Modern Languages Commons^™

Our Flag (And Spaceship) Means Queer: Monstering The Majority Culture, Sara Brown, Kristine Larsen

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Although the television series Our Flag Means Death presents on the surface as a romantic comedy, it is enhanced by mythic elements that infuse the narrative with a clear sense of the fantastic. Here, the pirates exist in a Secondary World that openly draws upon the Primary (both in terms of historiography and legend); hence 18th-century piracy and British colonialism can interact seamlessly with human-to-animal-transformations (paying homage to the Greek myth of Ceyx and Alcyone) without seeming either disconcerting or anomalous – all co-exist comfortably in Faerie. OFMD both inverts and deconstructs mythopoeia; the Primary World myths of the Gentleman …

Gazing Queerly: The Art And Text Around Saruman’S Non-Normativity, Christopher Vaccaro

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The queer is often defined by its relation to normativity. Michael Warner’s The Trouble with Normal situates queerness in opposition to normalcy, even gay normalcy. Karma Lochrie’s Heterosyncrasies: Female Sexuality When Normal Wasn’t deconstructs a monolithic hetero-normativity. Within the fantasy genre, protagonists frequently reside in a queer relation to normative communities. J. R. R. Tolkien quite often depicts his major characters within his mythopoeic framework as in some way outside of the normal; they’re often odd, fringe outsiders in relation to the larger community to which they are a part. The texts of his legendarium present this queerness fairly clearly—so …

Tolkien’S Queer Landscape: Three Papers On Middle-Earth’S Heterotopias, Will Sherwood, Marita Arvaniti, Mariana Rios Maldonado

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The following papers will explore Tolkien’s queer landscapes of Middle-earth: from Arda’s highest peaks and hidden underbellies, to her liminal, fae places, using the lens of Michel Foucault’s heterotopias.

Marita Arvaniti will introduce the panel and discuss Tolkien’s Faerian Drama and its relationship to the much-maligned Tom Bombadil episode, focusing on the queer figure of Tom Bombadil himself and his heterotopic domain.

Mariana Rios Maldonado will analyse the Barrow-downs, Dead Marshes, and Paths of the Dead as symbolic sites of death created during harrowing moments in the history of Middle-earth. These are no-places: spaces of Otherness containing the evil and …

Welcome And Announcements, The Mythopoeic Society

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Join us for a screening of the Welcome and Announcements video in the 'Track 1' room, and have a cup of coffee before we get started!

Translanguaging In Mandarin Instruction, Xiaodi Zhou, Xiaochen Du

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Mandarin has become a growing focus of language instruction in recent decades, and there have been many different approaches, from foreign language education to bilingual education, to dual-language immersion. In many such Mandarin instructional spaces, teachers adhere to the prescribed monolingual policy. In recent years, some have even experimented with creative pedagogy like skits and interactive boardgames, often relying on gestures in order to make their instruction comprehensible. Even with these multimodal approaches, students are still confined to leverage only the limited social and linguistic resources of the curriculum. Given current classroom necessities, there has been a shift to translanguaging …

Student Perceptions Of Icc Development And The Reasons For It During Casa@Auc, Stephen Wright

Theses and Dissertations

Research has described how studying abroad has become a major goal in the Arabic world, focusing on understanding the ideas and way of life of another culture and people. Study abroad programs increase students' “Intercultural communicative competence” as indicated by researchers like Maharaja (2018) and Lee and Song (2019). The current study is a case study involving three participants. It focuses on students' perceptions of the influence of the CASA@AUC study abroad program on their intercultural communicative competence (ICC) as reflected by ACTFL performance indicators they are capable of executing. Results of the study indicate that they have reached advanced …

Codeswitching In The Egyptian Arabic Movies: How Do Social Variables Trigger Codeswitching?, Randa Hassan

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

This is a qualitative study designed to examine the growing linguistic practice of codeswitching in a sociolinguistic context. For this purpose, 7 Egyptian Arabic films were purposefully selected to investigate what social variables and contexts can be associated with codeswitching. Data was sampled in 43 experts from the 7 films. The data was analyzed in terms of the social variables of education, social class, identity, stance, and age, within the theoretical framework of the critical discourse analysis, the accommodation theory, and the social arena theory. Although the study started with these social variables in mind, data analysis revealed two …

