Fall 2009 Newsletter

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Features 3

SLLC Welcomes New Faculty

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Faculty Profile: Professor Carol Mossman

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Staff Profile: Claire Goebeler

10 Publications and Awards 12

Recent Events

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Lectures

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Forthcoming Events

SLLC Welcomes New Director Dear Colleagues, Friends, and Alumni, As I near completion of my first semester as Director of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, I must say that the steepness of the learning curve is only matched by my amazement at the scope and breadth of talent, scholarship, and dedication of our faculty, our staff, and our students. This fall semester alone, the School has hosted ten lectures, numerous cultural events, and it has just co-sponsored with the Roshan Center for Persian Studies a major symposium entitled Iran After the 2009 Elections: Domestic, Regional, and International Dimensions. We have continued our International Film Series, capped on December 4 with a day-long symposium, “The Ethno(cinematic)graphic Look Today.” We sponsored a first annual Career Fair, with the participation of some twenty-five companies and prospective employers. Finally, we marked a very special event, the founding of the Language House, the campus’s first living/learning program, twenty years ago.

I wish to thank Michael Long for his leadership as Director over the past six years. I also wish to extend my gratitude to the inspired and hard-working team of Associate Directors, Claire Goebeler, Lauretta Clough, and Gabriele Strauch, with whom I am lucky enough to work, as well as to the excellent staff of the School.

With all best wishes, Carol Mossman, Director School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Copy: Lauretta Clough | Design: Jeffrey Maurer Distribution: Ray Chang

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SLLC Welcomes New Faculty Valerie Anishchenkova Assistant Professor of Arabic Valerie Anishchenkova received an MA with Honors from the State University of St. Petersburg (Russia) in Oriental and African Studies, and MA and PhD in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has taught Arabic language and literature/culture classes at the University of Michigan, Middlebury Summer School, and Tufts University. Her pedagogical experience includes Arabic language curricular development, as well as creating culture courses such as “Narrating War Zones: Cinematic and Literary Gulf and Chechen War Representations,” “Sexuality and Gender in Arabic Literature and Film,” “Fascinating Monsters: Representing Arabs in American Pop Culture vs. Americans in Arab Pop Culture.”

Her research focuses on identity studies, modern Arabic literature and film, cultural discourses on war, and sexuality studies. She is currently working on a book project entitled“Selves That Matter: Autobiographical Identities in Arab Literature and Film. “

Steven Ross Professor, Second Language Acquisition Steven J. Ross (PhD, University of Hawai’i Manoa, SLA) has joined SLLC after 25 years of teaching and research in Japan and Australia. Ross’s areas of research focus primarily on language assessment, SLA, and program evaluation. He has served as an editorial board member for the TESOL Quarterly, Language Testing, and Applied Linguistics, and has for the past 15 years been involved with language testing policy and research for the Test of English as a Foreign Language, and the Test of English for International Communication produced by Educational Testing Service.

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Minglang Zhou Associate Professor of Chinese Minglang Zhou earned his PhD in linguistics from Michigan State University in 1993.

Before joining UM, he taught at the University of Oregon, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Dickinson College. His teaching and research interests include the sociology of language, language and ethnicity, bilingual education, and teaching Chinese as a second language. He authored Multilingualism in China: The Politics of Writing Reform for Minority Languages 1949–2002 (Mouton de Gruyter, 2003) and edited four volumes on language policy, bilingual education, and language contact in China. He has also published two dozen articles and book chapters on these topics, and regularly reviews manuscripts for over ten international scholarly journals. He has recently won an American Philosophical Society fellowship for his book project “Models of nation-state building and language education for ethnic minorities in China, 1949-2009.”

SLLC Welcomes New Departments: The School has voted to restructure its constituent units, which now include the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, chaired by S. Robert Ramsey, the Department of French and Italian, chaired by Joseph Brami, the Department of Germanic Studies, chaired in ‘09-’10 by Rose-Marie Oster, the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, chaired by Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, the Department of Russian, chaired by Elizabeth Papazian, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, chaired by Juan Carlos Quintero-Herencia, and the PhD Program in Second Language Acquisition, directed by Robert DeKeyser.

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Faculty Profile:

Professor Carol Mossman discusses her work as How would you describe your evolution as a reader and scholar, from early days to the present?

scholar and teacher, Director and lover of art.

As a child I was an avid, even voracious reader. I remember reading things that were way above my level and just reading for the pleasure of the words, without, I am sure, even understanding what I was reading.

My first love by the time I got to college was philosophy, but at a certain point I decided not to go on in graduate studies with philosophy, partly because there were no women professors. Although at the time I did not even know what feminism was, I think it was automatically discouraging not to have any role models. I focused on literature in graduate school, French literature. Many of the same issues come up in literature as in philosophy, of course, ethical issues, the nature of knowledge, and the like, but literature has an aesthetic dimension that philosophy lacks.

Why literature produced outside your native language and culture?

