News and Events
Guest Speakers
Black Italians and Digital Culture in Contemporary Italy
Blackness in the Caribbean and Latin America
Cultural Events
2021 TA Talks
The Department of World Languages and Cultures and the Office of Equity and Diversity hosted the 15th annual TA Talks featuring the 2020-2021 Fulbright Language Teaching Assistants from Germany, Canada, Palestine and Uruguay. The FLTAs shared about their countries and cultures and what makes them unique.
Dragon Boat Festival
Visiting Chinese instructor Hsiang-Ling Wang hosted an event on the celebration of the Dragon Boat Festival on Thursday, April 22.
Fulbright Night: Uruguay
Spanish FLTA Cecilia Nuñez shared about the big carnival celebrations all around the world and in her home country of Uruguay at the Fulbright Night on March 25th from 7:00-8:00 P.M. Uruguay has the longest Carnival celebration in the world, and Professor Nuñez shared about the traditions surrounding this celebration in her presentation.
Fulbright Night: Palestine
Arabic FLTA Belal Elkurd invited the university community to join in a celebration of the olive harvest season in Palestine, the time of year when Palestinians gather to pick olives. Olive harvest season in Palestine is the time of year when Palestinians come together to gather olives, a mainstay crop of the Palestinian economy. Professor Elkurd shared about this wonderful time of year in Palestine and the traditions associated with it. This event took place on Zoom Thursday, March 4, from 12 to 1 p.m.
Asian New Year Celebration
Why Learn Chinese Event
Fulbright Night: CanadaÌý
On Thursday, October 22nd, Canadian FLTA and French instructor Chama Laassassy hosted a virtual French and Francophone Trivia Night featuring trivia and games on French and Francophone cultures.
Fulbright Night: GermanyÌý
Faculty News
Dr. Roxana Curiel
The World Languages and Cultures Department welcomed Dr. Roxana A. Curiel as a new Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies in the World Languages and Cultures Department.
Faculty Scholarship
Dr. Yamile Silva
Dr. Yamile Silva has been elected a member Executive Council of the Colonial Section, Latin American Studies Association (LASA) for a five year-period (2020-2025). LASA is the largest professional association in the world for individuals and institutions engaged in the study of Latin America. With over 13,000 members, more than 60 percent of whom reside outside the United States, LASA brings together experts on Latin America from all disciplines.
Silva published her annotated edition La sonrisa del paisaje. Diarios de Abigail Mejía (Santo Domingo: Ministerio de Cultura de la República Dominicana, 2020. pp. 180). Her article, “‘I, humble servant of your grace’: Isabel de Salazar’s and Ana de Nabarrete’s Petitions" has been accepted for publication by Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades (Michigan State University). It will be published on Nov. 2020.
Also, Silva’s book review of Rocío Quispe Agnoli. Nobles de papel. Identidades oscilantes y genealogías borrosas en los descendientes de la realeza inca. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2016. 264 pp. was published In Journal of Gender and Sexuality Studies Volumen 45, Número 2 (2020).
Finally, her article “"Different when I Opened My Mouth: Experiences, Reflections, and Perspectives of Faculty Members with Foreign English Accents in Higher Education" written in collaboration with Dr. Andrés Ramirez (Florida Atlantic University) has been accepted by Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism and will be published on its forthcoming issue, Volume 19, Number 2.
Silva was invited as a keynote speaker by the International Book Festival of Santo Domingo organized by the Ministry of Culture (Dominican Republic). Her talk “La sonrisa del paisaje. Escritura y cultura material en los diarios de Abigail Mejía” on June 4, 2020 was via Zoom and YouTube due to Covid 19.
Dr. Silva’s panel "Representaciones del miedo/Representations of Fear" was accepted for the LASA2021 Virtual Congress: Crisis global, desigualdades y centralidad de la vida, May 26-29, 2021.
She will be the guest editor, with Dr. Ana María Díaz (Oberlin College), of the thematic dossier "Yo llana estoy": jerarquías, transgresiones y despliegues de género en América hispana colonial (1492-1898) to be published in the Journal of Gender and Sexualities (Michigan State University). Also, Dr. Silva has been working on the article “La intervención de Estados Unidos en la República Dominicana através de las crónicas de Abigail Mejía” to be submitted this May to an academic journal.
