Modern Languages Commons^™

Chinese Undergraduate Student Teaching Assistants In A U.S. Collegiate Chinese Language Program, Donglin Chai

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

Given present limited opportunities to study in China, how can U.S. collegiate Chinese language programs take advantage of the presence of Chinese international students on campus to improve their Chinese language students’ intercultural communication skills? This article first reviews the background of “peer tutoring” in European and American collegiate institutes and describes some exemplary models in the field of Chinese as a Foreign Language in the U.S. Then, the article reports on a study of a tutor and grader system at a U.S. liberal arts college employing Chinese undergraduate students. Through both quantitative and qualitative data, the author analyzes the …

Harnessing Cultural Epistemology In Literacy Studies: Take A Walk In My Shoes, Isela Almaguer

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

The influence of our increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse school age population is experienced throughout our educational system. Teachers diversify their pedagogical practices to best meet students’ needs in their classrooms, thereby amplifying the importance of valuing culturally and linguistically diverse learners’ rich and plentiful cultural knowledge. It is essential to expand our literacy lens to include multifaceted and multidimensional opportunities which acknowledge and respect the cultural and linguistic learner diversity that reverberates across cultures. Engaging students in culturally relevant pedagogy accelerates learning by helping students make connections to concepts and topics. The impact is twofold as culturally relevant pedagogy …

The George Harris Show August 08, 2022, Part 5 Spanish To English Translation, Jonathan Gerweck

Honors College Theses

This thesis is an attempt at a Spanish-to-English translation of part of a comedy skit by Venezuelan American comedian George Harris performed on October 11, 2022, in Miami, Florida. As an academic, I have been captivated by foreign languages since a young age and have studied German up to the collegiate level. After moving to New York and studying at Pace University, an educational institution that does not offer German, I decided to teach myself Spanish. I reached the Advanced level of the language within my second semester of officially studying it at Pace University. I believe that the future …

Traducciones Para El Colegio De La Facultad De Ingeniería (Ceng) Del Inglés Al Español / College Of Engineering Translations, Xenai Camacho-Beas

World Languages and Cultures

This project seeks to show how I managed to translate texts from English to Spanish through the process of learning the concept of translation. It specifically seeks to demonstrate how to accurately translate a notion or message from one language to another without creating misunderstandings or errors. This project includes documents from the College of Engineering at Cal Poly, that I translated from English to Spanish in the hopes that members of the Hispanic community will be able to access them and learn more about the various study options the College of Engineering offers. We live in a very diverse …

Multilingualism And Memory: Investigating Possible Differences In The Abilities Of Monolingual And Multilingual College Students, Clara E. Barned

Honors Projects

This study investigated whether there is a difference in the memories of monolingual and multilingual undergraduate students using simple memorization tasks. There were 46 participants, 30 of which were monolingual (only knew one language) and 16 of which were multilingual (knew two or more languages). There was found to be no significant difference between the performance of the two groups, with the data generating a p-value of 0.557. This study further suggests related avenues of research and ways in which the study could be improved in the future.

Translating (Or Not) A South American Philosopher: The Paratexts Of The Works Of José Enrique Rodó In English, Gabriel González Núñez

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

This study will consider translation as a tool to transfer ideas from Latin America to North America (and the rest of the English-speaking world). It will do so by exploring some of the paratextual strategies that have been employed in transmitting the ideas of Latin American philosophers to the English-speaking world. Specifically, it will rely on a case study, namely, the translation into English of the works of José Enrique Rodó, an important South American philosopher from the early twentieth century. The paper will outline Rodó’s work as translated into English, focusing not on the quality of the translated texts …

Violencia, Memoria Y Empatía Reflexiva En El Ruido De Las Cosas Al Caer De Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Carlos Gardeazábal Bravo

Global Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article, I show how Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s novel El ruido de las cosas al caer (The Sound of Things Falling, 2011) proposes an articulation of the works of memory and affects that can be ethically relevant within the context of the war on drugs in Colombia. I link this analysis with an interpretation of the novel that discusses the role of literature in debates about systemic violence in the global war on drugs. I propose that The noise of things falling, thanks to its affirmation of what I call reflexive empathy, questions the geopolitical designs that articulate that …

Clic Newsletter - Fall 2022, Kevin Zhou, Jesus Bautista, Antonio Gonzalez D'Orazio, Carli Van Haute, Matilde Ronchi, Ramiro Garcia, Silvana Davi, Jamilya Tuleutayeva

