Department News

This category captures all the news related to the department.

Prof. Susan Einbinder at UCHI

Posted on March 23, 2016 by

Professor Susan Einbinder Speaks at the Humanities Institute

Humanities Institute Fellow and Professor of Hebrew & Judaic Studies and Comparative Literature and Susan Einbinder took the podium at the Humanities Institute on Thursday, February 25th to discuss her work related to trauma in medieval Jewish communities. Professor Einbinder offered an analysis of poetic epitaphs inscribed onto a number of giant gravestones dating from the years 1349-50 in Toledo, Spain. These stones marked the graves of important and wealthy Jewish citizens of the Kingdom of Castille, some of whom were casualties of the mid-XIV century plague of the Black Death. Einbinder explained that these epitaphs, whose verses are engraved in such a way as to compel the reader to circumambulate the graves in the act of contemplation, are among the non-traditional sources she is currently working with in examining the medieval context through the lens of trauma studies. Noting that these particular gravestones are unique among Jewish burial markers, Professor Einbinder says of these material remains and inscriptions they bear that, in short, “this genre poses problems.” The stones adorn only the graves of upper-class and otherwise noteworthy people, and the epitaphs are careful to omit embarrassing details of the lives of the privilaged deceased that they describe – they leave much unsaid about the more general climate in which they were created. Their poetics demonstrate little originality, and their repetition of traditional clichés underlines a sense that the engravings contribute little towards an understanding of the lives of ordinary Spanish Jews in the medieval era. Nevertheless, Einbinder asserted, the absolute absence in these epitaphs of allusions to violence against Jewish people during the Black Death – signs of which are unmistakeable in material remains found elsewhere in Spain – may provide evidence of the peaceful coexistence of the Christian and Jewish faiths in XIV century Castille.

Talk by Santiago de Pablo

Posted on March 15, 2016March 27, 2018 by

On March 11^th, 2016, award-winning author and historian Santiago de Pablo (University of the Basque Country) held a screening of his recent documentary film project titled Basque Swastika (in Spanish, Una esvástika sobre el Bidasoa). The 2013 film, directed by Javier Barajas and Alfonso Andrés Ayarza, is a fascinating exercise in metacinema, exploring the context and significance of a long-lost Nazi documentary on the topic of the Basque nation.

The original 22-minute Nazi film, released in 1944 under the title Im Lande der Basken (In the Land of the Basques), assumes a pseudo-anthropological perspective with regard to the Basque country, emphasizing the racial purity and communitarian character of its people as well as the isolated and idyllic landscape of the region. De Pablo was careful to point out that these optics exaggerate certain aspects of life in the region while ignoring others, such as area’s urban and industrial centers, in order to evoke a sense of mystical kinship with the Basques among a German audience.

Basque Swastika includes scenes from the Nazi documentary and other historical footage, along with interviews of people with significant links to Im Lande der Basken – among them Teresa Sandoval, the researcher who first rediscovered the obscure film in a Berlin archive, and Nicolas Brieger, son of the 1944 film’s director Herbert Brieger. This blend of sources yield a nuanced exposition of the Nazi film itself, as well as its creation and rediscovery, but the ultimate effect serves to preserve the air of mystery surrounding this very peculiar cinematic artifact.

Prof. Jacqueline Loss, the new editor of Translation Magic

Posted on January 21, 2016March 23, 2019 by

Professor Jacqueline Loss of LCL’s Spanish section has recently become the editor of Translation Magic, a section within the webzine Cuba Counterpoints, launched in May of this year. In it, she asserts her desire “to address what translation means for a ