2010 Newsletter

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Features 3

SLLC Welcomes New Faculty

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SLLC Welcomes New Staff

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Faculty Profile: Jubilee Memory

10 Publications and Awards 12

Conferences

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Education Abroad

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Recent Events

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Forthcoming Events

Copy: Lauretta Clough | Design: Jeffrey Maurer Distribution: David Watson

SLLC Welcomes New Faculty

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Sayed Elsisi Arabic Sayed Elsisi comes to us from a lectureship at Harvard University (20072010); his previous teaching includes the American University of Cairo (2000-2007), where he taught Modern Standard Arabic, dialect courses, and courses in Arabic literature while serving as a researcher and editorial assistant for Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics.

Sayed will defend his dissertation, “The Arabic Prose Poem: A Study in the Poetics of Genre,” at the University of Cairo this spring. His publications in Arabic include: “Alluring Text and Playful Reading” (2005), “Egypt: Culture and Society,” a textbook for the CASA Summer program (2006), and articles on the Arabic novel and poetry. His current project focuses on omitted genres throughout the history of Arabic criticism – questioning “poetics” in classical and modern Arabic literary criticism.

Satoko Naito Assistant Professor of Japanese Satoko Naito received her PhD in Japanese literature from Columbia University in May 2010. Her dissertation, “The Making of Murasaki Shikibu: Constructing Authorship, Gendering Readership, and Legitimizing The Tale of Genji,” analyzes the reception history of The Tale of Genji (c.1000 CE) and contemplates shifting problems regarding the production and consumption of literary fiction, as well as the interplay between gender and genre. While at Columbia, she taught classes on Japanese civilization and major East Asian texts, as well as research methodologies in East Asian studies.

Naito’s research and teaching interests encompass a wide temporal span of Japanese literature, including Heian narrative fiction and memoir literature; the reception and canonization of Heian texts; print culture in the early modern period; self-writing and sexuality in the Meiji and Taishô periods; changing notions of “the author;” and the construction of gender, genre, and literary histories. She is delighted to be at the University of Maryland and is contemplating learning to drive after her many years in New York.

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Pamala Deane Assistant to Director, Academic Affairs

SLLC Welcomes

Pamala S. Deane has been working at the University since 1985, when there were more mimeograph machines on campus than photocopiers. Her first IBM computer had 360K of memory. She spent ten years working at the Department of Theatre and ten years working at the Center for Renaissance & Baroque Studies before coming to SLLC, where she supports the Director and makes everything look and taste good. Her pastimes include gardening, birding, collecting vintage cookbooks, and driving a car that is older than most of our students (1987!).

She is the author of two books: James Edwards: African American Hollywood Icon (McFarland, 2009) and My Story Being This: Details of the Life of Mary Williams Magahee, Lady of Colour (Hardscrabble Books, 2004).

Katherine Giuffre Arabic Flagship Program Coordinator Katherine Giuffre, our newest new staff member, has a long-standing interest in Middle Eastern affairs and Arabic. Her academic focus was Middle Eastern Studies, both at Fordham University and at the American University in Cairo. Her professional experience has covered a range of areas within the general field of international education, training, and development. She has coordinated study abroad programs for Tel Aviv University and has administered numerous government-funded (USAID and Department of State) education initiatives benefiting scholars from developing countries. At the Council of American Overseas Research Center’s Critical Language Program, she worked with host institutions in the Middle East/North Africa. In her off hours, Katherine can be found on the soccer field or volunteering at the Washington Animal Rescue League.

Beth McAllister Payroll and Personnel Coordinator Beth McAllister comes to SLLC after 4 years at the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition. She has a background in accounting, travel, procurement, and employee contracts, and worked for many years in the area of health care administration.

Beth’s allegiance to UM and the State covers two generations. A DC-area native, she holds a BA in Consumer Economics from UM; a son graduated in 2005; a daughter currently attends. Beth’s husband recently retired after 28 years of service with the Metropolitan Police Department. The youngest of 10 children born within a span of 12 years, Beth is phased by little, and uses her patience for the benefit (and benefits) of all.

New Staff

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Sara Moon Program Management Specialist, Business Services A graduate of the Department of Communications, Sara Moon brings her experience in marketing, operations, and event management from the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship – as well as extensive experience with logistics gained through her family’s small business -- to the Office of Administrative Affairs, where she is responsible for procurement, travel, and accounting. Currently pursuing her MBA at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, she is conversational in Korean and fluent in Spanish, which she studied for ten years, three of which were at SLLC.

Chelsea Sypher Director of Special Programs Chelsea Sypher joins us from the University of Texas at Austin where she was Assistant Director of the Arabic Flagship Program and Administrative Director of the Arabic Summer Institute.

Chelsea grew up in the Middle East (Iran, Saudi Arabic, Bahrain, and Qatar), and completed her post-secondary education in Britain. She holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Sussex and a MSc in Applied Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh. She began in the field of language education as a teacher -- in the UK, South Korea, and the Middle East, most notably for six years at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, where she focused on language assessment and materials development. She and her English husband, who is completing his PhD in Arabic Linguistics, live happily in Wheaton with their two lawless dogs. In her free time she enjoys reading, cooking, and riding horses.

