Directors

Professor Yackee’s research centers on international investment law, international economic relations, foreign arbitration, and administrative law and politics. He teaches Contracts, International Investment Law, International Arbitration, and International Business Transactions.

Professor Yackee earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science (International Relations) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and earned a J.D., summa cum laude and Order of the Coif, from Duke University School of Law. He has also studied French and European law at L’Universite Pantheon-Assas (Paris-2), and he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to conduct research at the Thammasat University Faculty of Law, in Bangkok, Thailand.

Associate Professor of French in the Department of French and Italian, a core faculty member of the Second Language Acquisition doctoral program, and a faculty affiliate of the Center for Teaching and Research on Writing. My work includes oversight of a multiliteracies-oriented first- and second-year French language program, supervision of a talented and diverse group of graduate student instructors of French, and teaching cultural studies and writing courses in French and graduate seminars in applied linguistics.

My research focuses on multiliteracies and Design pedagogies in second language education. You can read about my current book project on second language writing here, which will be published as part of Routledge’s Multiliteracies and Second Language Education series.

Mary Noles is the Accountant II in the Department of French and Italian, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A staff member since 2003, she appreciates the fast-paced, continually evolving environment that the university provides. She is responsible for developing and maintaining financial data and providing fiscal management of grant, state, gift, and foundation supported accounts within the Department of French and Italian, including the financial data for the Center of Interdisciplinary French Studies. As Project Manager and Strategist for the CIFS, Mary oversees the annual applications for special project grants and annual operations funding from the French Embassy, maintaining UW – Madison’s status as one of the 20 French Centers of Excellence in the nation. Mary graduated from the University of Wisconsin – River Falls in 1989 with a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Math and took Master’s coursework in Education at the University of Minnesota.

Aliko Songolo’s research and teaching interests focus on francophone literatures of Africa and the Caribbean, and on francophone cinemas of Africa and Québec. He has published a monograph (Aimé Césaire: une poétique de la découverte, 1985), two co-edited volumes (Twenty-five Years After Dakar and Fourah Bay: The Growth of African Literature, 1998 and Atlantic Cross-Currents/Transatlantiques, 2001), and was Associate Editor of the highly acclaimed five-volume New Encyclopedia of Africa (2008). He has also edited special issues of two eminent journals in his field, French Review (1982) and Présence Francophone (2003), and published numerous articles. His current research projects investigate the question of national cinema in Québec and Francophone Africa, and postcoloniality in the wake of the Négritude movement. He was recently named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French Ministry of National Education.  At UW-Madison, Aliko Songolo has served as Chair of African Languages and Literature (now African Cultural Studies), and as Chair of the Department of French & Italian.  In addition, he has directed the African Studies Program at UW-Madison, and was Associate Vice-Chancellor of Academic Affairs at the University of California-Irvine before moving to Wisconsin. He is currently Co-Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary French Studies and Senior Adviser to the Vice-Provost for Globalization.  He chaired the Modern Language Association’s African Literature Division (2002), and its Division of Francophone Literatures and Cultures (2009), and was twice President of the African Literature Association.