Modern Languages Commons^™

Codenames For Language Courses, Jeffrey Nolan Mcculley, Chloe Bennett

UTA Libraries Staff Publications - Archive

In this lesson, students deepen their proficiency in the target language by designing and implementing a foreign-language edition of the game Codenames. Drawing on their understanding of vocabulary, semantics, and cultural nuance, students adapt game components and rules to account for language-specific challenges such as word ambiguity, cognates, homophones, and idiomatic meaning. Through collaborative gameplay, students actively apply linguistic knowledge in a communicative, problem-solving context that emphasizes precision and strategic language use. The lesson promotes critical thinking, intercultural competence, and authentic language practice while reinforcing vocabulary acquisition and comprehension in an engaging, student-centered format.

Post-Boom(Er) Maximalism In The Americas: Valeria Luiselli's “Lost Children Archive”, Antonio Barrenechea

English & Linguistics Articles

This article poses an alternative non-Anglophone starting point for twenty-first century maximalism through the Latin American Boom and “la novela total” that is its crowning achievement. Among such works are Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Carlos Fuentes’s Terra Nostra (1975). The term’s 1960s conception by Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa predates Thomas Pynchon as figurehead for maximalist theorizing within First World academic environments that control the conversation. Furthermore, I examine Mexican author Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive (2019) as a case of post-Boom(er) maximalism that differs from the big novels of the Latin American luminaries. …

Sharing And Preserving Sociolinguistic Corpora On The U.S.-Mexico Border, Katherine Christoffersen, Isabella Calafate, Julio Ciller, Ana M. Carvalho, Ryan M. Bessett, Brandon J. Martínez, Hannia Rojas Barreda, William Flores, Richard Quiroz

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

Since William Labov outlined the methodology for the sociolinguistic interview in 1972, sociolinguistic corpora have been used widely in the field of sociolinguistics to study diverse speech communities and linguistic features. However, most of these invaluable sociolinguistic collections have been available only to the individual researcher or research group, and these data sets usually disappear from use with that individual scholar. More recently, there has been a push towards data sharing in sociolinguistics, reflective of data sharing and the open science movement in other fields. Still, accessible online sociolinguistic corpora are few and far between, in part due to the …

The Extraction Unconscious: Solar-Powered Utopias In Catching The Sun (2015) And In The Name Of Lithium (2021), Isidora Cortés-Monroy

Critical Humanities

By comparing the depictions of future energy regimes in the two ecodocumentaries, Catching the Sun (2015) and In the Name of Lithium (2021), this article explores representations of post-carbon futures from the US and Argentina. Read closely alongside Frederic Jameson’s notions of utopias, the article delineates the extent to which a solar powered future challenges and reiterates current neocolonial extractivist structures. Basing myself on Patricia Yaeger’s concept of an “energy unconscious,” I argue that these solar utopias maintain an “extraction unconscious” that continues to produce sacrifice zones where primary commodities needed for the energy transition can be found. By analysing …

Del Policial Clásico Al Post-Neopolicial: La Estética Del Crimen En La Narrativa Mexicana, 1940–2020, Maria Carpio-Manickam

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Del policial clásico al post-neopolicial: La estética del crimen en la narrativa mexicana, 1940–2020 is a comprehensive study of Mexican crime fiction from cultural, gender, social, political, and literary perspectives. This book covers the different phases Mexican crime fiction has evolved through in the past eighty years: classical detective fiction (1940–1960s), género negro (1970s), neopolicial (1980–2000), narconarrative (1990s to the present), and post-neopolicial (2000 to the present). The first half of the book offers an overview of the development of crime fiction in the United States, how it was adopted by Mexican writers in the 1940s, and the changes it …

La Intensificación En Los Comentarios De Noticias: La Prensa Deportiva Digital, David Sanchez-Jimenez

Publications and Research

Las plataformas digitales de los periódicos permiten una comunicación más fluida y dinámica con y entre la audiencia, que refleja algunos patrones de la comunicación oral (Briz, 1997, 1998; Yus, 2001, 2010; Albelda, 2004; Albelda y Estellés, 2021). Entre ellos, se encuentran los recursos lingüísticos de intensificación que refuerzan la fuerza ilocutiva de los comentarios emitidos, en una clara apuesta por dotar al texto de una mayor interactividad con sus potenciales receptores. El objetivo de esta investigación consiste en conocer cómo se relacionan entre sí los participantes de estas plataformas en la prensa deportiva. En particular, se prestó especial atención …

