Year in review 2021–2022
gratitude, Mike SchoolInterimTuellerdirector,ofInternational Letters and Cultures
Withrely.
2021–2022interimfromWelcomethedirectorwasayearofgreatchangefortheSchoolofInternational
Italian, Japanese, ASL and Classics, some of the fastest-growing languages in the school, welcomed new faculty members this year. Moreover, in a year in which ASU was named a Hispanic-Serving Institution, the Spanish department also welcomed three new faculty members whose focus is Mexican and Chicano/a studies, adding to our existing strength in an area that is part of the heritage of many of our students. Not all the news was happy. Regent’s Professor David Foster, who was for 50 years the bedrock of Latin American studies at ASU, passed away in June 2020 and was memorialized this year. In his honor, and funded by a generous gift from his family, a lecture series was established in his name and the graduate student lounge, filled with the conversation of the students whose enthusiasm he encouraged, was named for him. While he is dearly missed by the many faculty and students who prized his guidance and fellowship, the presence of his name as a permanent feature of our school’s home is a meaningful reminder of him as we endeavor to carry on the work he loved.
Our building, now called “Durham Hall” (always its name, but long superseded by the title “Languages and Literatures”) was, after three years of construction, completed and dedicated this year. Although it retains the shape it always had, it looks and feels completely new both inside and out. The School of International Letters and Cultures now fills two and a half floors of the building and shares the remainder of the space with classrooms and a multitude of cultural and research centers.
Finally, this year Professor Nina Berman concluded her term as director — six years in which enrollment in our courses nearly doubled. While I am issuing this review of the last year, I have only just taken the position of interim director, and the accomplishments here must be credited to her and to the dedicated and talented faculty and staff of the school. As we look to the future, filled with challenges that, though unpredictable, will surely come, it is on our faculty and staff, and on the generosity of our supporters and donors, that we
Letters and Cultures (SILC) —change that our faculty, staff and students faced with determination and enthusiasm. As pandemic threats and policies shifted both worldwide and at ASU, students continued to flock to SILC classes, drawn to a variety of innovative courses developed by our faculty. Faculty, for their part, produced award-winning research that enhanced our knowledge of the world’s languages, literatures and cultures. The language courses offered at the School of International Letters and Cultures are not your typical language courses. Our aim has been to design a curriculum that goes beyond the status quo for the study of world languages and cultures — one that emphasizes that the two are deeply intertwined and highlights this to our students. Throughout the past year, students have responded to the curriculum with an eagerness to discover and engage, especially in some of our most unique classes. In American Sign Language, students not only learned to sign, but were taught the nuances of deaf culture, which is often overlooked in the study of ASL. In a course on the Mediterranean diet taught by the Italian faculty, they connected the science of diet to the transmission of culture by examining traditions of cultivating, preparing and consuming food in Italy. Additionally, the Humanities Lab, now fully housed in SILC, engaged students by having them identify real world problems and setting out a plan to combat these issues with cultural solutions.
Top ASU News stories of theHailingyearareborn hall ASU’s Thousand Languages Project ‘speaks to Conferenceeveryone’tobring together language scholars, translation professionals Panel of ASU, UA professors discuss Russia-Ukraine war Arabic professor receives Fulbright award
Student highlights Graduate Excellence Awards Jacqueline ComparativeShea,culture and language PhD Ana Cervantes Figueroa, Spanish MA Miriam SpanishCarpenter-Cosand,PhDDean’sMedalistsFall2021SydneyCampton,GermanSpring2022DanielO’Hara,Asianlanguages (Chinese) Foreign Language and Area Studies AntonellaFellowshipMorgillo and Sam Billing received graduate student FLAS Fellowships which provide academic year fellowships to students in foreign language and area or international studies.
Master’s and doctoral degrees awarded Fall Angelica2021Amezcua, Spanish, PhD Spring 2022 Albert Martino, Spanish, PhD Quidu Fu, Asian languages and civilizations (Chinese), MA
Valeria Ochoa
Juliana Fillies Testa
PhD student, University of Houston, Texas
DigitalErinUniversityLaneliberal arts coordinator, Cornell College, Iowa
Hin Ming Frankie Chik
Leslie del Carpio Assistant professor, Indiana University, Indiana Ana Cervantes Figueroa
Graduate student job placement
Assistant professor, Claremont McKenna College, California
Haihan Bai PhD student, School of International Letters and Cultures, Arizona State
Student highlights
Visiting lecturer, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Assistant professor of Spanish linguistics, Puget Sound University
K.C.AssistantKCteacher.Gardiner-Johnson,tothedirectorearnedabachelor’sdegreeincommunication in Tokyo. She was born in the Philippines and moved to Japan at six; as such, she knows both Japanese and Tagalog. For the last seven years, she has been working at the College of Law as an administrative assistant and previously worked for Maricopa County as a business analyst.