I’m not sure how much one thinks about these things as they happen, but it’s true that I spent 6 years of my childhood (from ages 10-16) in Saudi Arabia. For many many years thereafter I viewed myself as an ex-pat. I’m convinced that these formative years abroad are what determined my interest in “foreign” literatures and cultures.

Going into graduate school definitely involves sacrifice. For one thing, you have to specialize, narrow down, although you have the rest of life to regain breadth, of course. In addition, I used to do a lot of music, and that stopped in graduate school. I played the French horn, some piano, and I like to sing a lot, all things I have never picked up again, with some regret, I have to say.

You are the author of three books. How do you see them in the context of a life of thinking? Are they more separate conversations within the field of French letters, or do you see them as part of a whole?

My books were written at very different times within the discourse of literary criticism. My first book was very much high theory. It dealt with a famous novel, The Red and the Black, by Stendhal, but seen through the lens of various critical models. I then got more and more interested in psychoanalysis, and so for my second project I started with Stendhal again, but moved backwards to Rousseau and took a look at writers who lost their mothers in childbirth. The subject gradually developed into something that would be closer to an examination of the rhetoric of birth and the birth of a nation, mainly in France, although I used a lot of Freud. This most recent book is a single topic, about a single, very interesting life. It allowed me to do archival research to a greater degree than ever before. I found it fascinating to uncover the life of a woman who was well known in her time, but who had been forgotten since. We are no longer in an academic climate of “high” theory. The field is a bit in fluctuation right now, and I think the last choice was in a way a liberation from some of the theoretical models that had guided my thought up to then.

6 There is actually an overarching theme in my three books. I realize having finished this last one that I seem to consider the act of writing, and I’m talking about writing over decades, as a kind of process of healing. I’ve noticed that the books I have chosen to look at tend to be from authors who have been fairly wounded. And I’m not quite sure what that says, but we’re not going to go into that!

How have you developed as a teacher over the years as you bring what you do outside the classroom into the classroom?

I think I feel a lot more natural today than I did in the early years. I remember once forgetting my notes when I first began teaching, and of course my notes were absolutely meticulous, and they were so meticulous that even though I forgot them, I could completely reproduce them, down to the page numbers with examples. It was Madame Bovary, if I recall. That’s how well I prepared! All the while teaching in what I hoped was a very spontaneous way! Now I allow myself to sit back a bit more and watch the process of communication happen.

What is it that you are hoping to communicate? Do you have a global sense of what one is teaching when one teaches literature? Or is it mainly text-dependent?

First of all, in the general vein, the history of thought seems increasingly important to me. The history of everything seems increasingly important to me. We just don’t know who we are going to be if we don’t know who we were. The other hope is text-based, and I think that is what makes me someone who teaches literature. Put simply, I love beautiful writing. I love beautiful everything, actually. So I think that’s another reason that this is an obvious calling for me, communicating and helping to discover that beauty.

You have just been appointed Director of the School. How do you think your career as a scholar of language, literature, and culture will inform your work as director?

As a scholar, I hope that I will always be able to honor my colleagues’ need for time. Faculty have a lot of administrative work. I want to make sure that I am always aware and alert to my colleagues’ needs for broad swaths of time to produce scholarly work. There are no shortcuts in being a scholar. There are no shortcuts in learning a language. There are no shortcuts in learning how to play the piano. It’s all about time, and process through time.

That’s what I find so disconcerting about tweeting and twitter.

My intellectual commitments are to concepts of culture and communication. The School is a very unusual entity because we combine so very many different cultures, so many different anthropologies of communication, you might call it. And different interests. This is on the one hand an enormous challenge, but I think our strength derives precisely from this diversity. The whole question from my point of view is how to remain true to the depth and intellectual integrity that we have in each of our programs, and even extend it where possible, and at the same time, bring out some of what I think are the remarkable commonalities that we share.

Do you feel that the School is or should be an important conversant in current debates on the role of the humanities in the academy?

I think that the questions that one poses when one studies a “foreign” culture are absolutely central to the humanities. As far as I’m concerned, it comes down to the Delphic dictum – know thyself – and I firmly believe that one does not know oneself until one has encountered the Other, not just the Other, but others. In some sense, our discipline should be the most open in the humanities; we should be the portal to those others. And the students that we teach, and our disciplines, should reflect that. The kind of knowledge that one gains in sallying forth, abroad, so as better to know oneself.

7 We’re at a point now in history where we’re going to be more and more aware of literature and film that come from other parts of the world, and I think the School is really well positioned, at least on this campus, to be the translator, I guess you could say, of that trend. I think that the people of the world, the peoples of the world, are now gaining a voice which before the Internet they may not have had, and we will be in part at least the translators of some of these realities which may be new to Americans.

Have your past experiences in administration, as former Chair of French and Acting Director of the Comparative Literature Program, laid fitting groundwork for your job as SLLC Director, or are you in a brave new world?