Warrior Women And Trans Warriors: Performing Masculinities In Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature, Carolina Castellanos Gonella

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Latin American literature has depicted warrior woman and trans warrior characters in armed conflicts, but literary critics have not paid much attention to their empowerment. They also have critiqued these characters using traditional gender binary concepts or have viewed their access to power as evil or abnormal. Warrior Women and Trans Warriors: Performing Masculinities in Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature introduces a new perspective by analyzing how one trans warrior and two warrior women from three canonical novels contest traditional codes of behavior and appearance. It examines Pintada in the Mexican novel Los de abajo (1915); doña Bárbara in the Venezuelan …

An Investigation Into The Documental History Of Immigrants From Russia And Latin America In The State Of Nebraska, Elena Thomson

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The research questions in this essay ask whether or not the Nebraska State Archives contains literature in the Russian and Spanish languages. These documents, and others written in English on the same topic, are introduced and analyzed throughout the essay, exploring the history of immigrants from Russia and Latin America. As well as history, the documents delve into the current state of these immigrant groups, and how their traditions have changed Nebraska and continue to influence it today. The essay contains two sections: the first about immigrants from Russia, the second about those from Latin America. At the end of …

Una Casa Para Una: Construyendo Identidades Políticas Y Bilingüismo En A House Of My Own: Stories From My Life De Sandra Cisneros, Vanessa M. Lent

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

Este trabajo examina la construcción de la identidad política bilingüe y feminista en la obra autobiográfica de Sandra Cisneros, A House of My Own: Stories from My Life (2016). Cisneros, una autora chicana, explora las intersecciones de identidades como mujer y latina en los Estados Unidos, utilizando el bilingüismo como una herramienta para representar el espacio cultural intersticial que ocupa. Se analiza el uso del español en la obra, destacando cómo las inclusiones sirven para construir esa representación del espacio intersticial y enfatizar las diferentes perspectivas e identidades asociadas con el conocimiento de idiomas distintos.

El estudio se centra en …

The Golden Age Of Mexican Cinema, Daniel Galindo

Publications and Research

This presentation is about the film called María Candelaria (1943), a film of the cinema of the golden age of Mexico that shows the lifestyle of the people of that time, more than anything it shows how women were reviled in the macho society. The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema is a period of brilliance in the history of Mexican cinema, which began in 1936-1956.

Quemando Leña En Guatemala: Salud, Sostenibilidad Y Costumbres, Sydney Underhill

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

In the Central American country of Guatemala, firewood is an important fuel source. Eighty-eight percent of households in rural areas use wood stoves and open fires to cook and heat their homes. This tradition has fundamental roots in the culture and customs of Guatemala. Unfortunately, these methods contribute to air pollution. Consequently, it also results in smoke inhalation, which causes health problems. Additionally, the massive agriculture of other crops decreases the amount of firewood available to these households, affecting the sustainability of the resource. Some communities resist changing their use of firewood due to the profound nature that firewood holds …

Los Grupos Paramilitares Como Desafío Al Modelo Estado-Nación En La Región Andina, Alexandra Furney

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

Paramilitary groups in Colombia and Bolivia reflect a fallout of the Western nation-state model that was mapped over former Incan spaces at the beginning of the 19th century. Somewhere between plurinational and unformed states, these Andean nations face challenges in forming a coherent governing structure, at times challenged by geography and at others culture.