David Watson Graduate Coordinator

David Watson comes to SLLC from the advertising department of The George Washington University, where he was responsible for media buying, trafficking, client relations, and overall coordination of the university’s graduate advertising needs. He holds a BA in English/Rhetoric from Binghamton University in New York, and a MTA in Sports Management and Event Management from The George Washington University, School of Business. Prior to working at GW, David worked on campus in the Physics Department, where he managed faculty recruitment and APT processes and coordinated the many functions of the Chair’s Office. His corporate background is in the fields of Integrated Marketing Communications and Human Resources. David is an avid lover of music and traditional martial arts; he also enjoys dancing and natural bodybuilding.

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Faculty Profile:

Jubilee Memory Associate Professor Donald Hitchcock, Department of Russian, discusses his life as scholar and teacher on the occasion of his 50th year at UM. How would you describe your evolution as a thinker and teacher, from early days to the present?

Well, as a thinker, that’s hard. Probably like all of us, I had the tendency to memorize things as a student. I didn’t think things.

I hear on the radio and such that we train our students to think and solve problems. They never taught us to think and solve problems. What I did was memorize things. And I was extraordinarily good at repeating things verbatim. For some reason I could read a page and repeat back the whole thing. So I actually was terrific at history. In fact, I’ve been better at history than what I did, slightly better than in linguistics, and I think clearly better than literature.

So why not history?

Well, you choose. I had a Harvard graduate admissions interview with Roman Jakobson and Morris Halle, in Jakobson’s apartment. Jakobson was interested in getting people who were interested in the sources of Russian culture. And the sources of Russian culture lay in Byzantium.

I was interested in the Classical world, Greece, Rome, and Byzantium. From the very beginning.

And also, as far as literature was concerned, my view of literary criticism was basically his. If you took a work of literature, you weren’t going to write impressionistic criticism. “This poem is like a fluffy white cloud in the blue sky.” This was the aesthetic school at the beginning of the 20th century, and Jakobson was trying to get rid of it.

So I got in. If you look at my transcript, you see courses in Old Russian, Medieval Slavic manuscripts, Old Church Slavonic, and Byzantine History, and Latin, and classical Greek. I don’t have a degree in Russian, I have a degree in Slavistics.

That’s an education people used to have that is now less common.

I did my dissertation with Jakobson. I think he was the only person in America who could have done it. It was a linguistic study of a 12th-century apocryphal tale. I had original manuscripts. Jakobson had gone to Russia and he was friends with the wife of a famous linguist, who worked in the Lenin library, and she made microfilms of the manuscripts for him.

The Soviets didn’t let anything get out of the Soviet Union willingly. If he had asked for the things outright, he would have been told no. He had to smuggle them out.

7 Was this project what got you to Dumbarton Oaks?

That’s where I did most of my dissertation. I was a Junior Fellow. The Senior Fellows were very big wheels. European and English scholars. Dumbarton Oaks was very lavish. We lived there. With servants! We had breakfast served, and lunch served. I didn’t appreciate everything enough. I think too often you get things and you begin to expect them.

Dumbarton Oaks has a swimming pool, it has great gardens, after lunch you go out into the gardens with the faculty and you stroll, like in the 18th century. I stayed there 2 years.

Then you came here?

Actually, I came to the University of Maryland first. I’m an alumnus. I came to the University of Maryland because I was living in Maryland, but also because we taught Russian. We were the first school in the area to teach Russian – before WWII. I got my BA in 1952. We had the graduation ceremonies out on the Mall, in front of the old Administration Building. We were much smaller. Cosier though.

We see you at every graduation. Have you missed a single one in 50 years?

About 10 or 15 years ago, I got sick for spring graduation. Otherwise, I think I’ve been to all of them. After all, the students like it. Shouldn’t that be part of our job? I think that we should go not only for the students, but also for their parents. Because some people sacrifice to put their kids through.

So I graduated in ‘52, and from there I went to Georgetown for a year. I was the assistant to a linguist, Archibald Hill, from the University of Virginia.

You remember everyone’s name.

And I did everything in bits and pieces that year. I had a fellowship to the School of Languages and Linguistics. I took Greek at the undergraduate level; and a year course on the Russian Revolution and the Soviet State at the graduate level.

And if you can believe it, a whole year course and the professor never talked about the Revolution or the Soviet State.

Do you remember what he did talk about?

He analyzed the whole course of Russian history, from the beginning. And he did what I’ve heard another person did in St. Petersburg. He gave a history course without names or dates. I like the idea. But he had a very prejudiced PolishLithuanian attitude toward Russian history. Everything that Russia did from the beginning of history to the end was evil. Completely evil. And I had to listen to that stuff. And of course I did for a term paper a diplomatic study of an 18th-century treaty, and in this case, Russia was completely wrong, so I was honest. I was very negative about Russia, and I did fine!

