. She received her PhD in French and a certificate in Women and Gender studies at Washington University in St. Louis. At SHSU, she has taught a variety of culture, film, language, and literature courses. Topics include immigration, Black Lives Matter, Islamophobia, #MeToo, and Global Migration. Her research focuses on transnational movements from/to the Maghreb in 20th- and 21st-century film and literature and pedagogy in textbooks. She is currently working on a monograph on French women's travel writing on Morocco during the protectorate. Part of this research has appeared in several journals. She has also published work on contemporary writers and filmmakers such as Leïla Sebbar, Yamina Benguigi, and Abdellah Taïa. She has recently co-edited two volumes titled Abdellah Taïa's Queer Migrations: Non-places, Affect, and Temporalities (Lexington Books, 2021) and Diversity and Decolonization in French Studies (Palgrave, 2022). A third one, focusing on the representation of women at work is forthcoming (2022) with University of Wales Press.
Kris Knisely, PhD
Kris Aric Knisely (Ph.D., Emory University) is an Assistant Professor of French and Intercultural Competence as well as affiliated faculty in both SLAT and TSRC at the University of Arizona. In this role, Knisely regularly teaches courses that engage with the ways in which myriad language varieties and cultures come together, across various time frames and geographic contexts, to create affordances and constraints on how individuals and groups position both themselves and one another. Knisely's research broadly considers gender and sexuality in language teaching and learning and, in its most specific form, focuses on the linguistic and cultural practices of trans and non-binary speakers of French, particularly as they can inform the articulation of trans-affirming L2 pedagogies.Dr. Knisely’s work has appeared in a variety of edited volumes and journals including Contemporary French Civilization, Foreign Language Annals, The French Review, Gender and Language, Journal of Applied Measurement, and Pensamiento Educativo, among others.
Steering Committee Members
Cecilia Benaglia, PhD
Cecilia Benaglia (pronouns she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor of French Studies at the University of Limerick, Ireland, and she received her PhD from the Johns Hopkins University in 2017. Benaglia’s research interests include 20th-century French, Francophone and Italian literature, translation and multilingualism studies, cultural transfer studies, sociology of literature and women’s and gender studies. At SDSU, she teaches courses on topics such as multilingualism and translation in the Francophone world, travel writing and migration in the 20th century, and translating Italy/Italy in translation.
Hasheem Hakeem, PhD
Hasheem Hakeem is currently an Assistant Professor of Instruction in French at Northwestern University. He holds a dual PhD in French Studies, with a focus on queer literature and theory, and in Education from Simon Fraser University. He has taught a variety of courses in French language and culture at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels at Simon Fraser University and at the University of Calgary. Exploring strategies for teaching French through multimodal texts is part of his pedagogical commitment to developing students’ critical literacy skills in both lower and upper-level language courses. Hakeem’s research focuses on critical pedagogical approaches to French language teaching, queer and cultural studies, discourse analysis, and minoritized instructor identity. His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Voix plurielles, Cahiers franco-canadiens de l'Ouest, Contemporary French Civilization, The International Journal of Canadian Studies, and La Revue des sciences de l'éducation. He is currently co-editing a journal issue for Arborescences entitled “Au-delà de l’inclusion : pour une pédagogie critique, intersectionnelle et décolonisante”.
Gemma King, PhD
Gemma King is Senior Lecturer in French at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on contemporary francophone cinemas and museums, specialising in the representation of multilingualism, transnational connections, colonial histories, violence and social power. Her writing has been published in French Cultural Studies, Contemporary French Civilization, L’Esprit Créateur, The Australian Journal of French Studies, The Conversation, Francosphères and numerous edited volumes. She is the author of the monographs Decentring France: Multilingualism and Power in Contemporary French Cinema (Manchester University Press, 2017) and Jacques Audiard (2021), a volume in Manchester UP’s French Film Directors series.
Daniel Maroun, PhD
Daniel Maroun is Director of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Illinois where he teaches and advises a wide cohort of students. His research is informed by intersection of gender and sexuality within Francophone communities primarily in North Africa and the Levant. His second axe of research looks at the evolution of subjectivity and disease depiction in HIV/AIDS narratives of French. He is passionate about undergraduate curriculum, student outcomes, and inclusive education.
Marda Messay, PhD
Dr. Marda Messay is an Assistant Professor of French at Simmons University in Boston, Massachusetts. She teaches various courses at Simmons University, ranging from Beginning French to Francophone Literature. Her research focuses on contemporary sub-Saharan trauma narratives. Her work has been published in International Journal of Francophone studies and Women in French Studies.
Julia Spiegelman
Julia Donnelly Spiegelman (she/elle) is a critical applied linguist, French teacher, and anti-bias teacher educator. Her research and activism focus on the intersection of power, identity, and ideology in K-16 world language classrooms, seeking to document, understand, and oppose the workings of racism and transphobia within these contexts. Julia is a Ph.D. Candidate in Applied Linguistics at University of Massachusetts Boston with an M.A. in French from Middlebury College, where she was awarded the Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace. Julia’s work has been published in Applied Linguistics, The French Review, and L2 Journal. She is a former middle school teacher who has since taught French at UMass Boston, Longy School of Music at Bard College, and Brown University. Julia is a longtime faculty member at the Multicultural Teaching Institute, where she works with K-12 teachers to develop awareness of their own identities and engage anti-racist pedagogies in their classrooms.
Robin Turner
Robin Turner is a Ph.D. student in French Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she has been a teaching assistant and coordinator of elementary French classes in the Department of French and Italian. Her dissertational research examines the relationship between gender and sexual identities, multilingualism, and community organization. She also co-hosts the GradLings Podcast, a program dedicated to the promotion of graduate students working in all branches of linguistics.