Conocimiento Through Spiritual Activism: A Self-Reflexive Approach To Challenging Deficit Beliefs And Reimagining The Value Of Teaching In Higher Education, Alyssa G. Cavazos

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

This testimonio, inspired by Anzaldúa’s (2002) seven stages of conocimiento, is written in second person to highlight a series of counterstories aimed at guiding readers through the challenges of facilitating teaching conversations in higher education where deficit assumptions about students’ potential are prevalent. Readers will gain insight into disparaging and derogatory commentary aimed at silencing voices and the harmful impact these words and behaviors can have on our well-being and students' holistic success in higher education and beyond. Through a journey of empathetic understanding and reciprocal learning, I share guided questions to encourage readers to self-reflect on the need for …

Clarice Lispector: From Brazil To The World, Earl Fitz

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Clarice Lispector: From Brazil to the World explains why the Brazilian master was so transformative of modern Brazilian literature and why she has become such a celebrity in the world literature arena. This book also shows why Lispector is not one writer, as many think, but many writers. By offering close readings of her novels, stories, and nonfiction pieces, Earl E. Fitz shows the diverse sides of her literary world. Chapters cover Lispector’s devotion to language and its connection to identity; her political engagement; and her humor, eroticism, and struggle with the concept of God. The last chapter seeks to …

2024 Conference Program, Georgia Southern University

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

2024 Conference Program

Todo Sobre América Latina, Kayla Madeline Schwartz

World Languages and Cultures

This project attempts to inform a Spanish-speaking audience about the humanities of Latin America. The format is a blog which solicits more engagement with the embedded research and written text. Colorful photos and informative videos attract the attention of a general public that may otherwise not be interested in learning extensively about history and culture. Such focus is important because Latin American past has great bearing on the lives of much of the Latinx community today—in many regions.

Specifically, this blog contains articles about history, literature, movies and shows, dance, and travelling. The audience can learn about a broad timeline …

Actitudes En Pro Y En Contra Sobre El Uso Del Lenguaje Inclusivo Y Su Enseñanza En El Salón De Clases De Shl., Brisa Del Bosque, Mica Boh

11th National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language (Archived)

Con esta investigación, buscamos predecir si la enseñanza del lenguaje inclusivo en español en los salones de clase de español como SHL y como L2, provocará que su uso continúe en la lengua española o pase como una moda efímera.

Encuestamos a 75 instructores de Español K-12 en los Estados Unidos, que compartieron sus opiniones sobre la enseñanza y el uso del lenguaje inclusivo. La mayor parte de los instructores que respondieron nuestra encuesta, han enseñado a estudiantes de SHL y L2.

Como instructores de español, se puede ignorar la propuesta del lenguaje inclusivo y seguir enseñando de la forma …

¿Es Bienvenido El Uso De “Haiga” En Clases De Shl? Reacciones Y Experiencias En Clases De Herencia En Los Estados Unidos, Brisa Del Bosque

11th National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language (Archived)

En esta investigación cualitativa, he entrevistado a 5 instructores de SHL y a 5 padres/madres de familia con estudiantes de herencia en grados K-12, para escuchar sus opiniones sobre el uso del “haiga” en el salón de clases SHL en los Estados Unidos y en los hogares de hablantes de español como lengua de herencia.

Algunos de los temas y preguntas durante las entrevistas fueron:

¿Cómo se enseña el uso de “haiga”?

¿Se debe enseñar?

¿Se promueve su uso?

¿Lo usas en casa o en tus clases?

¿Se debe corregir?

¿Cuál es la diferencia entre haiga y haya?

El corregir …

“Su Español Es Incorrecto”: Challenging Spanish Teachers’ And Students’ Linguistic Beliefs Through Cla In A Dialectology Course, Silvia Perez-Cortes

11th National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language (Archived)

With the number of Spanish heritage classes and bilingual students being on the rise (Beaudrie, Amezcua & Loza, 2021), there is a pressing need to incorporate pedagogical practices that foster inclusivity and challenge dominant language ideologies (Holguín-Mendoza, 2018; Leeman, 2012; Lacorte & Magro, 2021; inter alia). This necessity is particularly dire at the K-12 level, where teachers ­oftentimes lack the training to deconstruct their own –as well as their students’– linguistic beliefs to offer a more socially-conscious instruction (Hudgens-Henderson & Hackman, 2021).