CLIC Newsletter

Page 1: Interview with our Past LP Manager: Daniel Alegre

Page 4: Event Throwback: Culture Fest Dance Class

Page 5: Recipe: Red Braised Pork Belly

Page 6: National Sports of Different Countries

Page 14: Student Work: Un Menu Francais by Jamilya Tuleutayeva

Page 15: Interview International Freshman

Page 16: Event Throwback: Calligraphy

Page 17: Restaurant Recommendations with Kevin

Page 21: Student Work: Self-Identity Poem by Carli Van Haute

Page 22: Interview with International Businessman: Luis Florez

Page 24: Recipe: Arroz con Maiz

Page 25: Student Work: Poesia in Inglese, Italiano e Spagnolo by Matilde Ronchi

Page 26: E-Sports: League of …

Can Spanish Programs Evaluate Oral Proficiency Gains For All Learners?: An Empirical Analysis Of Traditional And Nontraditional Spanish Majors' Oral Proficiency Development, Carolina Viera, Kelly Arispe

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

Higher education Spanish programs in the United States are diverse and complex, especially when it comes to student linguistic background. However, most studies on language proficiency were designed for traditional learners (L2s). In this study, we examine oral proficiency development of 125 Spanish majors in light of four linguistic profiles: Extended Stay Abroad learners, Second Language Learners, Native Speakers, and Spanish Heritage Language Learners. Data were collected using an oral exam based on the ACTFL Oral Proficiency guidelines at the beginning and end of students' upper division coursework. Quantitative analysis reveals significant differences within groups for senior exit oral proficiency …

Primitivism, Performance Studies, And Modernist Time: Tracing An Alternative Genealogy Of Performance Studies Through Case Studies In Modernist Cultural Appropriation, Stephanie Vella

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces a genealogy of research methodologies for documenting, transmitting, and analyzing embodied, non-textual performance practices from the late-nineteenth through early-twentieth centuries. I uncover intersections between these methods and the conflations of race and temporality that are ubiquitously threaded through modernist cultural practices during this time in the form of primitivism. The researchers whose work I analyze all saw European modernity as fundamentally detached from physical culture, while viewing other cultures—especially those of the people most directly threatened by colonial and capitalist expansion during this time—as having access to a “lost” corporeal knowledge. I argue that primitivism is not …

Del Ornitorrinco A La Radio Ambulante: La Nueva Crónica Latinoamericana En La Era Neoliberal, Ulises Gonzales

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the presence of neoliberal hegemonic imaginaries in narrative journalism written in Latin America between 1995 and 2021.

There are strong connections between a period of decline in the readership of some of the authors of the so-called “Latin American Boom,” the penetration of neoliberal economic policies in the region (with the privatization of State companies and the expansion of the telecommunications industry), and the renewed interest in non-fiction writing published by a number of print publications in the region during the last decade of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st Century, as in magazines …

Review Of Chiara Mazzucchelli, The Heart And The Island: A Critical Study Of Sicilian American Literature, Eveljn Ferraro

Modern Languages & Literature

Sicily’s island status and centuries of conquests and foreign rule have molded the identity of Sicilian people and culture in unique ways. Reflecting this diver-sity, Sicilian literature has long occupied a distinct place within Italian litera-ture. Likewise, in The Heart and the Island, scholar Chiara Mazzucchelli argues that Sicilian American writers have produced a substantial body of literature that, although traditionally subsumed under the broader domain of Italian American literature, manifests “a distinct Sicilian Americanness” that she terms “sicilianamericanita.” Following on the footsteps of scholars like Edvige Giunta and Donna Gabaccia, Mazzucchelli presents an ambitious “intraethnic decen-tering project” that by …

Everyday Consumption In Twenty-First-Century Brazilian Fiction, Lígia Bezerra

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Everyday Consumption in Twenty-First-Century Brazilian Fiction is the first in-depth study to map out the representation of consumption in contemporary Brazilian prose, highlighting how our interactions with commodities connect seemingly disconnected areas of everyday life, such as eating habits, the growth of prosperity theology, and ideas of success and failure. It is also the first text to provide a pluralistic perspective on the representation of consumption in this fiction that moves beyond the concern with aesthetic judgment of culture based on binaries such as good/bad or elevated/degraded that have largely informed criticism on this body of literary work. Current Brazilian …

تقاطع المستويات وتنازع الثنائيات في مجموعة (ارض من عسل) للقاص هيثم بهنام بردى, أ.م. د. نادية هناوي سعدون

Midad AL-Adab Refereed Quarterly Journal

No abstract provided.