In just a purely administrative sense, sure. Some of the things that might come as a shock for somebody who hasn’t done something like this before are less likely to catch me by surprise. The SLLC budget is quite a bit larger than some of the budgets I’ve seen, for example; still, there’s a basic principle of budgetness. And for some reason, for someone who’s in the humanities, I actually like working with numbers!

Another thing I learned in directing those other two units is once again about time. And that is that that change –which has to happen, the world is about change -- always takes time, negotiation, patience, sometimes even forgiveness. It’s taken me some time to understand that people are often reluctant to change because they are afraid, afraid of losing whatever they have, and I respect that kind of fear. I think it’s a very normal thing. One of my goals is to work supportively with people who are feeling anxiety about moving away from wherever they’re most comfortable towards something that is yet to be defined. I think all of us are moving toward something different in our fields. Again, I see lots of opportunities for us, and I see myself as an escort, if you will.

May we assume there is some pleasure in this for you?

I’d have to say one of the biggest pleasures is getting to know faculty, staff, and students more in depth. I find the depth of faculty research breathtaking, people are looking into absolutely fascinating issues, so that is the big plus for me. And the second plus is the potential to be creative in terms of designing programs and bringing out our research and teaching potential.

I think we can probably assume the down sides, and move on without listing them! During the more challenging times, when the overwhelming sense is less about creativity than something else, what do you do to relax, get back to where you can be at your best?

I pet my dog a lot!

And this semester, precisely as a way of trying to stay fresh -- and patient -- I’ve taken up Tai Chi, taught by our own Phoenix Liu, so I cross the street every Thursday and give myself the treat of enormous grace. Grace through time, I guess you could say.

And beauty as well?

There’s a great deal of beauty to it. I’ve done a lot of yoga, which is wonderful, but it’s not beautiful. This is absolutely beautiful, and it’s a discipline at the same time. And I guess for me that’s what art is.

I’ve also taken up Japanese floral arrangement this year. Ikebana is very, very disciplined, and very hands on.

When I’m in that large room filled with flowers, I feel like I’m back in kindergarten, you know, taking a lot of time with materials, positioning this branch here and that branch there, for balance.

So, time, discipline, beauty, and creation. I think you’ve shown us your life’s threads.

8 You are a Marylander, born and bred. Do you take pleasure from working at the central institution of research and teaching of your home state?

Staff Profile: Claire Goebeler Associate Director for Administrative Affairs

I do, yes. I especially like it when major events are held here that put us in the public’s focus in a positive way. Often I listen to public radio, and I love it when an especially learned guest is speaking about some major item of importance to the nation. I can’t tell you how many times I have been pleasantly surprised to hear the announcer close the interview by citing Dr. So and So from University of Maryland’s Department of Such and Such. It is very satisfying to be part of an institution that matters beyond its borders.

Do you sometimes get flashes of memory about your days as an undergraduate?

Yes, every day. I still remember where I first parked my car (called “lot 7 overflow” - a dirt lot located behind the frat houses), where I used to socialize (the UM “pub” that I managed to get into while still in high school – it was located where the South Campus Dining Hall is now) and even specific rooms and classes I took while I was here (like the large classroom where I sat in on my husband’s Hitchcock film class – it is now the Confucius Institute). My only connection to Jimenez at that time (mid 70’s) was through my oldest sister, who was a French TA when I was a freshman. I often “hung out” with her in the large TA office on the 4th floor. On the whole though, the campus has just exploded in the 35 years that I have known it.

Would you like to tell us something about your family? I know all 4 of you are linked to UM! I also know that you have 5 sisters, which, as I have told you, is a source of great jealousy for me.

My husband Rob works for OIT. He’s been here since 1978 and is dreaming of retirement. We were UG’s here together.

He is a huge Terrapin fan and has been to several bowl games and Final 4 tournaments. We were thrilled when our daughter Jackie committed to attending UM. She said that what convinced her to come was when she toured Clarice Smith (CSPAC) and discovered that Yo Yo Ma had performed there. Jackie marched in the band for 4 years and pledged their service sorority, Beta Eta. As part of her pledging process, she had to learn the oral history of the campus. She knows all manner of inane facts about the campus, its traditions, and the major personalities of each era. My son is a senior CRIM major. I will miss our lunches (at Chipotle - a staple of college student diet) where I could catch up with him and his campus life. I also have two nephews who are students here and a sister who has recently returned to the classroom. Yes, having 6 siblings (5 sisters & a lone brother) is a lot. I can’t imagine how my parents survived it. Large families are a thing of the past (octoMom aside) but it was a warm and supportive environment to grow up in.

9 Is your extended family a big part of your life?

When you are a member of a large family, no matter where you live, or what you make of yourself, you never lose your place in it. So, I embrace it. I am fortunate that we are all supportive of one another, in happy times and in tough times.

I can never tell what this will mean, babysitting, hosting large family dinners, packing and helping with moves, or something else. A few years ago this meant baking. Literally, each month I baked massive amounts of homemade cookies, muffins, breads, and mini pies to ship to my two nephews who were serving overseas. It was time-consuming, took planning, and some cost, but in the end, it was great fun.

