Latin American Languages and Societies Commons^™

Learning Chinese Vocabulary: Understanding Students' Perspectives, Austin Gasiecki, Zuotang Zhang

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

This study used a survey to investigate self-study and university-enrolled Chinese learners’ habits in studying Chinese vocabulary in order to determine what study methods influence a.) learners’ confidence in learning Chinese vocabulary and b.) what aspects of Chinese vocabulary they consider easy or difficult. We were particularly interested in seeing what the data had to say about students’ attitudes towards characters and the written language, given that the field of Chinese language pedagogy is known for a stronger focus on the written language as opposed to the spoken language. We found that aspects of Chinese vocabulary associated with the spoken …

Between Pain And Glory: Memory Disputes Of The Brazilian Dictatorship In Retrato Calado And O Que É Isso, Companheiro?, Angela R. Mooney

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

This article analyzes Luiz Roberto Salinas Fortes’ Retrato calado (Silent Portrait) published in 1988, considering the theoretical discussions on testimonio's epistemology—addressing the challenge of narrating trauma and the risk of stylization. It compares Fortes' memoir with Fernando Gabeira's O que é isso, companheiro? (What's This, Comrade?) from 1979, examining diverse approaches to capturing historical trauma through literature and its impact on collective memory about Brazilian Dictatorship (1964-1985).

Decolonizing French: Afrophonics In Ken Bugul’S Aller Et Retour (2013), Hapsatou Wane

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

This article explores the innovative language strategies employed by Senegalese writer Ken Bugul in her novel Aller et retour to construct a dynamic and interconnected linguistic landscape that challenges fixed language boundaries. Ken Bugul's "langue fabriquée" combines elements of French, Wolof, and English, reflecting a transglocal dimension that embodies the essence of afrophonics—a poetics of resistance that empowers local cultures in a globalized context. Through a detailed analysis of Ken Bugul's linguistic choices, including the use of quotation marks, footnotes, and arbitrary transcription, the study reveals how she creates a language that defies categorization and decolonizes French without resorting to …

Translating The Francophone Caribbean: Centering Black Production, Decentering Translation Practices, Nathan H. Dize, Charly Verstraet

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In her article, “A Tree as a Record: On Translating Mahagony by Edouard Glissant,” translator Betsy Wing recounts how Martinican writer Edouard Glissant expressed his disinclination to respond to translators’ questions and justified his intention by saying, “I wrote it once, now it’s your turn to write it” (124). According to Glissant, translating and writing are similar in nature. The art of translation therefore does not lie in the process of translating words into another language but in the skill to compose a text anew, that is to say to develop unique ways of ‘writing’ and therefore to deconstruct the …

La Radical Imperfección Del Mundo: El Crimen Perfecto De Jean Baudrillard Y El Crimen Ferpecto De Alex De La Iglesia, Maria A. Gomez

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

Le parfait crime (1995) by Jean Baudrillard and Crimen ferpecto (2004) by the Basque director Alex de la Iglesia are two works that not only have in common almost identical titles. They both reflect on how in consumer societies, an imperfect real world is substituted for an illusory hyperreality in which the distinction between subject and object has disappeared. While Baudrillard explains how the denial of a transcendent reality in contemporary society is “a perfect crime” that destroys the real, Alex de la Iglesia uses black humor and a mix of genres (mainly grotesque comedy and thriller) to show the …

De Médée À La Sorcière : Reconstruction D’Un Mythe Par Michelet, Caroline Strobbe

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

In La Sorcière, Jules Michelet uses the strength and the myth of the Medea character, which had already fascinated Corneille. In the second part of his work, Michelet creates nominative witches after authentic texts. In the first part, he creates an allegoric witch on the Medea model: the Woman, a victim of arbitrariness, injustice and repression, rises up against her oppressors, figuring the march of Humanity towards Enlightenment and Liberty. The analogies between the Witch and Medea are therefore numerous and necessary, since they help to render the defense of the oppressed against the oppressor. Would the somber Medea, …

Jason Herbeck. Architextual Authenticity: Constructing Literature And Literary Identity In The French Caribbean. Liverpool Up, 2017; 2020., Nathan H. Dize

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Jason Herbeck. Architextual Authenticity: Constructing Literature and Literary Identity in the French Caribbean. Liverpool UP, 2017; 2020. x + 330 pp.

Transgressing Boundaries Of Identity, Geography And Time In Transmutadxos And La Mucama De Omicunlé, Lucinda Smith

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

The literary works of Rita Indiana (1977) and Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro (1970) are recognised for exposing and challenging hegemonic ideas of identity, sexuality and power. The transgression of boundaries appears time and again in the fiction of both writers, whether these be boundaries of sexual or gender identity, desire, geography, time or even life and death. Using Rita Indiana’s novel La mucama de Omicunlé (2015) and Arroyo’s collection of short stories Transmutadxs (2016), the authors’ representations of such transgressions are the focus of this essay.

