Modern Languages Commons^™

A Short Letter By Humboldt To Jefferson, Reinhard Andress

Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works

At the tail end of his monumental trip of exploration and scientific discovery through Latin America from 1799 to 1804, the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt visited President Thomas Jefferson in Washington. United by their common interests in the Enlightenment, they began a correspondence that endured until 1825. This contribution discusses a letter of 1811 by Humboldt to the former president, hitherto unpublished in English. Aside from closing a gap in their correspondence, the letter, although short, offers an illuminating insight into Humboldt’s personal, political, and scientific networks, which included such figures as Abbé José Correia da Serra and Joel …

What Students Do With Words: Language Use And Communicative Function In Full And Partial Immersion Classrooms, Katherine Christoffersen

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

Over the past 35 years, language immersion programs have been steadily increasing in number throughout the U.S. The popularity of these diverse, linguistically complex educational programs has led to a rather extensive body of research on language immersion and dual language contexts. Research, however, has thus far focused primarily on the quantification of language use (the amount of target language versus first language use) in different settings and with different interlocutors. Very few studies have probed the interesting and significant sociolinguistic question of what students ‘do’ with languages in the classroom. The present study fills this research gap by investigating …

Review Of Performing Captivity, Performing Escape. Cabarets And Plays From The Terezin/Theresienstadt Ghetto. Edited And With An Introduction By Lisa Peschel., Hana Waisserova

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Performing Captivity, Performing Escape. Cabarets and Plays from the Terezin/Theresienstadt Ghetto presents Lisa Peschel’s edited, revised, and translated into English Divadelní texty z terezínského ghetta/ Theatretexte aus dem Ghetto Theresienstadt, 1941-1945.

Terezín/Theresienstadt was unusual in that it served as a ghetto with an attached prison, as well as a concentration camp. The Nazi propaganda used this camp to convince the world that life was “normal” in this supposed Jewish resettlement area. For this reason, they allowed cultural life to take place. Peschel’s work is an anthology of selected texts originating there. It contains cabarets, puppet play scripts, as well …

Les Etats-Unis D'Afrique Dans Le Manifeste Du Cinquantenaire : Une Prise De Conscience, Kpatagnon Maxime Vignon

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The present study seeks to explore and analyze the fifty recommendations consigned in Le Manifeste du Cinquantenaire with regards to the project of an African federation in the form of the United States of Africa. This manifesto is the product of a meeting of African intellectuals and state actors in Cotonou, Benin, from the 16th to the 20th of November 2010, on the occasion of the celebration of the 50 years of African independences. It also offers insights into how such a project could become viable and feasible. Indeed, after centuries of colonization, the African continent saw most of the …

Promising Digital Practices For Nondominant Learners, Kathy Bussert-Webb, Laurie A. Henry

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This case study took place during an after-school program in a public Texas school district along the U.S./Mexico border. We explore a focal participant’s technology access and use as part of our larger digital literacy research. We asked: What in- and out-of-school digital literacy skills, access, and experiences did Robot Boy (pseudonym) possess? How did he behave as a rhizome? Overarching theoretical frameworks were postmodernism and New Literacy Studies; within these theories, we focused on rhizomic principles and digital literacies. This research is part of a larger mixed methods research study (Bussert-Webb & Henry, 2016) focused on an exploration of …

Innovative Techniques For Inspiring Efl Students' Enthusiasm And Participating In English Classroom Activities, Yinghung Natalie Chiang

Master's Projects and Capstones

Since 1990, the government of Taiwan has sought to position the country as an international economic and trading center. As a result, English became a compulsory subject for Taiwanese students in 2005 (Lu, 2011). The Taiwan Ministry of Education (MOE) is promoting communicative language teaching (CLT) and encouraging learners to develop and increased desire to improve their language skills. However, many Taiwanese English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers still focus on memorization and the grammar translation method (Chung & Huang, 2009). The author discovered two major issues related to English language teaching in Taiwan. The first issue was many Taiwanese …

Agitando Lo Cotidiano. Una Conversación Sobre El Desafío Ⓐnarquista Frente Al Sexismo En El Lenguaje, Mariel Mercedes Acosta Matos, Ernesto Cuba

Publications and Research

Ernesto Cuba entrevista a Mariel Acosta acerca de los hallazgos en sus tesis de maestría, que aborda las propuestas de morfemas de género inclusivo en publicaciones anarquistas de habla hispana, entre las que se halla el uso de " @ " , " x " y otras innovaciones ortográficas que buscan desafiar el sesgo androcéntrico de la lengua. Palabras clave: Lenguaje no-sexista; anarquismo; ortografía; sociolingüística; estudios de lenguaje y género; español.

Ernesto Cuba interviews Mariel Acosta about the findings in hers master's thesis, which addresses the proposals of inclusive gender morphemes in Spanish-language anarchist publications, among which is the use …

Teoria De La Mente Y Sociedad En La Narrativa Policiaca De Lorenzo Silva Y Francisco Garcia Pavon: Estereotipos, Roles De Genero Y Minorias, Jesus Castro Gorfti

Open Access Dissertations

Spanish:

The purpose of this study is to utilize certain aspects of cognitive psychology as a framework to analyze the police procedural novels of two Spanish authors: Francisco García Pavón and Lorenzo Silva. Specifically, we will focus on two main aspects of the mind studied by the cognitive sciences: Theory of Mind and metarepresentations. Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the capacity that human beings have to attribute mental states to other humans, as well as oneself, based on their bodily and facial gestures. The concept of metarepresentation refers to the ability of humans to keep track of who said …

Developing Academic Literacy: What Novice Teachers Can Learn From The Case Of Teaching Latino/Bilingual Learners Science And Mathematics, Sandra I. Musanti, Sandra Mercuri