How has having many siblings influenced your personality, or your sense of yourself?

Well, I think that it has allowed me to appreciate multiple points of views and it has also given me a better ability to communicate. As a new mother I remember reading about how families communicate, one child to two parents. Add in another child and the arrows representing the lines of communication multiplied by several factors. I think my family communication chart would look like a spider web after accounting for all 9 of its members. Other than that, I would say that because I am used to working with a family group, I look at projects in terms of how each person can contribute to solving them, as opposed to doing it all myself or leaving everything up to just one person. So I adhere to the “many hands” concept of making light of work.

What route brought you to the SLLC Office of Administrative Affairs?

I have worked in a number of units on campus (ORAA, ENGR, Res Life) and done a variety of things (financial aid, contract administration, enrollment). Most recently I worked for the NFLC, another unit in ARHU. The NFLC primarily does national policy and sponsored research work for DoD in the area of strategic language training and heritage learners.

I reported to its Director, Catherine Ingold. I really enjoyed her style and manner of work and had some reluctance in leaving. But it was a good move for me to come to the School and learn more about how instruction is actually delivered on a campus of this size. Though I liked my work there, in the research setting, I missed the rhythms of the academic year, the faculty, the students and the campus setting. You can’t hear the marching band practice when your office is on the other side of Route 1.

What is the best part of your job?

The people! I have to say that the School’s faculty is the most welcoming group I’ve ever worked for. I also like our more celebratory style (who wouldn’t?) and the cultural diversity that is housed in this building. Though I am not well traveled, I gain something by working with those who are.

You are or have been a fan of sports, and a practitioner of at least one sport. What do sports bring to your life?

Well, I am a student of the game of golf. I’ve played since I got married, mostly in an attempt to NOT become a golf widow. I’ve been mildly successful at both. Golf is an ancient game about connecting – with the ball, the course, and other players. If you play it, even just once with someone, you have an immediate insight into that person. In spite of your final score, it takes just one good shot to bring you back the next time. It is also one of the few games you can play across genders, age, and skill level – all of which I like.

Do you have any suggestions for students who are interested in studying languages, literatures, and cultures in SLLC? Just do it! And then reward yourself by taking a Study Abroad course. Students have no idea how impressed a potential employer is with 2nd language skills, and they don’t realize that they may never again have the opportunity to combine study and travel again.

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Semester on Peace The School has contributed essays, courses, and events to the Semester on Peace. www.peace.umd.edu

Essay: Learn a language, have peace?

One of the best hidden and most important benefits of the experience of learning a language – which begins on the very first day one opens one’s mouth to utter, or even to stop and listen to, a new sound – can and perhaps should be thought of as groundwork for an engagement with peace. To make the effort to learn the communication system of another group of people is implicitly to recognize the value of that system and those people, to move outside of one’s own natural centeredness and take a humble step into an unknown (and vastly complex) territory, and to open oneself to being changed. Recognition of the value of something that is not you, humility, the courage to incorporate some of that thing that is not you – all sine qua non of a peaceful stance. It is not surprising that those who remain in that stance come to speak in terms of love, the tough kind though it may be.

Learning a language is a process that in the end leads not only to knowledge of something outside oneself -- which then becomes incorporated into oneself, in a much more literal sense than in the case of many other kinds of knowledge -- but also to a development of one’s own culture and language. No one loses, everyone gains.

Language study is always also culture study, sometimes more overtly, sometimes less. Given time, it can lead to a de-centered attitude toward understanding and problem-solving in general. An absorbed willingness to give up habits of singularity – one way, one kind, one good – and to live well with and continue to seek the multiple.

From: www.peace.umd.edu/Essays/essays.html

Publications Cynthia Martin (Russian) has published the third edition of her second-year Russian textbook, with Irina Dolgova. Russian Stage Two: Welcome Back! Kendall Hunt Publishing.

Carol Mossman (Director) has published Writing with a Vengeance: The Countess de Chabrillan’s Rise from Prostitution, University of Toronto Press.

Valerie Orlando (French) has published Francophone Voices of the “New Morocco” in Film and Print, Macmillan Publishers.

Elizabeth Papazian (Russian) has published Manufacturing Truth: The Documentary Moment in Early Soviet Culture, Northern Illinois University Press.

Ana Patricia Rodriguez (Spanish) has published Dividing the Isthmus, Central American Transnational Histories, Literatures, and Cultures, University of Texas Press.

Mary Ellen Scullen (French) has published the fourth edition of her first-year French textbook, with Albert Valdman, Cathy Pons. Chez Nous: Branché sur le Monde Francophone, Pearson.