Further to addressing similar themes in their texts, both Rita Indiana and Arroyo Pizarro were …

Pensar El Límite: El Símbolo Indígena En Los Proyectos Políticos Cubanos De Principios Del Siglo Xix, Jorge L. Camacho

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

This article investigates the way in which Cuban literature reflected on indigenous people during the early half of the nineteenth century and uses the symbol of the Amerindians to demonstrate a moral disjuncture between them and the colonizer. In this article, I call attention to the way Cuban independentists and Spanish nationalists used this figure to support their views and thus created a split in the Cuban creole imagination. I start by pointing out that these appropriations started at the end of the 18th century when historian José Martín Félix de Arrate, and poets such as Miguel González and Manuel …

La “Border Culture” Del Personaje Mexicoamericano En El Sureste De Estados Unidos En Los Cuentos De Lorraine López Y Mijito Doesn’T Live Here Anymore De Jaime Martínez, Jaime Chavez

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

This paper explores the concepts of "Border Culture" and "Borderlands" by Gloria Anzaldúa in Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories, Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories, by Lorraine López and the novel Mijito Doesn’t Live Here Anymore by Jaime Martínez. The paper argues that the Mexican American character in the southeast of the United States lives in the "Borderlands" and practices a "Border Culture" because they don't follow the traditional stereotypical role of the Mexican American character within the literary canon of both the dominant culture and Chicana/o literature.

Language Learning Through Interaction: Online And In The Classroom, Andrew J. Demil, Rachel Kozikowski

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

Online language teaching has become a popular alternative to classroom learning (Liu et al; Warschauer and Meskill). This led to research comparing the two learning environments (Young). Regardless of the learning environment, in order to be effective, the second language classroom must be designed to lead learners to acquisition. Studies suggest that collaborative tasks that push learners to negotiate meaning lead to acquisition (Leeser; Loewen and Erlam; Mackey and Philp; Stafford, Bowden, Sanz). Participants in this study were in two environments; a second language classroom in the typical in person classroom format, and a language learning course in an online …

Using A Smart Phone To Learn Spanish: Does It Work And Will Students Use It?, Andrew J. Demil, Alysha Assaf, Ryan Cragun

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

Over time, mobile devices have penetrated the classroom, requiring new and beneficial ways to implement classroom instruction. Research suggests that Short Message Service (SMS) based instruction is an effective tool for acquiring second language (L2) vocabulary and idiom knowledge (Hayati, Jalilifar, & Mashhadi; Lu,). Additionally, studies have found that students believe that mobile learning (m-learning) is beneficial to acquiring a second language (Cavus & Ibrahim; Hayati, Jalilifar, & Mashhadi; Lu, 2008). This study examined whether m-learning can lead to Spanish vocabulary familiarity and if sentence comprehension outperforms reading definitions. Participants were 29 native English speakers studying Spanish as a second …

A Story To Tell… How To Integrate The Three Modes Of Communication Through A Story Time Program In French, Frederique Grim

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

Bilingual story time programs found in local community libraries not only benefit children, they can also serve a need for L2 college students: the development of their communicative skills in an authentic environment. In addition to linguistic benefits, experiential learning has proven to prepare students for real-world skills, such as networking, mock professional experience and a sense of community engagement. This paper recounts how a world language story time program supports L2 learners’ three modes of communication, as articulated by ACTFL, and necessary for language development. Based on students’ perceptions, this study highlights their increase in motivation and confidence in …

Jarrod Hayes. Queer Roots For The Diaspora: Ghosts In The Family Tree. Ann Arbor: U Of Michigan P, 2016., Annie De Saussure

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Jarrod Hayes. Queer Roots for the Diaspora: Ghosts in the family tree. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. 325 pp.

La Emigración A Norteamérica, La Peregrinación Y La Hospitalidad, Charli Tyree

The Kennesaw Tower Undergraduate Foreign Language Research Journal

¿Qué es la peregrinación?: Hay varias definiciones de la palabra “peregrinación.” Una peregrinación es un viaje largo hecho a un lugar especial o sagrado para la urificación, como un acto de algún tipo de afiliación religiosa (Duque 270). Por ejemplo, cuando los cristianos van en peregrinación, viajan a un lugar que se considera especial para su fe personal, un práctico más viejo que cosmocentrismo teocrático (Duque 273). Estos lugares podrían ser donde nació Jesús, donde han ocurrido milagros, donde está enterrado un santo, como el Camino de Santiago, o cualquier otro lugar mencionado en la Biblia y que contiene un …