Similes Mini Lesson Plan, Kristen S. Addessi

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

1st Eut+ International Conference On Languages, Tamara Onnis, Stefanie Morgret

Conference Proceedings

Language has to power to bind us or divide us. Language enables us to cooperate with each other or impede each other. Through language, we are able to be the human beings we are today, hold our value systems dear and accomplish all that we have done over millennia. This volume provides an impression of the first international EUt+ language conference on ‘Inter/Multiculturalism in a Post Colonial Era: Languages and European Values’ hosted by University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt. Thirteen contributions invite you to experiences, ideas and research findings related to language and its interaction with intercultural communication, European values …

Enacting Invitational Rhetorics: Leveraging Networks Of Care In The Us Asylum Process, Monica Reyes, Randall W. Monty, Jorge E. Camarillo, Cindy Bernal

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

La Voz 2024, Loyola Marymount University, Modern Languages & Literatures Department

La Voz Student Journal

LA VOZ is published by the Modern Languages & Literatures Department, Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA.

Language Learning Simulation Using Duolingo Assignment Description, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

It is likely that preservice teachers will work with students learning English as their second (third, fourth, etc.) language. For preservice teachers to better understand the language learning process, Duolingo was used to simulate the learning experience. The assignment description outlines how preservice teachers can reflection pre-simulation and post-simulation about what they learned about language learning.

Goethe And Our Endangered Natural World, Heather I. Sullivan

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

The Nature Of Albanian Nasal-Stop Sequences: Phonetic, Phonological, Sociolinguistic & Historical Behavior, Patrick A. Gehringer

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

The Albanian language is relatively unique among the Indo-European languages with its word initial nasal-stop sequences. Despite broad characterizations, the phonetic, phonological, and sociolinguistic properties of these sequences have not been analyzed with the same rigor as languages with similar sequences. I employ phonetic, perceptual dialectological and historical methods to examine not only how these clusters are employed by speakers in today’s Albanian linguistic landscape, but also to the historical mechanisms and timing of the development of these clusters and their variants within Albanian. With a combined spectral and aerodynamic analysis, I have identified that these clusters are phonemically composed …

Rivers Of Language Across Oceans: Review Essay Of River In An Ocean: Essays On Translation, Edited By Nuzhat Abbas, Luise Von Flotow

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article presents an academic review of the collection of articles “on translation” and entitled river in an ocean. It engages with the foreword by Françoise Vergès and the introduction by editor Nuzhat Abbas, which set the tone of ‘decolonial feminism’ that permeates the essays. The reviews of the eleven essays—by women from southeast Asia, Africa, Palestine and Saudi Arabia—come from the perspective of feminist translation studies but pay careful attention to their very specific concerns around exile and life in diaspora.

The Favela Blossoms: Voices Of Favelas In São Paulo, Brazil, Vasti Cruz

Scripps Senior Theses

This project spotlights improvised housing in the peripheral areas of São Paulo, Brazil, better known as favelas. For over a century, the favela has been known as a place of death, violence, crime, and oppression. Paradoxically, the first favelas in Rio de Janeiro were named after a plant that produces flowers. However, today, these communities are rarely compared to their beautiful, symbolic-of-life namesake. Instead, this prejudgement is rampant not only globally, but also within the proper city– which perpetuates social division. When favelas are discussed in the media, they often reference those in Rio de Janeiro; however, favelas are present …

Constructing A Professional Identity: Nonnative English-Speaking Teachers In First-Year Writing Courses, Marcela Hebbard

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Literary Landscape For Twentieth-Century Spanish-Speaking Lds Poets, Gabriel González Núñez

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

Spanish is the second-most spoken language among Latter-day Saints, but relatively little is known about Mormon literature in this language, either its current status or its history. This absence is evident in the key surveys on Mormon literature that have been carried out. For example, when Eugene England considered the prospects of Mormon literature in his landmark essay on its history and future, he looked ahead at a mostly US-centric and fully English-language literary horizon.¹ This makes sense in the context in which he was writing. In the English language, and in the United States in particular, Mormon literature …

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 …

Expanding Understandings Of Race In Postsecondary Language Classrooms: A Call For Multiraciality In Teacher Identity Research, Marcela Hebbard

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

While issues of race in relation to teacher identity have been addressed in language education research, they have often been confined to special issues. Factors contributing to the “absent-present” nature of race include an imbalanced focus on intersectionality which tends to prioritize the teacher's linguistic identity over other social categories, such as race and the persistent dichotomy between the idealized native speaker and non-native speaker. To broaden the understandings of race in teacher identity research within postsecondary language classrooms, this chapter advocates for considering the notion of multiraciality. To support these arguments, results from a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of …