Then I went to Harvard. 4 years. They give you a bibliography when you arrive, and after four years, you take an oral exam. One bibliography for literature, and one for linguistics. The linguistics part had languages too. I studied Czech, Czech literature; I then got to go to Prague for a summer, on a fellowship. So you have an examination, on everything, everything, and they gather all the faculty members together in a room, and you’re there by yourself. And what they do is, first they start easy, and they see how far you can get into what you’re studying. And I said to students and colleagues when I got here, if I had known what was in that bibliography when I graduated, I would have been one of the three greatest linguists in the world before I’d even started in the field. That bibliography was unreal. Everything was in there.

Different periods of linguistics and different periods of history, everything was there. And I said to myself, was this something they put together when this program was being put together to show some committee how scholarly it was?

So I took the exam, and later I can tell you there was one person who was a little bit surprised, here at UM, when I told him I passed the exam the first time. And I said to myself, here’s someone who evidently did not! Laughter.

8 Do you like it when people ask difficult questions? Did you enjoy being examined?

I did it. That’s all. I had studied for that exam so long that anything I put into my head, something would come out. I had soaked up everything I could soak up, it was impossible to soak up any more, so I said, I’m taking it, that’s it, and I went and I drank at Cronin’s bar, a glass of vodka, because that leaves you breathless, and I went into that exam.

Is there anything, with all you learned, that you haven’t taught in your years here?

That’s the disappointing thing. The program at Harvard taught you to be a research scholar. There I was with the Latin, Greek, and so on. It’s so European. It’s not American. I got a classical-type Central European education.

If you could teach anything in the world next semester, your dream course, what would it be?

My Old Church Slavonic class. The one I’m doing!

In it I can teach different texts, and I can introduce the students to the language itself. There’s really not enough time for me to do what I want to do. People don’t realize it, but this language, and the introduction of this alphabet, in the 9th century, was a great event in European history. This language could be understood everywhere, from Bohemia in the west to Kiev in the east. It was a pan-Slavic language. People couldn’t read or write in those days, the 9th century, but the new alphabet brought change to Eastern Europe. So for instance, the daughter of one of the princes of Kiev, Yaroslav, married the King of France, and we have a document that is signed by her, because her husband couldn’t read or write. The King of France couldn’t read or write, and this was a woman, and they had schools where they taught the daughters of nobility to read and write. And even more importantly, they translated the Holy Gospels into Slavonic, while in Western Europe, translation into the vernacular was forbidden. You were not permitted to use a vernacular language. Think what happened to the person most responsible for the King James version of the Bible. You could use Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. Anything else was forbidden. So in Western Europe the people knew the Bible from images, from windows, not from written texts. In Eastern Europe, they knew it from texts. I forget who it was who said that a peasant woman in Bohemia knew more about the Bible than the King of France.

When you teach students today, do they ask questions, do they see that events in the 9th century could be similar or different from how things are happening in the current world? Or does it seem so far away that it’s like a fairy tale to them.

I should ask them. I should ask them.

Do you teach the way you are talking now, everything from memory? You can, if I may be so bold, walk in, sit down, and start talking?

Laughter. Well, we start with a text. Which is good because it has all the tenses, all the grammatical things they’re going to need to know to continue onward. So yes, there I start and say: recites line in Old Church Slavonic. The first sentence.

And I keep on.

What’s that the first sentence of?

The Parable of the Blind Man, from the Book of John.

In other words, you know it by heart.

Well, I don’t know it all, but I know a lot of it.

You know it because you’ve taught it 30 times, or you just have a mind that likes to know things?

Well, especially because I need to know it. Because, you know, I have problems seeing. I know some people accuse me of memorizing, but it’s not true. Laughter.

9 You just “happen” to remember?

Well, it’s because there are interesting problems there. They might not think the linguistic problems are interesting, but I do. Every sentence has its pitfalls. I tell the students, “every sentence is a trap.” No one wrote a grammar of Old Church Slavonic in the 9th century.

Do your students get excited sometimes?

Yes. I’ve been told, I haven’t read it, but my assistant last year told me there’s something called Facebook. About my course.

And it says “Dr. Hitchcock is not a myth, he’s a legend.” Laughter.

I don’t know, there may be things in Facebook that say unpleasant things! They like the course because I was enthusiastic.

Over the 50 years of your career in the Academy, are there changes that seem like gains to you, and others that seem like losses?

Yes. One of the reasons I came to work here was that the Foreign Language Department was so nice. The people were so generous, and convivial, and I said, this is a place where I’d like to come work, because these people are really nice. Welldisposed toward me. And in the ‘60s, that changed.

You can peg a change to the ‘60s?

Yes. We had a whole change in society. People behaved, well, we’re supposed to be such duds, we people from the ‘50s. You know, not complaining, being quiet, being obedient, and so forth. But everything was very calm! And then in the ‘60s it was the opposite, nothing but explosions. A lot of gossip, whoppers, bad behavior in general.

Forgive me for sounding old-fashioned, but it sounds to me like what you miss is something akin to mannerliness?

I want to get through the pearly gates. Laughter. I want to get through the pearly gates. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil!

Would you like to tell us what you do or think about for pleasure when you’re not here?

