Dr. Jill Beckman is the Director of the Division of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (DWLLC) and Associate Professor of Linguistics.

Prof. Heitzman is currently researching two interconnected projects: He is interested in a group of outward-looking poets who came to prominence in the 1960s, some of whom spent some time at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP), including Yoshimasu Gōzō and Shiraishi Kazuko. He is also researching the history of Japanese writers in the IWP as well as the early days of the IWP in general. He has published translations of work by four recent IWP participants: Nakagami Nori, Shibasaki Tomoka, Fujino Kaori, and Takiguchi Yūshō. He also has longstanding interests in Japanese film and Japanese theater.

Anna Barker has taught courses in the English Department, in Comparative Literature, in Russian Literature, and in the Honors Program. Her areas of interest include 19th-century Russian and European literature, Russian cultural history, 19th century women writers, artist, and composers, and Wonder Woman. In recent years, she has regularly taught the authors course "Tolstoy and Dostoevsky," organizing a campus-community celebration to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Tolstoy's death in 2010.

Jack has an M.A. in Linguistics with a focus on teaching English as a second language. He desires to enhance student learning experiences in the classroom by incorporating innovative technologies and promoting student identities. He is currently working on a project that aims to introduce virtual reality to UI courses. 

Aniruddha Dutta is an Associate Professor in the departments of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies and Asian and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Iowa. Dutta is interested in the study of contemporary globalizing processes, the political economy of gender and sexuality, transnational discourses and practices of development, and the institutionalization of gender and sexual identity politics, with specific reference to India and South Asia.

Meredith Mahy Gall is the senior academic advisor for the Division of World Literatures, Languages, and Cultures (including all world languages, International Studies, linguistics, and translation) and global health studies students.

Course Management for Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literatures, Department of French & Italian, Translation Programs, BTAA CourseShare, and WLLC courses. Graduate Coordinator for French and Literary Translation

Chuanren Ke (柯传仁) is Professor in the Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literatures and Director of the Second Language Acquisition PhD Program (aka FLARE, Foreign Language Acquisition Research and Education) in the Division of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Iowa. His main area of research is in Chinese second language acquisition, instruction, and assessment. 

I have taught English at various institutions and companies in Korea, such as Samsung; from this experience, I am trying to approach difficulties that English Korean-learners usually face, especially as a beginner. I am mostly interested in the difference between Korean grammar and English grammar and also in English polysemy; currently expanding my interests to the way AI-based translators interpret English polysemy in different contexts.

Anna Kolesnikova has been working in the Russian program at the University of Iowa since 2007 teaching a variety of language and culture courses. Her areas of expertise are Russian language and culture and technology in second language acquisition.

Irina Kostina demonstrates unique competencies of developing assessments, interactive face-to-face courses and curriculums for Russian language, culture and civilization, intensive Russian courses for students, professionals, and heritage learners that increase student engagement, motivation, achievement, and retention. Dr. Kostina’ s research interests are in the methods of teaching Russian as a foreign language, and the theories of creating communicative textbooks. 

Yuan Lu received his Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition with specialization in Chinese language teaching and learning from the University of Iowa in 2017. He taught Chinese language to foreign/second language learners in China and the state of Kansas before joining the University of Iowa. He is the coordinator of Chinese program at the University of Iowa, supervising curriculum and instruction in the program, and teaches First-year Chinese, Second-year Chinese, Accelerated Second-year Chinese, Fourth-year Chinese, Fifth-year Chinese: Chinese Linguistics and Academic Writing, and Introduction to Chinese Linguistics. His main research interests involve second language acquisition theories and research methods, language assessment and testing, and grammar and discourse learning and teaching in Chinese as a second language.

Philip Lutgendorf taught Hindi and Modern Indian Studies in the Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literature for 33 years, retiring in 2018.

Gabbie holds a bachelor’s degree in English. She taught English Language Learning in the Clear Creek Amana School District and worked in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Office of the Dean prior to becoming Division Administrator for the Division of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures in 2023. Her interests include building sustainable staffing and communication structures; fostering a strong multicultural community; and supporting the Division in its mission to advance interdisciplinary research, artistic creativity, global awareness, and the study of languages, literatures, linguistics, societies, regions, and cultures. She collaborates with the staff team and faculty leadership to facilitate administrative operations and strategic planning.

Margaret H. Mills was a Professor of Russian language and linguistics and the former Chair of the Department of Asian and Slavic Languages at the University of Iowa. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan (1985) and her MPH from the University of Iowa (2005). She has spent 30 years studying, consulting, and conducting linguistic and public health field work and research in the Soviet Union and Russia.

Professor Nishi's primary research areas have been verb semantics and the second language acquisition of aspect. She is particularly interested in discovering how learners’ semantic representations of verbs in L1 affect the learning of verb semantics in L2, and how this interacts with the acquisition of aspectual morphology in L2. In most of her projects, she pursues a cross-linguistic approach in order to explore how underlying universal patterns are manifested in the process of language acquisition/development, or in the representation of languages, as well as to identify cross-linguistic variations and their significance. She also investigates how these findings can be applied to language pedagogy, in particular, the teaching of Japanese as a second/foreign language.

Nana Onishi teaches all levels of modern Japanese language. She is interested in Japanese, language pedagogy, and second language acquisition.

Joung-A Park is the Asian and Slavic Languages and Literatures lecturer at the University of Iowa and teaches First and Second-Year Korean language.

Helen Shen's main research areas are Chinese L2 literacy development focusing on orthographic knowledge development and cognitive process of Chinese characters, reading education in Chinese, and instructional theories in teaching Chinese as a second language.

Frederick Smith's primary interest lies at the intersection of text and practice, in what gives cultural and religious traditions their dynamism. As a scholar of Sanskrit and South Asia, his work includes studies of texts and performances of Vedic sacrificial ritual from antiquity to the present; studies of religious experience in India, with a primary focus on the history and phenomenology of deity and spirit possession; the writings of Vallabhācārya; and India’s great epic, the Mahābhārata.

Professor Strand specializes in premodern Japanese literature and visual culture, with expertise in travel writing, poetry, calligraphy, and landscape painting. Her research is founded in examining the historical contexts in which works of literature and art were created. Her research interests extend to issues of canon and interpretation in literature and art, as well as the ways in which historical themes surface in contemporary popular culture.

Newell Ann Van Auken teaches Classical Chinese literature, a world literary tradition spanning over thirty centuries. Her research focuses on early China, and she is also a translator.