Following the work of Beaudrie et al. (2021) and Wilson & Marcin (2022), this study examines …

A Translated Town? Translation In The Linguistic Landscape Along The Us Border With Mexico, Gabriel González Núñez

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

Cities are the hubs of the modern world and, in border towns between states where different languages are used, these hubs are bilingual. Such bilingual towns offer opportunities to examine the extent to which translation, including the decision not to translate, plays a role in shaping the public spaces of cities. This article seeks to do so by reporting on a linguistic landscape study carried out in Brownsville, a city that sits on the Texas border with Mexico. The study will survey two streets in Brownsville with a special concern for both untranslated and translated signs as a way of …

Teaching Hispanic Culture, Diversity, And Tolerance Through Hispanic Dances And Music: Two Approaches For Flamenco & Caribbean Dances, Chita Espino-Bravo Ph.D., D. Nicole English

Modern Languages Faculty Publications

A Sociology Approach: Dance can be a useful tool for teaching students about culture and community. Through the language of Dance and Music (Caribbean Dance), context is given to social facts, which engages and informs students about such social issues as history, Colonialism,social class, gender, race/ethnicity, and social justice. The added bonus of using Dance as a lens is that it involves active, embodied learning (Dewey, English, Mead), making the material more memorable, meaningful, and relevant to the learner. A Communicative Approach (Task-based Learning Activity) & Language for Specific Purposes:Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) is a derivative of the Communicative Approach …

La Fiesta Del Espiritu Santo: An Original Work For Choir, Soloists, And Small Ensemble Influenced By The Santeria Music Of The African-Dominican Community In The Dominican Republic, Rafael Scarfullery

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This study examines the role of Santería music as practiced by African Dominicans in Villa Mella, a neighborhood of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. This musical tradition comes from the culture and religion of the Yoruba people who were brought as slaves from Africa, and features complex drum rhythms and call-and-response chants. This paper deals with the historical and social context of Santería music within the Dominican Republic, but its principal objective is to adopt the musical language of this tradition and use it to create a new contemporary work for mixed choir and small ensemble.

One of the most …

Fábula Del Poder: Corporalidad, Biopolítica Y Violencia En La Narrativa De Sergio Ramírez, Daniel Chávez Landeros

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

A noncommissioned officer of the Nicaraguan National Guard travels to New York to meet the famous bodybuilder, Charles Atlas. When he approaches his hero, he finds a body pierced with syringes and tubes, a cyborg of fragile artificial life. In the garden of a Central American dictator’s mansion, a prisoner is locked in a cage next to a lion’s. Nature and animal instinct will take their course. In post-Sandinista Nicaragua, an amputee policeman must face—alone and wounded—a drug gang commanded by his former guerrilla leader. Despite the gravity and violence present in many of Sergio Ramírez Mercado’s short stories and …

The Ripple Effect: Gender And Race In Brazilian Culture And Literature, Maria José Somerlate Barbosa

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

In The Ripple Effect: Gender and Race in Brazilian Culture and Literature, Barbosa adopts a comparative, multilayered, and interdisciplinary line of research to examine social values and cultural mores from the first decades of the twentieth century to the present. By analyzing the historical, cultural, religious, and interactive space of Brazil’s national identity, The Ripple Effect surveys expressive cultures and literary manifestations. It uses the martial art-dance-ritual capoeira as a lynchpin to disclose historical ambiguities and the negotiation of cultural and literary boundaries within the context of the ideological construct of a mestizo nation. The book also examines laws …

Fantasmas Compartidos: Posmemoria, Herencia Y Reescritura De La Guerra Civil Española En México Y España, Mayte Lopez Sanchez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes contemporary novels and films about the traumatic legacies of the Spanish Civil War through the lens of postmemory, memory studies, and transatlantic studies. I examine how Mexican and Spanish writers and filmmakers from the postwar generations approach the memories of their ancestors—and their own—to reframe history through fiction, memory work, and personal agency. Studies about historical memory are typically constrained to national contexts, but I highlight how trauma transcends the nation not only in space but also in time. Moreover, I focus on how inherited memories acquire new meanings in contemporary representations and how those resignifications have …