Well it’s hard, because, you know, it used to be I travelled. I can’t travel anymore. I can’t see well enough. I’m afraid to go to New York even. Like crossing streets in Paris, you have to cross when others are crossing, people might be desperate to get me, hit the gas!

So you can’t do what you wish you could do?

No. But what I enjoy most of all, of course, are concerts. Music, because I don’t need vision at all.

Are you the kind of listener who can go into rapture?

Oh sure! Oh sure! I have a huge collection of Bach. Some of it is mono records!

My mother tried to give me piano lessons. But I have to say, I just wanted to go out to play. Later, I fell in love with music.

Faculty Awards Publications Jorge Aguilar-Mora and Pierre Verdaguer 10

have been promoted to Professor Emeritus.

Sarah Benharrech (French) has received a Semester Research and Scholarship Award (RASA) for Spring 2011. She will be working on a project entitled “Evolution and Personal Identity Theory in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Natural Sciences.”

Sarah Benharrech (French) (ed.) Mémoires secrets dits de Bachaumont, volume VIII (1775), H. Champion.

Joseph Brami (French) has edited and prefaced a volume of essays on Proust - Lecteurs de Proust au XXe siècle et au début du XXIe, Marcel Proust 8, vol.1. La Revue des lettres modernes; Éditions Minard.

Valerie Orlando (French), Safoi Babana-Hampton (PhD French; Ass’t Prof. Michigan State), and Mary Vogl (Colorado State U) have published a translation of Correspondance ouverte by Moroccan philosophers Abdelkebir Khatibi and Rita El Khayat. Open Correspondence: An Epistolary Dialogue, University of New Orleans Press.

Evelyn Canabal-Torres (Spanish) has been selected as one of five 2011 Stamp ServiceLearning Faculty Fellows. Sponsored by the Adele H. Stamp Student Union - Center for Campus Life and supported by the Center for Robert Ramsey (East Asian Studies) will publish A History of the Korean Teaching Excellence, the program seeks to Language, Cambridge University Press, to appear in January 2011. develop a community of faculty who practice and promote service-learning pedagogy, Elodie Lafitte, Christina Wall, and Mary Cobb Wittrock, former memto contribute high-quality service-learning bers of the organizing committee of the 2007 SLLC Graduate Student courses to the new General Education cur- Forum, have published the conference proceedings. Culture as Text, Text riculum, and to enhance educational experi- as Culture was brought out by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in March ences for students outside the classroom.

2010.

Sandra Cypess (Spanish) has been chosen by Lina Morales, a 2010-2011 Philip Merrill Presidential Scholar, as one of two K-16 faculty mentors who have most influenced her academic career. This is Sandy’s second Merrill award.

Elke Frederiksen (German) was invited to deliver the keynote address at the Ohio State German Studies Graduate Conference in March 2010. Her lecture was entitled “Journeys across Continents - Writing across Borders: From Europe to Africa - from Africa to Europe.”

Kira Gor (SLA) has received a grant from Duke University for her project, “Linguistic Correlates of Proficiency.” She was also invited to join Duke’s National Policy Committee on Slavic & East European Languages.

New PhDs

Angela DeLutis-Eichenberger (Spanish) successfully defended her PhD dissertation entitled “El proceso semiótico de un héroe decimonónico: un estudio en torno a los ‘textos-tumbas’ de Andrés Bello.”

Directed by Jorge Aguilar-Mora.

Michele Mason (Japanese) has been awarded a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) to conduct research in Japan in Spring and Fall 11.

Tanya Huntington (Spanish) successfully defended her PhD disserta- Elizabeth Papazian’s book The Documentary Motion entitled “El águila y la serpiente de Martín Luis Guzmán: Una mea ment in Early Soviet Culture has been awarded the culpa revolucionaria.” Directed by Sandra Cypess. prize for best book in the category of literary/cultural studies by the American Association of TeachVerónica Muñoz (Spanish) successfully defended her PhD dissertation ers of Slavic and East European Languages. Liz (Rusentitled “Pliegues Sublimes: lo extraño, lo raro y lo perturbador en Si- sian) will travel to accept the award in January. mon Bolívar, Juana Manuela Gorriti y Ricardo Palma.” Directed by Jorge Aguilar-Mora.

Robert Ramsey (East Asian Studies) has been awarded the Tongsung Academic Prize from the Dorothée Polanz (French) successfully defended her PhD dissertation Tongsung Academic Foundation in Seoul, Korea, for entitled “Théâtralité: Analyse d’une notion critique à travers trois mé- distinguished scholarly achievements. He is one of dia et époques.” Directed by Hervé-Thomas Campangne. only two native-born Americans to have been extended this honor.

Katharina Rudolf (German) successfully defended her PhD dissertation entitled “ Memoriales Schreiben und Phänomene der literarischen 2010-2011 Lilly Faculty Fellows: Erinnerung bei Walter Benjamin, Ernst Jünger und Friedo Lampe.” Di- Valerie Anischenkova, Arabic rected by Peter Beicken.