New staff
Melissa MelissaAccountingKing,specialisthasabachelor’sdegreeinaccounting and also graduated from ASU with a second bachelor’s degree in secondary education and a master’s degree in educational technology. Prior to joining SILC, she was a high school math teacher and GED math and science
Lauren CommunicationsParra, specialist Lauren has a bachelor’s degree in communication and a master’s degree in international relations. She previously worked at ASU’s Enterprise Marketing Hub where she developed communications plans for the ASU Alumni and Sun Devil Rewards.
Anita Huizar-HérnandezSpanishHuizar-Hernández,associateprofessorspecializesin19thand20th century Mexican American and Chican@ studies and southwest borderlands studies. She earned a doctorate in literature from the University of California, San Diego.
Sign Language
Aya McDanielJapaneseMcDaniel,lecturerspecializesinJapanese
Patterson earned a master’s degree in American Sign Language and deaf studies from Gallaudet University as well as a doctorate in history from Ohio State University with a dissertation on “The Right to Access: Citizenship and Disability, 1950–1973.” Patterson has taught at various institutions, most recently as an instructor here at ASU.
Jennifer Adams, Italian instructor Adams has been working at the university as a faculty associate for both the School of Art and the School of International Letters and Cultures. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Italian and art history from University of California, Los Angeles, a master’s degree in Italian literature from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and a doctorate in Italian renaissance and baroque art history from ASU.
faculty
second language acquisition and is a certified oral proficiency interview tester. She earned a master’s degree in foreign language education and research from Kansai University in Japan and has held appointments at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory LindseyUniversity.
LecturerPatterson,ofAmerican
Ilaria Tabusso-MarcyanItalianTabusso-Marcyan,lecturerearnedadoctoratein comparative literature and Italian studies from the University of California, San Diego and is coming to ASU from Miami University. Her research areas are environmental humanities, ecocriticism, food studies, Italian 20th and 21st century literature and Italian
Newcinema.
Azucena Hernández-Ramírez, Spanish assistant professor Hernández-Ramírez
Barbara Weinlich, Classics instructor Weinlich holds a doctorate in classical philology from the Goethe University in Frankfurt. She loves the idea of making Classics accessible to the evolving student generation which has a heightened awareness of the eco-, gender-, racial- and social-political concerns that are waiting to be addressed at the national as well as international level.
Miguel SpanishGarcía,assistant professor García earned a doctorate in Latin American literatures and cultures from the University of California, Davis and is joining our faculty from Fordham University. His research focuses on the intersections between science and technology and Mexican literature and film from the 20th and 21st centuries.
is joining the Spanish and Portuguese section as assistant professor. She is a specialist in 19th and 20th Mexican studies, with a focus on sound studies, poetry and environmental humanities. She earned a doctorate in Hispanic languages and literatures from the University of California, Berkeley.
Katie HinojosaJapaneseHinojosa,instructorgraduatedfromASUwith
a bachelor’s degree in Japanese and from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa with a master’s degree in East Asian languages and literatures. After working with us as a faculty associate for the past year, we welcome her as a Japanese instructor.
Faculty updates Mike FullSaraInterimTueller,directorBeaudrie,professor,associate director of PrincipalSarahAssociateAnaAssociateJianlingadministrationLiao,professorHedbergOlenina,professorRisha,lecturer
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Saule Moldabekova Robb
Ligia Bezerra has offered exceptional mentoring for her students, supporting them in their teaching, research and cultural enrichment. Her inspiring mentoring has encouraged students to increase their Portuguese fluency while also developing cultural knowledge. She is sensitive to the unique sensibility of her students and aims to foster their development in a collaborative way.
Outstanding teaching, lecturer: Anne Walton-Ramirez
Outstandinggovernment.faculty mentoring: Ligia Bezerra
Beverly McBride’s contributions are widely appreciated by faculty and staff. In her support of SILC committees, she has worked long hours to make sure that everything stays on track. Beverly has provided everything colleagues need to do critical work in a timely and professional manner. Among many other things, colleagues are grateful for her assistance in helping SILC transition to the now-required ASU Vita (APARS) for annual evaluations. She has answered countless questions from faculty and helped solve technical problems.
Saule Moldabekova Robb’s service to SILC has been essential for maintaining the excellence and national visibility of our thriving, robust Russian program, which is among the top ten U.S. programs in number of majors. Robb nurtures students, and coaches them for the nationally competitive scholarships that they regularly win. She has also led numerous initiatives to connect SILC to the community and the world at large, including inviting the U.S. Department of State and our graduates to talk to our students each fall about programs and jobs in
Outstanding service, individual: Beverly McBride
Anne has been an excellent leader for upper-division courses in her role as upper-division course coordinator. Not only does she teach key courses in Spanish linguistics, but her overall contribution to the Spanish program has been pivotal. She contributes to the growth of the program through coordination, course development and classroom experience.
SILC Awards
Outstanding teaching, tenured track or
tenured faculty: Ebru Turker and Francoise Mirguet
Outstanding service, team collaboration: Spanish linguistics faculty
The Spanish linguistics faculty — Sara Beaudrie, Alvaro Cerron-Palomino, Michael Gradoville and Marta Tecedor Cabrero — have been working hard to ensure our new PhD in Spanish linguistics program is nationally recognized. They have a strong mentoring program for our graduate students and, through teamwork, have helped the graduate students to achieve remarkable success during the program. Moreover, they have had 100% success in job placement after graduation in academic and tenure-track jobs as well as in the business world.