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Congratulations to our New PhDs

Sandhya Bodapati (French) successfully defended her PhD dissertation entitled “Apologies in French: An analysis of remedial discourse strategies used by L1 speakers.” Directed by Lindsay Yotsukura. Sandhya has accepted a position as Assessment Specialist, French and World Language Pedagogy, at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ. Pausides Gonzalez (Spanish) successfully defended his PhD dissertation entitled “Desglosar la memoria. La sensibilidad del tiempo en la obra poética de José Antonio Ramos Sucre.” Directed by Jorge Aguilar Mora.

Pausides is currently Associate Professor at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, Venezuela.

Sylvia Naylor (Germanic Studies) successfully defended her PhD dissertation on “Die Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF): Repräsentationen in literarischen Texten und anderen kulturellen Produkten.” Directed by Elke Frederiksen. Sylvia has accepted a position as Archivist with the National Archives and Records Administration.

Diana Romero (Spanish) successfully defended her PhD dissertation entitled “Un lugar en el mundo: literatura, conocimiento y autonomía en tres novelas colombianas de finales del siglo XX.” Directed by Saúl Sosnowski. Diana is a full-time lecturer at Colombia University.

Karen Vatz (Second Language Acquisition) successfully defended her PhD dissertation entitled “Grammatical gender representation and processing in advanced second language learners of French.” Directed by Robert DeKeyser. Karen is a Faculty Research Assistant at the Center for the Advanced Study of Language.

Faculty Awards

Student Awards Graduate:

Elke Frederiksen (Germanic Studies) has been selected as one of three faculty members campus-wide to serve on the national selection committee for the New Faculty Fellows Program recently launched by ACLS (American Council of Learned Societies) with funding from the Mellon Foundation.

Sunyoung Lee (SLA), ARHU Graduate Student Travel Award

Manel Lacorte (Spanish) is a recipient of a 2009-2010 instructional improvement grant from the Center for Teaching Excellence, for his project entitled: “Helping Students to Succeed in Spanish: Creating an Electronic Resource Site for Students of Spanish 301.”

Dean’s Senior Scholar Christopher Tabisz -Germanic Studies/Linguistics

Juan Carlos Quintero-Herencia (Spanish) has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for his book project tentatively entitled Listening Travels: Poetics and Politics in the Caribbean Archipelago. Our profound congratulations will go with him this spring.

Ana Patricia Rodríguez (Spanish) was chosen by Vineeta Singh, a 2009-10 Merrill Presidential Scholar, as one of two k-16 teachers who had most influenced her education. “In her class on Latin American literatures and cultures, Dr. Rodríguez encouraged us to explore the context that surrounds the production of literary works. Through her support and motivation, I found my niche here in College Park.”

Undergraduate:

Heyward G. Hill Memorial Scholarship Ian Gross – Philosophy/Chinese Access2Leaders Externship Program: Connecting Language House Alumni and Residents Dora Larson (French Cluster), Marc McCarthy (French Cluster), Whitney Schepf (Japanese Cluster), Ilana Shrier (Hebrew Cluster), Anastasia Frolova (Russian Cluster). $200 stipend and externship with local alumni. They will “publish” their experiences at http://www.languages.umd.edu/lh/blog.html.

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Recent Events: SLLC Faculty Teaching Forum SLLC Faculty Research Forum Heritage Language Teaching and Learning Two fall Faculty Teaching Forums, organized by Manel Lacorte, Coordinator of Instruction and Professional Development, explored issues related to heritage learners.

The first forum examined a range of heritage learner profiles, strategies of placement and pedagogy, and challenges for the effective integration of heritage learners in language, literature, and culture courses in divergent units.

The five panelists were Ali Abasi (Persian), Alaa Elgibali (Arabic), Kira Gor (SLA), Miki Kashima (Japanese), and Dolores Lima (Spanish).

The second forum featured Dr. Shuhan Wang, Deputy Director of the National Foreign Language Center, on “Developing a Learner-Oriented Pedagogy for Heritage Language Instruction: Theoretical Considerations and Practical Implications.” Her wide-ranging talk on biliteracy sketched out a holistic “eco-system” of elements at play in every case of heritage learning.

2009 Language Career Fair

The Art of Human Composition in the Mirror of Princes Literature of the Italian Quattrocento The first Faculty Research Forum of 2009-2010 featured Giuseppe Falvo (Italian), who presented his work on the role that Humanism has played in the formation and development of modern political thought. Through a close reading of primary sources, he brought out the practical application of humanist philological scholarship (peritia litterarum) in the creation and implementation of innovative models of princely behavior and practice (scientia rerum). What is significant about these texts, which focus on the art of human composition (compositio), is the identification of the five classical components of rhetorical discourse described primarily by Cicero and Quintilian: invention (inventio), arrangement (dispositio), expression or style (elocutio), retention (memoria), and delivery (actio). Drawing instructive parallels from the art of pictorial composition, codified in Della Pittura (1435) by one of the leading art theorists of the XV century, Leon Battista Alberti, Dr. Falvo demonstrated how these rhetorical components, which are applicable to the visual arts, are also applicable to the princely codes of conduct advocated by the Italian humanists.