Roberta Lavine, Spanish

Eric Zakim, Hebrew

Graduate Student Awards

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Cristina Burneo (Spanish)has received two fellowships this year: a full-year Snouffer Fellowship, awarded through the College of Arts and Humanities, for work on her dissertation; and a translation fellowship from the Collège International des Traducteurs Littéraires in Arles, France, where she will work during the month of January with Adriana Castillo de Berchenko, specialist on the Ecuadorian poet Alfredo Gangotena, the primary object of Cristina’s research.

Sunyoung Lee-Ellis (SLA) won a National Science Foundation (NSF) award following the NSF-IGERT annual meeting held in downtown Washington DC in May for her poster presentation on “Why bilinguals forget or don’t forget what their parents told them.” Sunyoung also received an Abstract Award during the 2010 Second Language Research Forum, as well as a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the NSF. Dorothée Polanz (French), Alejandra Echazú, Carolina GomezMontoya, and Verónica Muñoz(Spanish) were all recipients of DeFaculty Awards cont... partmental Dissertation Fellowships for a semester of writing support Valerie Anishchenkova, Julie Koser, and Jian- in AY11. mei Liu have been awarded RASAs for a semester next year: Valerie’s project is entitled : “Au- Oscar Santos-Sopena (Spanish) has been awarded the 2010 South tobiographical Identities in Contemporary Arab Atlantic Modern Languages Association (SAMLA) Harper Fund Award.

Narrative Discourse;” Julie will be working on The award in honor of SAMLA past president George Mills Harper proa book chapter entitled “Gender Ambivalence vides travel funds to attend the annual convention. Oscar also received and the Woman Warrior;” Jianmei will be work- awards from both the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Couning on “The Fate of Zhuangzi in Modern China.” cil and the Association of Computers in the Humanities to attend the Out-of-the-Box Text Analysis for the Digital Humanities workshop at the 2010 Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.

Undergraduate Student Awards see pg 18 for photos.

The following excerpts from letters of Three Dean’s support cover the areas in which all three awardees shine: intelligence, Scholars integrity, drive.

Lina Morales-Chacana (Spanish

major and minor in Secondary Education)

“Lina’s Honors Project is an excellent example of her commitment to humanistic goals. Her work involves original research and creativity in developing a web page that will provide information on all aspects of Chilean Theatre. While a few senior professors in the field have begun to develop web sites for individual national theatres in Latin America, there is no web site that deals with theatre in Chile in both Spanish and English.

In order to accomplish her research and investigation and gather the materials she needs, Lina has had to contact playwrights and critics working in Chile and the United States. The web site will include texts of original plays in both the Spanish original and in translation. Since Lina is also an accomplished translator, she will guide that aspect of the project. ”

Annelise Myers (Veterinary Science and German double major) “Another way Annelise stands out is through her active participation in community service and serious involvement in social service activities. Annelise served as an advocate in court for abused petitioners at the Domestic Violence Center of Howard County (2008 - 2010) and as a devoted member of the Best Buddies Organization, a non-profit program that provides the opportunity for intellectually disabled people to form personal friendships (2007-09); through her church affiliation, she has been involved with Cold Weather Shelter, which provides homeless adults a safe shelter of last resort to avoid the risk of death or bodily harm from hypothermia (2007-09); and she donates blood and platelets regularly.

This reflects her deep commitment to playing an active role in resolving social and political ills in our society. “

John Van Trieste (Japanese & Chi-

nese double major and East Asian Studies Certificate) “Let me start by saying that John has a special brain, the likes of which most of us can only dream about. A double major in Japanese and Chinese, two very different and difficult languages to master, John remains the stuff of legend in our department as the only student to ever have placed into advanced levels without any previous formal training in either language.

But it is not just his remarkable intellect that defines him and his way of moving through the world. John’s intelligence is tempered by his disarming humility and his strong critical skills are balanced by an infectious cheerfulness, making him a universally liked colleague and student. He is what I call a “whole person,” an individual whose integrity and purpose is determined not by scholastic accomplishments alone, but an individual that infuses his knowledge and learning of the world with a mindful ethics centered on the acceptance of all that it means to be a human being.”

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SLLC-Sponsored Conferences Second Language Research Forum (SLRF) Reconsidering SLA Research: Dimensions and Directions October 14-17

In October, the students from the Second Language Acquisition Program hosted the 2010 edition of the Second Language Research Forum (SLRF), a major annual international conference in the field. The event featured a preconference workshop on the latest technologies in the experimental research scene, as well as four plenary talks and six colloquia reflecting on the most current issues in the field. In addition, over 100 papers and 50 posters were presented over the four days of the conference. In all, the formal talks and the social gatherings at SLRF 2010 provided a venue for 424 faculty members and graduate students from all over the world to meet, network, and share research ideas.

Toward a Culture of Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and Democracy in Iran The Roshan Center for Persian Studies October 28-31

For more information visit: http://www.languages.umd.edu/persian/events/roshanhrc/

13 Reading Comparatively: Theories, Practices, Communities November 4-5

The Center for Literary and Comparative Studies of the Department of English, in conjunction with SLLC and the Departments of Classics and Art History, held a two-day, in-house symposium, the broad aim of which was to enable a critical rethinking of the act of reading – as well as to foster shared knowledge of cross-departmental areas of expertise. Conference participants addressed the ways in which their work is comparative beyond the common interpretation of reading in different languages, addressing such broad questions as: What does it mean to read comparatively? Why read comparatively? Is it possible not to read comparatively?