A Transcendental Phenomenology Into How Teacher Educators Address Social And Psychological Elements Of Teachers' Professional Identity, Hussein Meihami, Naser Rashidi

The Qualitative Report

Addressing social and psychological elements of teachers' professional identities is crucially important to develop teachers’ knowledge and practice concerning social and psychological issues in their classes. Thus, this study was an attempt to investigate how Iranian EFL teacher educators addressed social and psychological elements in teacher education programs to develop teachers’ professional identities. To that end, a series of phenomenological interviews were conducted with four EFL teacher educators to delve into their past, current, and future practices. Moreover, the syllabi covered by the EFL teacher educators were analyzed as a verification of the data obtained through phenomenological interviews. Explicitation of …

Ancient Surgeons: A Characterization Of Mesopotamian Surgical Practices, Alison J. White, Jason Herbeck, Joann Scurlock, John Mayberry

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: The Ancient Mesopotamian civilization, the earliest known, emerged in the fourth millennium BCE. While the advent of medicine is established, there is little understanding of surgery's origins. We sought to describe the characteristics and medical acumen of the surgeons of the first civilization.

Methods: Source documents and commentary on Mesopotamian medicine were systematically analyzed for evidence of surgery and physician descriptions.

Results: Early tablets reveal evidence of the incisional drainage of a scalp abscess and empyema, advanced wound care, fracture alignment, and possible caesarians without evidence of wound suturing, emergency procedures, trephination, or circumcision. While the asû and āšipu …

On Playful Language Divergences. Code-Switching Among Spanish-Portuguese Bilinguals, Ana M. Carvalho, Katherine Christoffersen

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

Uruguayan Portuguese, a variety of Portuguese which occurs in contact with Spanish in northern Uruguay along the Uruguayan-Brazilian border, has been perceived to be a mix of Portuguese and Spanish, in which speakers are either unable to separate languages or engage in code-switching for pragmatic purposes. Here, we analyze in-group communication using visual and verbal data extracted from video recordings of conversations among bilinguals in northern Uruguay, in order to investigate whether all language mixing is random or if speakers engage in pragmatically meaningful code-switching. We identify instances where Portuguese was inserted into Spanish segments with the intention to shift …

Resiliency: Experiences Of African American/Black Sign Language Interpreters., Jordan Satchell, Campbell Mcdermid, Lindsey Totten, Anna Yarborough

Journal of Interpretation

There is a growing body of literature on the experiences of African American/Black sign language interpreters (Carpenter, 2017; West Oyedele, 2015), but still many challenges faced by this community in the field. For example, many experience isolation in their interpreter education programs and later in the field, and they described the programs they attended as White-centric and oppressive (Carpenter, 2017; Cokey & Schafer, 2016; West Oyedele, 2015). To understand their experiences better, a qualitative study was conducted which involved interviewing ten African American/Black interpreters. The findings indicated many barriers in the field, including racism and discrimination in systems of networking. …

The Levant: France’S Colonial Crucible, Michael Adelson

French Summer Fellows

In the medieval era of religious and political tumult that culminated with the Crusades, (mostly) Roman Catholic Western European citizens from all walks of life committed themselves to conquer Jerusalem and wrest control of historically Christian lands from the Muslim polities that claimed the region. The historical Kingdom of France was a major contributor to the Crusades, and as such, the feudal realms established in the Levant in the wake of the First Crusade were dominated by former French crusaders and citizenry. The geographic boundaries and demography of these Crusader States are reminiscent of French hegemony in the Middle East …

Cross-Infections Of Vegetal-Human Bodies In Science Fiction, Heather I. Sullivan

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

It is particularly disturbing when seemingly inert plants escape the category of nourishing food and instead become transmitters of vegetal diseases infecting our human bodies or transforming us into plant-human hybrids or even plant-infused zombies. This article analyzes the ecological and alimentary implications of three sf texts in which plants infect human bodies or use them as a kind of walking soil from which to sprout: Paolo Bacigalupi's novel The Windup Girl (2009), Olivia Vieweg's German-language graphic novel, EndZeit [EndTime, 2018], and Nnedi Okorafor's graphic novel LaGuardia (2019). Presenting plant-human relations as either utopian and kinship-based or as horrific cross-species …

Composing Her Growing Identities As A Mexican American, Xiaodi Zhou

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This article studies the growing and changing cultural identifications of one early adolescent Mexican American girl as represented by her engagements with literacy. Her writing behaviors in particular manifested a changing cultural identity that reacted to and represented her response to a changing world. Her bilingualism and biculturalism manifested a dialogic innervation of distinct voices and truths, particularly set in the Trump-era United States. Through a theoretical framework of cultural hybridity and bordered identity, this study analyzes the complex linguistic, developmental, and cultural identities of a young Mexican American woman in the rural South.