SLLC launched an inaugural language career fair in November in the Stamp Student Union, welcoming more than 25 employers and sponsors of internships to campus. Co-organized by the University Career Center and the President’s Promise, and supported by the SLLC UG Committee, the fair attracted nearly 300 students from across campus, and was followed by inquiries about “next time.” A list of participating employers can be found at: https://umd-csm.symplicity.com/events/students.php?cf=Language2009

UM and the Università per Stranieri di Perugia Sign MOU In an evening ceremony at the Italian Embassy in Washington DC, in the presence of the Italian Ambassador, H.E. Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata and vice-Ambassador, Dr. Sebastiano Cardi, the University of Maryland and the Università per Stranieri di Perugia signed a Memorandum of Understanding as a public declaration to work together in implementing a program at the international level geared toward the preparation and certification of future teachers of Italian. The new program, integrated into the College of Education’s MCERT in Italian, rests on a total immersion experience in the language and culture of Italy and a specialization at the advanced level in the teaching of Italian. We recognize the extraordinary efforts of Giuseppe Falvo in bringing this collaboration into being.

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Commemoration: The Fall of the Berlin Wall To mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9th students of the German Club built a wall on Hornbake Plaza throughout the day, capping the event with words delivered by Dr. Carol Mossman, Mr. Christian Sedat, First Secretary of Political Affairs for the German Embassy, Dean James F. Harris, Dr. Gabriele Strauch, and the president of the German Club: Ms. Marissa Goldner. Finally, with a burst of enthusiasm, the cardboard wall, covered with graffiti applied throughout the day on what “Wall” meant to passersby, was torn down.

© Vince Salamone www.diamondbackonline.com

ESSAY: WHY I AM A BERLINER TOO (A Sort of Personal Story of the Fall of the Berlin Wall) Gustavo A. Chaves, PhD Program, Department of Spanish and Portuguese It’s November 9th, 2009. I am walking around campus with a German flag in my hand. I have come to a public gathering in front of the Hornbake Library to hear some speeches and to watch a few boxes tumble down as a way of reenacting what happened in Berlin 20 years ago.

But why should somebody from Costa Rica care about the fall of the Berlin Wall, especially when that somebody happened to be merely ten years old at the time of the event? I have read this question many times in the unbelieving faces of the people to whom I have tried to explain why November 9th, 1989 is one of the most defining ethical moments of my life.

I have never meant to dramatize my experience. In all honesty, I do not remember much about that time and of that day in particular. All I can recall is being home after school. My parents were watching the news. There were people shouting and hugging; some were hammering a wall. Unimpressed, I proceeded to go next door to my aunt’s house, only to find her monotonously ironing clothes, her mind completely occupied not with the last minutes of the Cold War but with the more familiar and inspiring plot of a soap-opera. It is the same story many people my age can tell.

We lived in a country without an army. Having my parents interrogated or imprisoned was not a concept for me. Nor was asking for permission to leave or enter the country. These were basic liberties that I took for granted and if at any point I showed a moral reaction toward the events on the news, it must have stemmed from this almost innate conviction that people are intrinsically free… or should be.

Eventually, the Berlin Wall meant a question, or at least the beginning of one: It was a “What if?” What if I had been born on the other side? What if I had been a Party official in one of the Eastern bloc countries? What if my family had been torn asunder because of that wall?

These are silly questions. They are also improbable and emotionally-driven. But in answering these questions years later, I realized how accidental it all had been, how so many lives can be crushed to serve the caprices of blind leaders in the midst of a mindless ideological confrontation and how easily I, along with my family, could have been a part of it. I learned from the Wall that borders are too trivial to define the lives of the peoples they separate. That crowd peacefully crossing from one side of Berlin to the other showed me that, powerful as they may be, systems are more precarious and fearful than people confronted with questions of dignity.

The word I have in mind every 9th of November is “Reunification.” It is used to describe what happened to Germany as a country after the Wall fell down. But thinking on it personally (that is, responsibly), I see that the entire world was reunified on that 9th of November of 1989. But there is no promise involved in this story as long as we let it pass as just another historical date. The memory of what once divided Berlin should be a constant warning to us about how fragile our freedoms can be, and how much work it actually takes to keep them breathing –and breathing for others.

I am not a German, but for as long as I live I will think of myself as a Berliner because I cannot tolerate a world wherein freedom and human dignity are the lot of some, while others live in oppression. I make no mistake about it: the fall of the Wall was not a fulfillment of hope; it was a call for awareness and a limit we should endeavor to never reach again.

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Lectures

Book Launch: My Prison, My Home

Folklore and Modernity in Japan: The Case of Tanuki

The Roshan Center for Persian Studies hosted Dr. Haleh Esfandiari , director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, former deputy secretary general of the Women’s Organization of Iran, and author of Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution, who spoke on the occasion of the publication of her new book: My Prison, My Home.