Keynote speakers include Louis Menand, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of English at Harvard University; Zita Nunes, Associate Professor of English; and Eric Zakim, Associate Professor of Hebrew.

SLLC presenters included: Silvia Carlorosi (Italian), Michelle Mason (Japanese), Carol Mossman (French), Valerie Orlando (French), Elizabeth Papazian (Russian).

Eric Zakim, SLLC

The Scene of Reading: Keynote Excerpts

When I first heard the title for this conference, I knew I was in trouble. I know nothing about reading.

I “do” readings, I assign readings to my students, I read a lot, I have even participated in a reading or two in my life—both musical and dramatic. But if hard-pressed—which, I suppose, is exactly what I am today—I could not define very well the process of reading on a social-critical level.

Writing is different. Our profession — literature, and the humanities more generally — has exerted great intellectual effort in an obsessed encounter with writing. Even if any sort of monolithic definition of writing remains — and should always remain — elusive, at least we are comfortable discussing, debating, and analyzing what writing is and what writing means.

Not so for reading. The good news for me is that it seems as though reading is as enigmatic and elusive to others as it is to me.

I thought of the title “The Scene of Reading” in order to allude to Jacques Derrida’s essay “Freud and the Scene of Writing” in an attempt to get at the basic, fundamental, raw, we might say, experience of reading as something beyond a metaphysical idealization. In my title, I didn’t mean to suppress Freud by leaving him out, but to highlight the theoretical encounter of reading — or rather, to ask: can there be a theory of reading? And what might it mean for literary studies to ignore a theorization of reading?

Frankly, I think Derrida himself answers the question, and throughout the essay — in George Carlin fashion — we could read “reading” instead of “writing” and come to some interesting issues and questions. Derrida himself already hints at the power of this exercise when he writes: “With dreams displaced into a forest of script,The Interpretation of Dreams, no doubt, on first approach will be an act of reading and decoding.” Derrida does a little more than that, but within the context of his reading of Freud within a context of the violence of the reception of writing in the body, a site of “writing” itself, as he would have it, and not a “reading” despite sounding very much like one. In any event, within this context Derrida starts to unravel a metaphysic of reading and place it within the materialist psychology of an early essay of Freud.

Rather than follow this process in Derrida — which we might better leave to a seminar at some other time — I think it worthwhile, and certainly more fun, to follow through on the idealized representation and understanding of reading, which made me think of various scenes (the second meaning of scene from the title) from films. In this, I am not invoking the popular as some sort of counter to a critical approach. Indeed, I think the scenes I want to show, some coming from art films, others from Hollywood, are fascinating for what they have in common as they tease out a representation of reading. Film simply has a way of representing reading which texts find rather difficult, I think.

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Zita Nunes, Comparative Literature As Julian Wolfreys points out, there is another interesting and obscure meaning for read, this time used as a noun, signifying the stomach of an animal. This meaning, the oldest of all, according to the OED, I would suggest may be the spectral presence behind our more common understandings of reading, inspiring familiar tropes that link reading to consuming, devouring, assimilating. This definition of read may have served as the inspiration perhaps for one of the 18th century German literary critic Friedrich Schlegel’s aphorisms: “A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus he should have more than one stomach.” Remembering Freud’s definition of identification as an act of incorporation, it is a short leap, at least in my mind, to practices of reading that are supposed to lead to identification—of the reader with the text, the text with a community, a community with its members.

The example I will give is of reading the African Diaspora as community.

I would like to look briefly at a scene of reading from Claude McKay’s 1928 novel, Home to Harlem.

The middle section of the book is devoted to an encounter between Jake, the Harlem-born main character, and Ray, a Haitian intellectual, a student who had left Haiti during the US occupation of that island, as they both work on a train, and as Ray is reading a book.

The reading modeled in the subsequent scene, in which Ray reads aloud to Jake, is comparative, collaborative, and interdisciplinary. The texts interwoven serve a didactic purpose in that they educate Jake as well as the reader of the novel by introducing them to the sites of recognition and misrecognition in and through language that mark the experience of diaspora. In response to Jake’s claim that “it is all Greek to me,” Ray starts them both off on a path of translations, where each translates for the other his context, his version of “the Negro,” this term that is supposed to self-evidently refer to them both—they translate from Greek to French to English, from English to slang, from straight to queer, from fear and stereotype to grudging acceptance and admiration, from Haiti to the US, from poetry to the blues, from history to daily life to poetry, from recognition to misrecognition, to an affectionate understanding of what they do or do not, can or cannot know about each other.

They work together, Jake and Ray, collaboratively, because their comparative reading, initially of Daudet’s Sappho, but then of their relative and shared contexts, has fissured their sense of their appointed identities, each of his own and also of the other. … A comparative reading always unsettles identities, meanings, and places, as it forces an engagement with more questions, more traces, more risk.