Un’Analisi Di Sei Poesie Di Sibilla Aleramo, Olivia Mazza

The Kennesaw Tower Undergraduate Foreign Language Research Journal

Sibilla Aleramo è lo pseudonimo di Rina Faccio, un’autrice italiana, nata a Alessandra, in Italia, il 14 agosto 1876 e morta il 13 gennaio 1960 a Roma. Lei era una femminista meglio conosciuta per le sue raffigurazioni autobiografiche della vita come una donna nel tardo XIX secolo in Italia. Aleramo dice che si sente come se lei avesse vissuto tre vite. "La sua 'vita prima,' come madre e moglie, è delineata nel suo romanzo Una Donna. Una citazione da Una Donna spiega: “Ubbidisci al comando della tua coscienza, rispetta sopra tutto la tua dignità, madre: sii forte, resisti lontana, nella …

Florecitas Roqueras: Rock, Punk Y El Problema De Género En Hispanoamérica, Micaela Lyons

The Kennesaw Tower Undergraduate Foreign Language Research Journal

Se puede afirmar que la sociedad latinoamericana en general es predominantemente patriarcal, una en la que sus miembros tienen ideas rígidas sobre las vidas de las mujeres y en la que los hombres tienen cierta ventaja. En este sentido, el rock y la industria de música no son diferentes. Sin embargo, a lo largo de la historia moderna la música rock ha abierto varias posibilidades para otorgar poder a las mujeres, ofreciéndoles herramientas para rechazar la naturaleza patriarcal y dominante de su entorno. En este ensayo, exploro las relaciones entre las mujeres y el rock para mostrar como estas mujeres …

Gedichte Als Antwort Auf Den 2. Weltkrieg: Gomringers Und Jandls Konkrete Poesie In Der Nachkriegszeit, Miranda Gilgore

The Kennesaw Tower Undergraduate Foreign Language Research Journal

Die konkrete Poesie wurde erstmals schriftlich als solche 1955 genannt (McCullough ix; Bornscheuer 418). Die Art stammt aus dem Altgriechischen und Lateinischen, aber zwei brasilianische Dichter sowie der Schweizer Eugen Gomringer brachten konkrete Poesie zur bedeutenden Rolle in der Diskussion von Poesie (McCullough ix; Bornscheuer 418). Konkrete Poesie diente als Bruch von der Dichtung der Vergangenheit und den zugehörigen Regeln (Gomringer Theorie der konkreten Poesie 12-18). Was bedeutend an konkreter Poesie ist, ist dass sie keine bestimmte Syntax und kein festgelegtes Reimschema hat (McCullough vii). Der Name konkrete Poesie bezieht sich auf die Wichtigkeit der Form und Gestalt der Poesie …

Geräusche Von Innen: Musik Und Der Kuleschow Effekt Im Film Die Wand, Brianna Bean

The Kennesaw Tower Undergraduate Foreign Language Research Journal

Musik ist ein wichtiger Teil jedes Films, weil Musik die Emotionen der Zuschauer so stark manipulieren kann. Es gibt wenig Musik in Julian Pölslers Film, Die Wand, aber die Musik, die es gibt, ist wichtig, weil sie eine unerwartete Tiefe in den Film bringt. Der Film beginnt mit einem fröhlichen Popsong, darauf folgen verschiedene Klänge, die sich im Film wiederholen und die ich hier als „Musik“ lese und analysiere. Schließlich gibt es wiederholt Stücke der Partita Nummer Zwei für Violine von J. S. Bach. Diese Musikbeispiele drücken das zentrale Filmthema der Selbstisolation aus. Wegen des Popsongs zu Beginn merken die …

Preface, Susanne Kelley

The Kennesaw Tower Undergraduate Foreign Language Research Journal

We warmly welcome you to the ninth volume of our undergraduate foreign language research journal, The Kennesaw Tower!

Flora Tristan’S Plural Identities In "Peregrinaciones De Una Paria": Challenging And Reproducing Existing Power Structures, Nancy Tille-Victorica

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

This article analyses the ways in which Franco-Peruvian author Flora Tristan crosses the border of her plural identities in her famous travel book Peregrinaciones de una paria (1837). It especially looks at how she performs as a male in certain situations and how these are generally associated with her French identity. It also considers her identification as a woman and how it is linked to her Peruvian identity. These examinations reveal how Tristan actually redefines herself as a pariah and how her definition differs from that of outcast imposed on her in France prior to her departure for Peru.