Her memoir recounts her recent experiences as a political lightning rod during one of her yearly visits to her mother, relating how Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, convinced that she was part of an American conspiracy for regime change in Iran, put her through weeks of interrogation, tapped her phone, requiring her to speak in code to her husband and daughter, and finally held her at the notorious Evin Prison, where she would spend 105 days in solitary confinement.

Michael Dylan Foster, Assistant Professor of Japanese folklore and literature, Indiana University, Bloomington, presented a talk on the tanuki, or raccoon dog, famous in Japanese folklore as a well-endowed and often comical trickster. One of its supernatural talents is shapeshifting—the ability to alter its own corporeal form as well as the contours of landscape.

At the turn of the twentieth century, these powers were challenged by another force that could reshape the landscape: the steam train. By exploring a number of legends that pit tanuki against train, Foster uncovers a profound anxiety about modernity and the changes it was bringing to the natural and cultural environment of Japan.

17th Century French Studies

Pom Poko ©Studio Ghibli

Two lectures were delivered by Louis Van Delft, distinguished Professor Emeritus of 17th-century French Literature, Paris-Nanterre. One on his book entitled Les moralistes.

Une apologie; the other entitled “Le ‘métier’ de Molière.”

Indigenismo, Decolonization, and Maya Nationalism: Luis de Lion’s El tiempo principia en Xibalbá Emilio del Valle Escalante, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, UNC Chapel Hill, presented part of his book-length project on the representation of memory and history in contemporary indigenous textual production from Mesoamerica and the Andes.

The Question of Afghanistan: Could Women be the Answer?

Louis Van Delft

A panel discussion with Suraya Pakzad (activist and founder of the Voice of Women Organization), Nasrine Gross (founder of The Roqia Center for Women’s Rights, Studies and Education in Afghanistan), and Tazreena Sajjad (PhD student, AU School of International Service). Sponsored by the Persian Flagship Program, the University Career Center/The President’s Promise, the Women’s Studies Department, Global Communities, and Peace X Peace.

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The Shame of Survival: Working Through A Shared Histories Across Two Continents: Spanish Guest Workers in Germany and Nazi Childhood “Braceros” in the US Ursula Mahlendorf, Professor Emerita of German, Slavic, and Semitic Studies and former Associate Dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara offered a reading and discussion on the occasion of the publication of her memoir entitled The Shame of Survival, which relates her experiences as a girl brought into a Nazi youth organization, and the path she took in coming to terms with her past. It was a project born of her desire not only to understand through writing, but to bring the past to her students and “make them feel.”

The global labor shortage in Europe and in the US during and after WWII brought Spanish workers to Germany and Mexican laborers to the US. Both populations would toil as “guest workers,” encountering similar labor policies, hardships, and identity issues. Gabriele Strauch (Germanic Studies) and Ana Patricia Rodríguez (Spanish and Portuguese) led a discussion following the viewing of scenes from documentaries on these cross-Atlantic guest worker programs.

Peace and the Promotion of Democracy: America’s Choices in the Middle East Talk presented by Arabic Flagship guest Ammar Abdulhamid, Founder and Director of the Tharwa Foundation, Syrian author turned human rights and pro-democracy activist, who enjoys a global reputation as an outspoken advocate for social and political change in the Broader Middle East and North Africa region. In 2005, Newsweek magazine named him as one of the most influential personalities in the contemporary Arab World. Ammar has briefed the President of the United States, testified in front of the U.S. Congress, was a visiting fellow at the Saban Center for Mideast Policy at the Brookings Institution, is a frequent expert media commentator, and has presented testimony on behalf of numerous asylum seekers to the U.S. Ammar Abdulhamid

Transmission and Tradition: Between Misunderstanding and Discomfort Ricardo Forster, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires, presented the Juan Ramón Jiménez Distinguished Lecture on what he called the “encounter between generations,” the dialogue between the past and the future, the complex and “enormous task of questioning what is human and inhuman in Man,” and our need to continue passionately “throwing bottles into the sea.” His lecture, delivered in Spanish, was generously subtitled for an open audience (thanks go to Verónica Muñoz for the written text, and to Vivianne Salgado for her interpreting during the Q and A period). Among his books are: Walter Benjamin and the Problem of Evil (2001), Messianism, Nihilism and Redemption: From Abraham to Spinoza, from Marx to Benjamin (2005), The Hermeneuts of the Night, from Walter Benjamin to Paul Celan (2009).

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Conference: IRAN-After the 2009 Elections A major symposium brought together a stellar roster of experts and specialists, primarily academics and journalists, to discuss the domestic, regional and international implications of the election.

Welcomed by Provost Nariman Farvardin, the full house heard three panels: The Election and Its Aftermath, with Suzanne Maloney, Brookings Institution; Robin Wright, U.S. Institute of Peace; Steve Kull, Program on International Policy Attitudes, University of Maryland; Iran’s Nuclear Program, Then and Now, with Trita Parsi, National Iranian American Council; James Walsh, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Gary Sick, Columbia University; Iran’s Regional Position, with Abbas Milani, Stanford University; Shibley Telhami, Sadat Chair for Peace and Development, University of Maryland; Karim Sadjadpour, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Presented by the Roshan Center for Persian Studies and the Sadat Chair for Peace and Development, and co-sponsored

by SLLC, The College of Arts and Humanities, and the Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

The Language House 20 Years of Immersion!