This award recognizes professors Turker and Mirguet’s course SLC/ KOR 420 and SLC/KOR 598 Emotions Across Languages, Cultures and History, which is team-taught. This course provides students with an understanding of emotion both from the perspective of humanities and social sciences. With its unique structure, the course not only presents how emotions vary and are used across cultures and history, but how they are reflected in language, particularly in Korean, in the form of metaphorical complexes of emotions. Students evaluated the course as being truly eye-opening and inspiring, and final papers written for the course have been accepted for presentation at conferences and submitted to peer-reviewed journals.
Curriculum redesign winners
Sean McKinnon, SPA 194 Language in the US
Faculty highlights
This redesigned course examines why only about 20% of the U.S. population is bilingual despite being a nation of immigrants and Indigenous peoples. His proposal reframes the course around social justice and equity issues through critical perspectives. He plans to use the pedagogical framework of critical language awareness to teach students about how language is embedded in social meaning and power dynamics. McKinnon said he plans to revise the course again over the summer based on student feedback before teaching it again in fall 2022.
Enrico Minardi, ITA 319 Italian for the Professions Minardi’s revamped course will focus on sustainability and how it affects the economy and job market in Italy. “It is the most popular economic sector among youth nowadays. Italy is one of the leading countries in the sector.” Students will learn the differences between Italian and U.S. business etiquette, the most important trends of the Italian economy, how to apply for a work visa and more.
Sara Lee, GER 494 Language and Disability Lee had a social justice-minded approach to updating her class, which already engaged deeply with equity and social justice. Lee plans to add more opportunities for students to participate in community outreach; learn about career and internship options in the field; and work on projects that allow them to apply their knowledge to real-life scenarios.
Hedberg Olenina was awarded this prize by the Association for Slavic Studies, East European and Eurasian Studies for the “most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian and East European studies in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences for her book “Psychomotor Aesthetics: Movement and Affect in Modern Literature and Film.”
Ana Hedberg Olenina, 2021 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize
Natalie GermanLozinski-Veach,LiteratureArchive fellowship
Lozinski-Veach was awarded a fellowship from the German Literature Archive at Marback am Neckar to conduct research for two months for her book about authors Paul Celan and W.B. Sebald. Her research includes looking at their personal libraries, manuscrips, notebooks, letters and diaries.
Minardi secured a 9000 euro grant from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, which offers funding for Italian language teaching activities to promote the language across theglobe.Enrico
ContributionMinardi,for chairs of Italian language
“Transnational Intersectionality: Whiteness and Womanhood in Postcolonial Africa” focuses on the intersections of race, gender and socioeconomic class.
Paul Hirt Excellence in Environmental Humanities
IHR fellowships 2022–23 Britta Ager’sAger:work
“Cultivating an Image: The SelfPresentation of Roman Landowners” examines how agriculture acted as a locus of display and performance, especially for political elites, in the Roman Republic and early empire.
This year, Dan Gilfillan received the Paul Hirt Award alongside Chris Jones. Typically, only one person is chosen to receive this award; however, the committee found both applications so compelling that it decided to give both applicants an award of $7,000 each.
Institute for Humanities Research award winners
Isaac Joslin’sJoslin:work
Faculty highlights
Publication Development Grant awardees for spring 2022 Ebru MultimodalTurker:Metaphoric Creativity in Education Discourse: College Advertisements in South Korea Cynthia Tompkins: The Aporia of Absence in Latin American Art Films Sean McKinnon: A Variationist Analysis of Overt Subject Placement in Bilingual Arizonan and Monolingual Mexican Spanish Sara DocumentingBeaudrie:the Voices of Language Minorized Latinx Students in Spanish Heritage Courses Ana Hedberg Olenina: Embodied Cognitio, Neurocinematics and the Virtual Worlds of Sergei Eisenstein
Aleksandra Gruzinska Wheels of Change: Feminist Transgressions in Polish Culture and Ying-shihSociety Yu The Religious, Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in Early Modern Faculty-publishedChina books Danko Špika Slavic Languages: Geneology and Ideology
Danko Šipka Lexical Layers of Identity: Words, Meaning and Culture in the SlavicTheDankoLanguagesŠipkaGeography of Words: Vocabulary and Meaning in the World’s DisabilityNinaLanguagesBermanand Social Justice in Kenya
Durham Hall grand reopening
Building updates
Durham Hall renovations are now complete! In the spirit of ASU sustainability, President Crow opted to renovate the building rather than having it completely rebuilt. The three-year, $65 million project has transformed our building into a sleek, state-of-the-art facility that is home not only to The School of International Letters and Cultures, but to 11 humanities centers.
A grand reopening event was held in April with speeches from President Michael Crow, Dean of Humanities Jeffrey Cohen, the now former Director Nina Berman and student Jeremy Parker. Tours of the building were also provided. Fun fact: The building was named after G. Homer Durham, ASU president from 1960–69.