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …

Cross-Language Community Engagement: Assessing The Strengths Of Heritage Learners, Elise Dubord, Elizabeth Kimball

Faculty Work

This article reports on university students’ learning outcomes stemming from their work as language partners in a community-based learning project in an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) class with adult Spanish-speaking immigrants. We present a rubric designed to assess student learning in the collaborative, cross-language nature of the partnership that moves beyond notions of language acquisition. The rubric was used to score the reflective writing of students in two university classes who participated in this off-campus partnership, one in Spanish for majors, and one in English for general education students. Our analysis focuses on correlations between students’ language …

Don Quixote In Russia In The 18th And 19th Centuries: The Problem Of Perception And Interpretation, Slav N. Gratchev Phd

Modern Languages Faculty Research

This paper examines the problem of the perception of Don Quixote in Russia in the XVIII and XIX centuries. The author wants to demonstrate that this process of appropriation has had a long and complex history, and there were specific reasons for this. Don Quixote, the first modern fiction novel, upon arrival in Russia, received minimal attention and was perceived as a very simple and comic book. Then, little by little, it began to gain importance. Most of the materials the author uses for this presentation are available only in Russian, and they are kept in the scientific libraries …

Book Review: Monique Yaari, Ed., Infra-Noir Un Et Multiple: Un Groupe Surréaliste Entre Bucarest Et Paris, 1945-1947, Cosana M. Eram

College of the Pacific Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Opening The Door For Cross-Disciplinary Literacy: Doing History And Writing In A High School To University Collaboration, Beatrice Mendez Newman, Penny Rosas

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

Drawing on the work of Denstaedt, Roop, and Best (NCTE), the authors devise and coteach an interdisciplinary unit based on proslavery and abolitionist primary documents to guide students in doing history and doing writing.

La Visión Del Colombiano En La Hojarasca, El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba Y Crónica De Una Muerte Anunciada, De Gabriel García Márquez, Luz S. Valencia Galvis

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

El presente trabajo tiene el propósito de analizar la construcción identitaria del colombiano en las obras La hojarasca, El coronel no tiene quien le escriba y Crónica de una muerte anunciada de Gabriel García Márquez. Bajo esta perspectiva, se indagará sobre algunos aspectos que intervienen en la configuración y expresión de la identidad cultural del colombiano representado en los personajes de cada obra, como el lenguaje, las costumbres sociales y culturales, los estereotipos en su lugar/época. Con lo antes indicado, intento esclarecer la visión del colombiano según García Márquez. Asimismo, se realizará una descripción de la evolución de los …

Immigrant Student Identities: How Bakhtin And Hermans'' Theories Conceptualize Their Fluidity, Xiaodi Zhou

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This essay discusses how Bakhtin's conception of double-voicedness and cultural identities, along with Hermans's theories of I-positionality and subjectivities, helps frame researchers' characterization of immigrant students' complex and fluid identities. This age of globalization has increased the number and dimensions of positions anyone can assume. Immigrant identities, particularly students, can especially be conceptualized as dynamic and in flux, fluctuating between at least two cultural positions. Sometimes their transnational identities can be conceived as hybridized and dialogic between these cultural norms.

Cooking, Language, And Memory In Farhoud's Le Bonheur À La Queue Glissante And Thúy's Mãn, Simona Emilia Pruteanu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Cooking, Language, and Memory in Farhoud's Le Bonheur à la queue glissante and Thúy's Mãn" Simona Emilia Pruteanu discusses two moments in the evolution of (im)migrant writing in Québec. Abla Farhoud's 1998 novel shows the struggle of Dounia, a Lebanese immigrant living in Montréal, who in her seventies finds a voice with the help of her daughter's writing and starts to reflect on her identity. Themes of language and cooking overlap and reinforce one another and offer a new perspective on memory and the act of remembering. Language, cooking, and memory also intertwine in Thúy's 2013 …

Fundamentals Of Machine Learning For Neural Machine Translation, John D. Kelleher

Conference papers

This paper presents a short introduction to neural networks and how they are used for machine translation and concludes with some discussion on the current research challenges being addressed by neural machine translation (NMT) research. The primary goal of this paper is to give a no-tears introduction to NMT to readers that do not have a computer science or mathematical background. The secondary goal is to provide the reader with a deep enough understanding of NMT that they can appreciate the strengths of weaknesses of the technology. The paper starts with a brief introduction to standard feed-forward neural networks (what …

A Contrastive Analysis Of Dar ‘Give’ In English And Brazilian Portuguese: Semantic-Syntactic Relationships And Implications For L2 Instruction, Katherine Christoffersen

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

In recent years, research on multiword lexical units has influenced second language acquisition research, but little work has been done on light verbs, especially comparing the use of light verbs in English and Brazilian Portuguese. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the syntactic and semantic aspects of dar and ‘give’ through the semantic continuum, event type, denominal verbs and incorporation. This study finds that distinct and varied semantic uses of light verbs present a unique challenge to second language learners in terms of both their understanding and their production. Furthermore, this study analyzes the semantic-syntactic interrelationships and suggests implications …

Songs Of Passage And Sacrifice: Gabriella Ghermandi’S Stories In Performance, Laura Dolp, Eveljn Ferraro

Modern Languages & Literature

In this time and on this page, Spivak's island seems an apt place to begin a discussion about storytelling, resistance, and belonging. This chapter documents a conversation originating from two disciplinary perspectives-literature (Ferraro) and music (Dolp). We explore how spoken-word performance in a global context can facilitate social empowerment, craft a cultural past, and invigorate political consciousness. Although our analytical strategies and some of our conclusions differ, we share the assertion that the notion of artistic citizenship as it is defined elsewhere in this collection is considerably complicated, and even requires redefinition, in the context of non-Western cultures. Our present …