Finally, Dr. Silva has been promoted to Full Professor at our institution.
Dr. Marzia Caporale
Dr. Caporale had the following publications appear in print:
- Book review: Federici, Sandra, et Raphaël Thierry, coord. Africa e Mediterraneo : Cultura e Società. “Libri in Africa, libri d’Africa.” Vol. 89. In Etudes Littéraires Africaines Spring 2020
- Journal article: ‘Recasting the Gaze: Self-perception and Body De(con)struction in Nelly Arcan’s “La honte”’ L’Esprit créateur 60.2. 2020.
Dr. Roxana Curiel
Dr. Roxana Curiel’s paper “Mujeres rifle: Masculinidad femenina en el evento fotográfico de la Revolución mexicana.” was accepted for publication at Hispania.
She gave the following talks during the summer:
- “Conversatorio Drag King,” Orgullo Crítico Independiente México 2020.
- “How White Privilege Affects the Afro-Latinx Communities,” Conversation with Becky G, Kali Uchis, and El Guru for Conciencia Collective and We Are Mitú panel sessions.
- “Drag King/Queer: Mujeres cis, personas trans y no binaries en el drag,” Día Internacional del Drag.
- “Cultural Appropriation in Latinx Music,” Sociedad Latina (Summer Sessions).
- Drs. Curiel and Silva arranged a talk with Mayra Santos-Febres and Alán Peláez López about "Blackness in the Caribbean and Latin America" (see below).
Dr. Roxana A. Curiel was a panelist at the Harvard Latina Empowerment and Development (LEAD) 14th Annual Conference. The virtual conversation was part of the “Education and Academia” panel at Harvard University. In mid-March, Curiel will be part of the “Ciclo de conversaciones OTRXS MUNDXS” for the Museo Tamayo, in Mexico City. This virtual event between the Mexican artist Ana Segovia, and Curiel’s drag collective, ManaDragKing, will reckon with notions of femininity and masculinity within discourses of mexicanidad (Mexicaness) and will include videos of their drag interventions. Finally, Curiel’s talk, “(Un)Documented Narratives: Immigration Enforcement, Trauma Porn, and Migration Stories,” was accepted to be presented at the VI Coloquio Internacional Repensar América Latina, organized by the Universidad de Costa Rica and the Centro de Investigación en Identidad y Cultura Latinoamericanas (CIICLA).
Dr. Habib Zanzana
Dr. Zanzana presented a scholarly work on medical humanities in spring 2020. “Blindness in World Literature and Cinema,” Northeastern MLA 5th Annual Convention. He participated in a panel on “Medical Humanities: Literature, Medicine, and the Arts.” March 5-8, 2020, Boston, Massachusetts.
Dr. Zanzana will be presenting 4 scholarly papers at national and international conferences in spring and summer 2021. All conference events will take place on Zoom platforms.
- “Covid-19 and the New Normal in France and Beyond” at the French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium, on March 10, 2021.
- “Reclaiming the Heroism of the Forgotten Women of the Algerian War in Nora Hamdi’s La maquisarde” at the Northeastern MLA Conference, March 11, 2021.
- “Masculinity, Queer Identity, and Modern Arab Society” at the Northeastern MLA Conference, March 13, 2021.
- Contemporary Womxn’s Writing and the Medical Humanities in Addellah Taïa’s A Country for Dying at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London, July 2021.
Dr. Zanzana has published three poems (two in English and one in Spanish) on the online platform Viral Imagination Covid-19 in February and March 2021. “The Viral Imaginations: COVID-19 project is an interdisciplinary initiative focused on collecting, displaying, and archiving Pennsylvanians’ first-person, imaginative and artistic expressions made in response to their lived experience of the coronavirus pandemic.” It is a gallery and archive curated by Pennsylvania State University (College of Humanities, Department of Medicine; Penn State Bioethics Program; Communication Arts and Sciences; Art Education and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies; and Science-Art Initiative-The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences).
The poems are listed below:
- “On Her Way”
- “Esmeralda” (a Spanish language poem)
- “School Bell’s Ringing”