Ironie Et Autoréflexivité Dans Un Dimanche Au Cachot De Patrick Chamoiseau, Olga Hel-Bongo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Social pressures in Patrick Chamoiseau’s novel, Un dimanche au cachot, can be read not only in the theme of slavery, but also as a discourse on the narrative text itself, in which the essay plays an important role, and in the author’s denial of his art and status. Chamoiseau’s intention of subversion is omnipresent through parody or renunciation of all forms of excess. The offensive concerns, on the one hand, the memory of slavery as a social and historical institution transmitting values of order, hierarchy and traumatism in the minds. It concerns the whole narrative act and the relation between …

Alfred Alexandre : Écrivain « Post-Créol(Ist)E » ?, Françoise Simasotchi-Bronès

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Alfred Alexandre’s novels Bord de canal (2004) and Les villes assassines (2011) are set in the poorest urban slums of Fort-de-France. In both novels, the marginal characters exemplify the paradoxes of a Martinican society shifwrecked under the flow of rampant globalization. Alexandre’s portrayal of a decadent urban humanity stands far from the Creole community codes as imagined by the novelists who have preceded him, and signifies his intention to break away from their recurring themes. My purpose, here, is to assess what is truly innovative in this newly labelled “post-Creole” writing. It seems that investing those markedly social and scriptural …

L’Envol (En)Chanteur Du Colibri Ou La Poétique Environnementale Du Vivant Dans Les Neuf Consciences Du Malfini De Patrick Chamoiseau, Gwenola Caradec

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article considers Patrick Chamoiseau’s recent work, which has focused increasingly on ecological themes, expressed particularly in one of his latest novels, Les neuf consciences du Malfini (2009). Strongly influenced by his “Master” Édouard Glissant and the latter’s concept of the “Tout-M-Monde” (“Whole-World”), C hamoiseau offers a paradigm shift for the very notion of Nature, revealed to be inseparable from a certain Poetics of Life.

Généalogies De L'Errance, Cilas Kemedjio

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The city narrative is Chamoiseau’s most original contribution to the west Indian worldview. Such writing is based on the poetics of creolity and on the memory of housing, visible in the ancestral hatred of dogs by municipal workers. It also builds up intertextual links which question both Cesairian Negritude and Glissant’s poetics. The historical memory of Chamoiseau’s characters and the intertextual links in his works transform his writings on townlife into a form of consolidation of a literary tradition which renews the genealogy of wandering life.

La Condition Postmétisse, Célestin Monga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Patrick Chamoiseau’s thought has evolved considerably over the past twenty-five years. Whether it inscribes itself in the registers of utopia or counter-utopia, it has moved away from the linguistics issues of creoleness to acquire a humanistic thickness. It now advocates the advent of a global identity that could be viewed as “post-mestizo”. This essay analyzes its invocation of the Tout-Monde and its faith in a universal poetics of relation. It also assesses the empirical basis for his views in a world where nihilism appears to be the only credible virtue.

Patrick Chamoiseau Et La Poétique Du «Nomadismecirculaire», Samia Kassab-Charfi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

By advocating a fluid and metamorphic type of creolity, Patrick Chamoiseau has managed to distance himself from any claim to a particular identity. His latest poetics refute more than ever the elegy of origin and the celebration of race. In Glissant’s footsteps, he experiments with the notion of “circular nomadism”, which becomes a major rite of initiation for many of his characters. That same notion, at the heart of the amorous gravitation by which he unveils the treasures of his sentimenthèque, finally leads to an ethic of transformation, a kind of “eco-philosophy” where every exodus becomes an exordium, a new …

Archéologie Du Cachot, Lydie Moudileno

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This essay examines the relationship between writing, memory and prison, as it is deployed in Patrick Chamoiseau’s tenth novel Un dimanche au cachot (2007). In this text, the inscription of the writer within the space of a small prison located on a Martinican plantation, serves Chamoiseau’s larger project to survey the Caribbean territory in order to unveil memorial traces. As it exhumes the ruins of an old disciplinary prison cell, this archeological move triggers a series of crucial transformations: in Un dimanche au cachot, prison writing reclaims a new glissantian “Lieu”, while making room for a therapeutic way of dealing …

« Banlieue Noire » : La Question Noire Dans La Littérature Urbaine Contemporaine, Stève Puig

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Just as the “beur” movement started to flourish in France in the 80’s and the 90’s, a new question has emerged in French society in the last decade: the “black question”, which deals with the place of Africans and Antilleans in French society today. At the same time, a new literary genre has emerged: urban literature, which largely tackles themes related to the presence of Afro-caribbean people in metropolitan France. This article seeks to analyze three urban novels which take place in France, and more specifically how characters situate themselves regarding their Frenchness as the French government attempted to redefine …

Le Marranisme Absolu Dans L’Oeuvre D’André Et De Simone Schwarz-Bart, Kathleen Gyssels

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article studies in what forms the magical-religious dimension is expressed in the fiction works of the Schwarz-Bart couple in order to assess the function given by the authors to the manifestations of the “divine” therein. The frontier between belief and miscreancy is particularly flexible in each of the novels – whether written jointly or separately – by André and / or Simone Schwarz-Bart. Indeed, co-signed or not, the identity quest cannot be dissociated from the religious one: a quest of the meaning of suffering, of a balm that remedies the agonies and compensates for the traumas endured by two …