Writing Centers’ Entanglements With Neoliberal Success, Crystal Bazaldua, Tekla Hawkins, Randall W. Monty

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

Throughout the 2010s, “success” became a common descriptor in writing centers, academic units, and student services. While the term carries connotations of professional achievement and economic improvement, it is rarely explicitly defined. This ambiguity is an example of how the interests of public institutions of postsecondary education are entangled with neoliberalism. Using a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis approach, this essay examines uses of the ideograph “success” within an original mini-corpus comprising the webspaces of eight writing centers from one large state university system in the United States. The analysis considers how writing centers contribute to neoliberal discourses of “success” that …

Latina Voice In Dialogue With Literacy, Xiaodi Zhou

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This study follows the literacy experiences of four Latina middle schoolers as they read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and compose home language narratives in their heritage voices. Both their vibrant ethnic cultures and other intersecting rays of identities are analyzed in the vein of their literate identities. Through analysis of their writing and speech, the girls present hybridized identities on the border between cultures and languages. Their position and identities in the social world of middle school are discussed and how transactions with literacy can dialogically influence those identities to enact critically conscious pedagogy.

Sibelius’S Scaramouche: A Comparative Production History Of A Tragic Pantomime, 1913–1977, Karl E. Toepfer, Eija Kurki

Open Educational Resources

The book describes the historical context for the Scaramouche tragic pantomime created by Poul Knudsen and Jean Sibelius in 1913. The pantomime had numerous productions in various European countries between 1922 and 1977, and the book examines all of them according to all available evidence. The text explains the historical and cultural significance of the pantomime and how it uniquely explores a dark and complex intersection of female sexuality, marriage, and class control of erotic desire. The authors examine all productions of Scaramouche from the premiere production in Copenhagen in 1922 to the last major production in Karl-Marx-Stadt, East Germany …

Puerto Rican Welfare Queens And The Semiotics Ofrespectability: The Language Of Race, Class, Andgender, Mary Beaton

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Andrew Tate, Matt Walsh, And The Discursive Production And Policing Of Gender, Alan J. Bandyk, Alan J. Bandyk

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis utilizes the works of Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir, Frederic Jameson, and Edward Said in a discourse analysis of influencers and writers in the right wing "manosphere." The figures analyzed herein are Andrew Tate and Matt Walsh. Their rhetoric aims to create a discursive woman who embodies traditional notions of gender and sex that de Beauvoir critiqued in 1949. The constant adherence and reference to a mythical past exhibits ways of thinking that coincide perfectly with Jameson's own theoretical work with the term and its inherent false nostalgia. Tate's and Walsh's efforts also fall into discursive attempts at …

Gender And Student Motivation In Domestic And Foreign Language Study, Macey Overturf

Honors Program Theses

No abstract provided.

Student Perceptions Of Community-Engaged Scholarship Courses: Developing A Sociolinguistic Corpus On The U.S.–Mexico Border, Katherine Christoffersen, Aubrey Villanueva, Ryan M. Bessett

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

The well-documented benefits of community engagement experiences have resulted in its incorporation across a wide variety of disciplines, from health care (Alexander et al., 2020) to aviation science (Belt & Sweetman, 2021) to statistics (Schanz & Giles, 2021). The field of sociolinguistics is no exception with plentiful examples of community-engaged scholarship (CES) or “research of mutual benefit to community and academic interests” (Delugan et al., 2014, p. 155). One way that linguistics and language courses have integrated CES is through the development of community-based sociolinguistic corpora or collections of informal interviews with community members. In these courses, students are trained …

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 …

The Accuracy Of Automatic And Human Live Captions In English, Pablo Romero-Fresco, Nazaret Fresno

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

Closed captions play a vital role in making live broadcasts accessible to many viewers. Traditionally, stenographers and respeakers have been in charge of their production, but this scenario is changing due to the steady improvements that automatic speech recognition has undergone in recent years. This technology is being used to create intralingual live captions without human assistance and broadcasters have begun to explore its use. As a result, human and automatic captions co-exist now on television and, while some research has focused on the accuracy of human live captions, comprehensive assessments of the accuracy and quality of automatic captions are …

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 …