Meet the New Chair of French & Italian, Ioana Pribiag
Meet Ioana Pribiag, the chair of the Department of French & Italian. She shares her research specialties and current projects, along with her initiatives for the department as she steps into the role.
Transformative experiences
Pribiag specializes in literature and cinema from post-colonial Francophone nations, focusing on North Africa, the Caribbean, and Québec. She earned her MA and PhD in Romance studies from Cornell University, but before pursuing Francophone studies, she earned a BA in biological sciences, with a minor in neurobiology and behavior. It was a study-abroad experience in Paris that changed her intellectual and career trajectories. While abroad, Pribiag took philosophy and art history courses for the first time and interned at the Museum of Natural History.
“As a pre-med student already having narrowed in on a career field and having engaged in several lab research projects with faculty early on, this experience opened dozens of new doors for me. Most importantly, it opened my mind. I really fell in love with French culture, as well as the freedom and exhilaration that comes from unlearning things you thought you knew about your own culture. Seeing things from a different perspective can be destabilizing, but also extremely enlightening,” she reflects.
After her semester abroad, she pursued a second major in French, writing an honors thesis on the first Francophone Black novel written in French and graduating summa cum laude. She was eager to continue research in the field. “I was just voracious to learn more, and also to help disseminate this corpus,” she shares. “Reading Francophone works as a senior was the very first time that I had really come into contact with other perspectives that challenged deeply embedded ideologies of our society.” Pribiag wrote her dissertation on the role poetry can take as a political act in both its words and public performance.
What’s new
Pribiag is now completing a book called Shards on fragmentation as form and content in Francophone literatures. “The way fragmentation is used in post-colonial texts is very often related to specific historical trauma. There's a very different way that these works portray fragmentation as something that has specific sources and is painful, as something that shouldn't necessarily be the state of humanity,” says Pribiag. “There's a yearning for wholeness that one finds is very different from Western traditions and postmodernism, for example.”
Her most recent research engages with Francophone women’s voices, including Indigenous authors, filmmakers and artists from Québec.
Building connections
Pribiag took on the role of chair in summer 2025, shortly after receiving tenure. She came into her leadership role during a transitional period for the department, with retiring faculty and smaller budgets, in part due to the federal government's withdrawal of support from universities and the humanities. With these challenges in mind, she is reinventing the ways the department operates, bringing new initiatives that will form a strong and energetic foundation as she guides it into the future.
This year, the department had several in-depth discussions aimed at strengthening teaching, advising, and student engagement. Priorities include increasing experiential learning throughout the curriculum, creating more effective and innovative assessments, expanding access to study abroad and immersive opportunities, and connecting students more directly with internship and career pathways.
The student experience is a top priority for Pribiag. She highlights the importance of skills that are unique to departments that teach languages, cultures, and literature, such as second-language competencies and cross-cultural learning. “I want students to see French and Francophone studies as a foundational background for a successful career path,” says Pribiag. “Clarifying the transferable skills students are learning when they take our classes is really important. That includes things as fundamental as adaptability and perseverance, because learning a foreign language can be really difficult.”
By emphasizing the advantages of a degree in French & Italian, she hopes undergraduates can use their classroom experiences to stand out for careers and internships. “Employers really love seeing candidates who have second language proficiency, especially since global awareness and intercultural competency are crucial today. It can often give you a leg up,” she explains.
In addition to internal initiatives within French & Italian, Pribiag also plans to build relations with other departments and units within CLA and strengthen relationships with local and international organizations, such as the Alliance Française, the Italian Cultural Center, and the Black Europe Film Festival. Through these partnerships, she envisions developing unique co-sponsored events and courses while introducing a wider range of students to French & Italian.
Pribiag also aims to strengthen connections with alumni of the department. She is committed to creating more opportunities for alumni and students to meet. Through classroom visits and mentorships, she wants to show students the many options they can pursue with a degree in French & Italian, while also gaining valuable insights and experiences when planning their careers after graduation. Pribiag is establishing a network of French & Italian scholars so current students and alumni can reach out to each other in the future.
This story was written by Lily Zenner (BA ‘25, English).