Graduate Field Committee in Film Studies On June 25th 2010, the Dean of The Graduate School formally approved the Graduate Field Committee in Film Studies, a collaboration between the Graduate School and the College of Arts and Humanities. A Graduate Field Committee is a group of faculty engaged in a common research area that crosses traditional disciplinary lines. Its mission is to sponsor collaborative scholarship by faculty and graduate students through the organization of symposia and lectures, the creation of courses, and the direction of graduate student research.

Conveners: Caroline Eades (French) and Elizabeth Papazian (Russian) SLLC Members: Valerie Anischenkhova (Arabic), Peter Beicken (German), Silvia Carlorosi (Italian), Regina Harrison (Spanish), Regina Igel (Portuguese), Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak (Persian), Jianmei Liu (Chinese), Michelle Mason (Japanese), Eyda Merediz (Spanish), José María Naharro-Calderón (Spanish), Valerie Orlando (French), Rose-Marie Oster (German), Pierre Verdaguer (French), Eric Zakim (Middle Eastern).

See: www.film.umd.edu (with thanks to Brian Real for his site work)

New Education Abroad Programs

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Maryland-in-Beijing Beginning this spring, UM students can spend a semester studying Chinese language and culture in Beijing.

Students on the Maryland-in-Beijing program take courses at the College of Chinese Language and Culture (CCLC) at Beijing Normal University along with courses taught by a UM Faculty Director, one of which includes the important “Connecting Across Cultures” component.

“Connecting Across Cultures” takes students out of the classroom and into the spaces of Beijing, where they learn how to communicate with people from different backgrounds, build their professional portfolio, meet Chinese and other international friends. Along with various “connecting” activities, students complete a series of reflection assignments, including online discussions with other study abroad students, as a way to think about their experiences more deeply. See http://international.umd.edu/studyabroad/2070.

Dushanbe, Tajikistan Persian Undergraduate Flagship A group of undergraduate Persian Flagship students spent 8 weeks this past summer in Dushanbe, the capital city of the Republic of Tajikistan, a small mountainous country situated between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Hosted by local families, the students studied Iranian Persian, Tajik (the local dialect of Persian), and culture in a classroom setting, while also traveling to other cities and rural areas. Daniel Weininger, who studied two full years in the Persian Flagship Program before his education abroad experience, and who now works in the Center for Persian Studies, lived with family consisting of a mother and father, five sons and a daughter, and their children; three generations shared the living space.

“The home was a hub for neighborhood and familial gatherings,” he remarks. Daniel describes the distinction between Persian and Tajik as akin to that between British and American English. “Forget everything you know about Western Society,” he says as a way of suggesting how to approach the former Soviet satellite. He was fascinated by the overall friendliness and curiosity of the people, the culture of the body, the unexpected gender roles, and the rich cuisine. Daniel’s blog (http:// dwindushanbe.blogspot.com) ranges from food reviews to the history of Dushanbe Jews to rugged travelogue to words of wisdom for visitors to other lands (and for those who stay home). One entry describes the experience of traveling by way of an old, shaky Soviet plane: “I’ve heard [this] before: worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do but doesn’t get you anywhere. So just take it easy and hope the plane will land. And when it does, laugh.”

Photos courtesy Daniel Weininger

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Recent Events September 21 JAPAN SPEAKER SERIES Laughing Fish, Weeping Mussels: The Regeneration of Life in Chiri Yukie’s Ainu Shin’yôshu Sarah Strong, Bates College October 5 DEPARTMENT OF GERMANIC STUDIES Justice and ‘Unjustice: Questions and Answers in Literary Discourses Harro Mueller-Michaels, Ruhr October 7 Universitäet Bochum LATINO HERITAGE MONTH El regreso de Lencho Film Screening & discussion with October 6 filmmaker Mario Rosales ARABIC FLAGSHIP PROGRAM Poetry & Palestine Fouzi El-Asmar, Freelance Jour- October 13 nalist GRADUATE FIELD COMMITTEE IN FILM STUDIES: WORKS-IN-PROGRESS SERIES October 7 Postcolonial or Transnational CinKOREAN ALPHABET DAY emas? A Comparative Perspective on Films from Former Colonial Empires Caroline Eades, SLLC October 13 ARABIC FLAGSHIP PROGRAM Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam Akbar S. Ahmed, American University

October 14 DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH AND ITALIAN Le théâtre sanglant du début du XVIIe siècle français Christian Biet, University Paris X Nanterre October 14 LATINO HERITAGE MONTH Echando Pleito: El Club Cubano Inter-Americano and the Emergence of Afro-Cubanidades in New York City, 1933-1995 Nancy Raquel Mirabal, San Francisco State University October 25 JAPAN SPEAKER SERIES Kan as an Other to Modernity: Language Reform Movements in 1880s Japan Atsuko Ueda, Princeton University October 26 CHINESE SPEAKER SERIES Writing Sex and Politics in Taiwan Li Ang, Writer November 12 INTERNATIONAL FILM SERIES Silent Comedy Shorts Live piano accompaniment by Andrew Simpson, Catholic University of America

Juan Ramón Jiménez Distinguished Lectures and Seminars In her second visit to campus, Concepción Company Company, Academia Mexicana de la Lengua, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México & Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, presented 4 lectures throughout the month of October.