Du Undergraduate Showcase: Research, Scholarship, And Creative Works, Caitlyn Aldersea, Justin Bravo, Sam Allen, Anna Block, Connor Block, Emma Buechler, Maria De Los Angeles Bustillos, Arianna Carlson, William Christensen, Olivia Kachulis, Noah Craver, Kate Dillon, Muskan Fatima, Angel Fernandes, Emma Finch, Colleen Cassidy, Amy Fishman, Andrea Francis, Stacia Fritz, Simran Gill, Emma Gries, Rylie Hansen, Shannon Powers, Jacqueline Martinez, Zachary Harker, Ashley Hasty, Mykaela Tanino-Springsteen, Kathleen Hopps, Adelaide Kerenick, Colin Kleckner, Ci Koehring, Elijah Kruger, Braden Krumholz, Maddie Leake, Lyneé Alves, Seraphina Loukas, Yatzari Lozano Vazquez, Haley Maki, Emily Martinez, Sierra Mckinney, Audrey Mitchell, Kipling Newman, Audrey Ng, Megan Lucyshyn, Andrew Nguyen, Stevie Ostman, Casandra Pearson, Alexandra Penney, Julia Gielczynski, Tyler Ball, Anna Rini, Christina Rorres, Simon Ruland, Helayna Schafer, Emma Sellers, Sarah Schuller, Claire Shaver, Kevin Summers, Isabella Shaw, Madison Sinar, Claudia Pena, Apshara Siwakoti, Carter Sorensen, Madi Sousa, Anna Sparling, Alexandra Revier, Brandon Thierry, Dylan Tyree, Maggie Williams, Lauren Wols

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

DU Undergraduate Showcase: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Works

“Actitudes Hacia Los Acentos Y La Comunidad Latina: Un Estudio De La Percepción Del Inglés Hablado Con Influencia Del Acento Del Español Y Su Efecto En Los Latinos En Los Estados Unidos”, Eden Shenal

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The guiding question for the research in this study is as follows: what are the social impacts on Latino individuals speaking accented English as they live, work, and otherwise interact with US-born native English speakers? Are there adverse stereotypes and perceptions about foreign accents that impact their lives, and if so, what are those impacts and the potential long-term consequences of them?

La pregunta guía para la investigación en este estudio es la siguiente: ¿cuál es el impacto social de hablar inglés con acento extranjero en personas de origen latino mientras viven, trabajan e interactúan con hablantes nativos de inglés …

Cartografías Cosmopolitas: León De Greiff Y La Tradición Literaria, Marco Ramírez Rojas

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Cartografías cosmopolitas: León de Greiff y la tradición literaria analyzes the poetic works of this twentieth-century Colombian writer as a manifestation of cosmopolitanism, global cultural cartographies, and a self-fashioned poetic genealogy. Ramírez Rojas approaches de Greiff’s poems as cultural maps that reveal both a desire of connectivity with the world and a need for reorganizing the imaginary library of world literature. From a self-assumed position of eccentricity, de Greiff builds a network of global connections and disputes the binary division of cultural centers and peripheries, revendicating marginality as a productive condition. The study of this alternative cosmopolitanism brings de Greiff’s …

Reproductive Justice And Feminism: A Comparative Legal Analysis Of The Policies And Healthcare Systems In The United States And Colombia, Samantha Cooke

Modern Languages, Philosophy and Classics Theses

This thesis seeks to offer a comparative legal analysis of the state of the laws regarding abortion and reproductive autonomy in the United States of America and Colombia. This thesis will first address a brief history of feminism and its origins in the United States and Colombia. It will also analyze the policies held by each respective nation; starting with old legislation and moving to current policies regarding abortion. It will also include a comparison between both the U.S. and Colombia; offering suggestions for the future with regards to potential policy changes. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate …

Identity Negotiations Of A Mexican Transnational In The Rio Grande Valley: Crossing The Border Daily, Xiaodi Zhou, David Martinez-Prieto

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This narrative case study examines the cultural affiliations of one transnational US-born Mexican American college student, and her various intersecting veins of identity. The aim was to capture the bordered existence in the many criteria of her being. Her linguistic identity, pop culture identity, spiritual identity, as well as her general cultural affiliations are examined as intersecting rays of influence. Utilizing Anzaldúa’s (2012) bordered identity as theoretical grounding for her partitioned selves, along with Bakhtin’s (1986) notion of cultural and linguistic dialogue, we analyzed the complexities in this one bicultural, bilingual young woman venturing into adulthood. This study sheds light …