Happy Birthday Language House!

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Giving at SLLC:

Celebration at SLLC: Eid-al-Fitr The Arabic program organized a Friday afternoon party in celebration of the end of Ramadan that featured rousing music, a Moroccan feast of roasted lamb and raisins, chicken tajin with lemon, bastila, aubergine salad, pastry, an oriental dancer, and an invitation to the standing-room only crowd to join in the dancing.

A 2007 alumna of the Japanese Cluster has donated $1,000 to the Language House in gratitude for the part it played in her linguistic and cultural education. We thank Katy Phillips for her surprise gift, and wish her well as she leaves for work in Tokyo.

Music at SLLC:

Translating History into Music: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Japanese-American Internment Camps Anthony Brown, composer, percussionist, ethnomusicologist, Guggenheim and Ford Fellow, Poetry at SLLC: Smithsonian Associate Scholar, Grammy nominee, Artistic DirecReading: Coral Bracho tor of Fifth Stream Music and the Asian American Orchestra, gave a Born in 1951 in Mexico City, Coral Bracho has published six books of lecture on composing the musipoetry, including El ser que va a morir (1982), a groundbreaking work in cal suites “Never Again” and “E.O. Mexican letters. In the words of her translator, Forrest Gander, “Her dic- 9066” from his album FAMILY. tion spills out along ceaselessly shifting beds of sound… Bracho’s poems make sense first as music, and music propels them.” Reading co-spon- Dance at SLLC: sored by the Mexican Cultural Institute and the Embassy of Mexico.

On Mondays and Wednesdays at 6:30pm in the Language House, Reading: Hernán Bravo Varela and Alejandro Tarrab the International Folk Dance Club The Young Mexican Poets series presented a reading by two prize-win- presents dancing from around ning poets: Hernán Bravo Varela (b. 1979), translator of Shakespeare, the world. Join the club and learn Dickinson, Hopkins, Wilde, and other English-language poets, and author Japanese fishing dance, Middle of two books of poetry; and Alejandro Tarrab (b. 1972), author of three Eastern belly dance, Royal Scottish books of poetry. Co-sponsored by the Mexican Cultural Institute and the Country Dance, Irish Ceili dance, urban break dance, and more.

Embassy of Mexico.

Undergraduate Language Flagship News: The Arabic and Persian Flagship programs have new websites! www.arabic.umd.edu The Undergraduate Arabic and Persian Flagship Programs include: • Intensive language skills courses • Area studies courses • Guest speakers and native speaking language partners • Cultural exchanges and field trips • Scholarships and overseas training

www.persian.umd.edu

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Forthcoming Events:

8th Annual SLLC Graduate Student Forum SPACE AND TRANSCULTURALITY April 8-9, 2010

“Each time I undertake to paint a picture, I have the sensation of leaping into space. I never know whether I shall fall on my feet.” Picasso may have simply been trying to paint a picture, but his statement exemplifies the metaphysical connection between space and the endeavor of expression. Space, as evidenced by its charm over architects, artists, writers, and scientists alike, is a concept that profoundly intrigues us, and its examination is fundamental to an understanding of ourselves.

Space can be an emptiness, or it can be room to grow. “The space between” can be a communal place where ideas meld, but it can also be a gap, a breach in understanding. This conference seeks to explore the question of space and its representations within the context of transculturality in language and literature. How does space, from its geographical to metaphorical manifestations, affect the flow and transfer of ideas between cultures? What are the differences between physical and mental spaces among cultures? What consequences arise from the imposition of one culture on the space of another? We think of barriers as marking a boundary within a space, but in what ways does space itself create boundaries? How is space compartmentalized by different cultures? Do certain gaps between cultures defy exchange?

The graduate students of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Maryland cordially invite students from all disciplines to submit papers that analyze possible reflection on and interpretation of “Space and Transculturality.” Topics include but are not limited to: • • • • • • • • • • •

The relationship between space and borders (both physical and metaphorical) Representations of space in literature The conceptualization of space from a linguistic perspective Sociocultural approaches to the question of space Colonialism and post-colonialism Terrorism in today’s world literature Geographical space Emptiness Visual representations of space Borders, boundaries, and walls Definitions of space

Abstracts are encouraged from all fields and papers should be in English. Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words by January 15, 2010 to umdsllcconf2010@gmail.com.

2010 Second Language Research Forum RECONSIDERING SLA RESEARCH: DIMENSIONS AND DIRECTIONS October 14-17

Congratulations to the SLA PhD students whose proposal to host this international conference was selected from among a highly competitive field. Detailed information is available at:

www.languages.umd.edu/SLRF/

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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