Straddling Differences: Celebrating Contradictions And Confusion At The Frontera, Miryam Espinosa-Dulanto, Karin A. Lewis, Vejoya Viren

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

A yearlong collective auto-ethnographic stories of three colleagues at a Hispanic Serving Institution at the U.S.–Mexican frontera culminated in the realization that our disparate experiences, the multiple voices used in articulating these, and the diverse ways these manifested in classroom practices and interactions had crafted the only academic space where we-three felt to belong.

Review: Rethinking Joseph Conrad's Concepts Of Community: Strange Fraternity, John A. Merchant

Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works

A review of Kaoru Yamamoto, Rethinking Joseph Conrad's Concepts of Community: Strange Fraternity

Humanitarismo Literario Y Migración Forzada: Un Estudio De Las Tierras Arrasadas De Emiliano Monge, Carlos Gardeazábal Bravo

Global Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Las tierras arrasadas (2015) de Emiliano Monge se encuentra entre el creciente corpus de novelas y películas sobre los migrantes centroamericanos y los diferentes tipos de violencia que afrontan. Monge aborda en esta obra los efectos de la militarización en la política migratoria de México, impulsada por la guerra contra el narco que comenzó en 2006. Esta novela lleva a cabo un desmonte crítico del humanitarismo literario al tiempo que enfatiza la vulnerabilidad de los migrantes y su agencia. En tal sentido, se explora la forma en la que, en cuanto ficción posthumanitaria, la novela encarna las diferentes formas en …

Teaching Spanish Conversation Through The Uaps: A Pedagogy Of Jesuit Values And Mission, Richard D. Reitsma

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

This praxis piece explores the development of a Jesuit focused pedagogy within the context of a Spanish language conversation course. The author begins by defining the origins of the pedagogy employed in this course and how it came to be centered around the Universal Apostolic Preferences of the Society of Jesus (UAPs) which consist of the following goals: 1) Showing the way to God/goodness/hope through discernment; 2) Walking with the excluded, the poor, the outcasts of the world, those whose dignity has been violated, in a mission of reconciliation and justice; 3) Journeying with Youth, to accompany young people in …

Proyecto De Traducción: Compartiendo Cultura A Través De Historias De Latinoamérica, Diana P. Beas

World Languages and Cultures

This project attempts to cultivate awareness of ethical and professional perspectives that reflect linguistic and cultural heritage. In other words, creatively share the culture and history of Latin American countries. To achieve this, this project consists of two short stories I have translated. The stories were originally written in Spanish and I have translated them to English. Furthermore, each story is from a different Latin American country (one is from Argentina and the other is from Guatemala). To carry out this project, I began by researching simple background information of each country to which the stories belong to. Afterwards, I …

Jugando Sin Fronteras: Apoyando El Desarrollo Bilingüe A Través Del Juego, Michaela Henderson

World Languages and Cultures

Jugando sin fronteras is a website aimed at both speakers of Spanish and English within San Luis Obispo county. This project attempts to break down the cultural and linguistic gaps between students of bilingual education systems. Jugando sin fronteras is dedicated to uniting language groups and facilitating intercultural communication by demonstrating the use of both Spanish and English equally in bilingual spaces.

Writing Centers As Democratic Spaces: A Review Of A Writing Center Practitioner’S Inquiry Into Collaboration: Pedagogy, Practice, And Research By Georganne Nordstrom, Randall W. Monty

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Consecuencias Sociales En El Cine Latinoamericano: Alta Visibilidad De Lo Queer, Tucker Wayne Skipper

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

This presentation explores hegemonic societies in the Caribbean and the Southern Cone of Latin America as framed by the cultural phenomenon of high queer visibility in four films: Fresa y chocolate (1995) by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, Antes que anochezca (2000) by Julian Schnabel, El beso de la mujer araña (1985) by Héctor Babenco, and Hoy quiero volver solo (2014) by Daniel Ribeiro. It examines the social consequences that each of the main characters must pay to their hegemonic societies because of this visibility. This research also makes a case for compulsive heterosexuality and how the heterosexist …

Temas Tempranos Del Feminismo En La Literatura Española De Principios Del Siglo Xx: Emilia Pardo Bazán Al Franquismo, Savannah Courter

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

This presentation investigates Spanish feminist themes and how two authors—Emilia Pardo Bazán and Dolores Ibárruri—affected the role of women in their society during Franco’s regime. This presentation will discuss the main themes contributed by these two authors and how they fought against Francoism, Franco’s society, and the chauvinistic ideas and rules created for women during the regime.