Anna Michelle Martinez-Montavon’s passion for languages began well before she came to Notre Dame. Her parents grew up in Mexico and South America, and she grew up in the United States speaking Spanish at home as her first language. She learned English while in daycare and then studied French in middle school. Now in college, she’s fallen in love with yet another language.
Rachel Rivers Parroquín joins the University of Notre Dame faculty this year as an assistant professional specialist who will both teach Spanish and lead an expansion of service learning programs for Spanish majors.
Two faculty members of the Romance Languages and Literatures Department have been named recipients of the 2010 Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
Literary Models
Maria Rosa Olivera-Williams, associate professor of Spanish and director of the Latin American Studies Program, and Catherine Perry, associate professor of French, were among 20 Joyce Award winners selected from across campus. The awards honor faculty who create environments that stimulate significant student learning, elevate students to a new level of intellectual engagement, and foster students’ ability to express themselves effectively within their disciplines.…
Notre Dame students have joined with the American Red Cross to form a Community Language Bank. A key mission of the Language Bank is to ease refugees’ transition to their new life in the United States. Senior Chris Meister developed the idea after a trip to Kenya, where he realized that there are many refugees in the United States who don’t speak English, and that Notre Dame has the resources to help them.…
The University of Notre Dame is already home to an impressive number of scholars whose research and teaching focus on Italy and the culture and history of a part of the world central to the birth and development of Western civilization.
Now, thanks to support from the College of Arts and Letters and Office of Research, the University will further extend its engagement in “all things Italian” with an international and interdisciplinary program in Italian studies.…
A new book in the Kellogg Institute’s series with the University of Notre Dame Press explores how citizens in Spain confront memories of Franco’s dictatorship. Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain is the most recent addition to the Contemporary European Politics and Society Series.
The editorial board of the European Romantic Review and the executive committee of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism have chosen an article by Julia Douthwaite, professor of French in Notre Dame’s Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, as the winner of their Best Article of 2009 award. “The Frankenstein of the French Revolution: Nogaret’s Automaton Tale of 1790,” written by Douthwaite with former graduate student Daniel Richter, was selected for the prize based on its merits in scholarship, originality, quality of writing, and significance for romantic era studies.
Claire Reising, a Notre Dame junior majoring in French and English, has won a 2010 Prix Du Meilleur Essai award from Women In French (WIF) for best undergraduate essay written in French by a non-native speaker. In her paper, titled “‘Cette Condition de Sans-Famille’: Le Rejet du Rôle Maternel Chez les Jeunes Femmes,” she explores three books by Muslim and Muslim-born writers in which young female protagonists contest traditional female roles in their societies.
One of the world’s leading Dante scholars, Zygmunt G. Baranski, is slated to join the faculty next fall as the University’s first Notre Dame Professor of Dante and Italian Studies. He will also serve as a distinguished visiting professor this semester.…