La tensión entre escritura y oralidad en la formación de los adverbios en –mente La tensión entre forma y significado en el cambio gramatical Lexicon as a Reflection of Culture: ‘Bad’ and ‘Good’ Roots in the History of the Spanish Language La tensión entre profundidad histórica del cambio y la creación de nuevas categorías en la lengua

Argentina in Maryland: Approaches to Art and Fiction

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commemorating the bicentennial of Argentina’s independence from Spain October 19 Graciela Speranza, Writer and Critic Poéticas y políticas del desarraigo en la literatura y el arte latinoamericanos contemporáneos

Sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, the Center for Jewish Studies, the Institute of International Initiatives in the School of Education, the Institute for International Programs, and the Embassy of Argentina.

October 25 Mirta Kupferminc, Artist The Skin of Memory November 17 Sergio Chejfec, Writer Viaje a la provincial de los no-escritores December 6 Axel Gasquet, Scholar Los escritores argentinos de París: la generación de 1930.

Language House Awards

The University Sustainability Council and the Student Advisory Subcommittee have selected the Language House to be awarded funding from the Campus Green Fund for the St. Mary’s Compost and Garden Project. The proposal was one of six to receive funding out of a field of 29 projects.

Leysan Khakimova, PhD student in COMM and Russian Language House mentor, received the ARHU Service Award at ARHU Convocation on September 14.

SLLC Faculty Teaching Forum

Two Fall 10 Faculty Teaching Forums, organized by Manel Lacorte, Coordinator of Instruction and Professional Development, explored issues related to assessment in the context of language learning.

The first brought Laura Rosenthal (ENGL) to SLLC to present issues and trends in Learning Outcomes Assessment. The second featured Steve Ross (SLA), who presented results of an assessment study carried out by the Center for the Advanced Study of Language on Arabic and Chinese Startalk programs across the country in Summer 2010, including triangulated correlation of classroom observation, student self-assessment, teacher assessment of students, and summative proficiency assessment.

2010 Language Career Fair The second annual Language Career Fair was held November 16, welcoming more than 28 employers and sponsors of internships to campus. Organized by the University Career Center and the President’s Promise, and supported by the SLLC UG Committee, the fair attracted students from across campus, and was preceded by an evening workshop on job-seeking skills. A list of participating employers, including the National Security Agency (NSA), L-3 Stratis, and Anne Arundel County Public Schools, can be found at: https://umd-csm.symplicity.com/events/students.php?mode=list&cf=LANGUAGE2010

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SAVE THE DATES!

Graduate Field Committee in Film Studies Works in Progress Series Selves that Matter: Autobiographical Identities in Contemporary Arab Narrative Discourse Valerie Anishchenkova (Arabic) Wednesday, February 16 SLLC Faculty Research Forum: 18th Century Studies Julie Koser(German) and Mehl Penrose(Spanish) Wednesday, March 30 SLLC Graduate Student Research Day April 7-8, 2011 Language, Identity, and Nation-State Building during Globalization: International Symposium on China’s 100 Years of Language Planning April 14 - 15, 2011 Graduate Field Committee in Film Studies Conference April 29, 2011

Deans Scholars

John Van Trieste, Michelle Mason, Dean James Harris

Dean James Harris, Annelise Meyers, Brian Bequette

Dean James Harris, Sandra Cypess, Lina Morales-Chacana

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Giving to the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures You can contribute to the School or your favorite program within the School

A message from Carol Mossman, Director, SLLC

The faculty, staff and students of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (SLLC) are going from strength to strength. The quality of our undergraduate and graduate programs, of our faculty members’ and students’ research and scholarly publications, and of the services our faculty and staff provide for the campus and surrounding communities is truly exceptional.

But we need your help. As State funding declines, generous gifts from alumni, friends, embassies, cultural organizations, and businesses become ever more important. Private support is needed to increase funding for undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships, lectureships, and professorships. If you can support the School’s work in any way, please contact either of the following individuals:

Claire Goebeler, Associate Director for Administrative Affairs, SLLC, 301-405-4927 email: cgoebele@umd.edu

Laura Brown, ARHU Director of Development, 301-405-6339 email: lwbrown@umd.edu

Chose the Giving Method that’s Right for You Online Giving Make a donation to the department online at https://advancement.usmd.edu/OnlineGiving/umd.html Please designate “SLLC” on the form.

Gifts By Check Gifts may be made by check to “University of Maryland College Park Foundation (UMCPF).” Please designate “SLLC” in the memo line. Checks can be mailed to:

Claire Goebeler

Associate Director for Administrative Affairs

3215D Jiménez Hall

University of Maryland

College Park, MD 20742 Other Gift Options You can also donate to the School or to specific SLLC programs through matching gifts, appreciated securities, real estate, annuities, estate planning, and more.

The School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures JimĂŠnez Hall, University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742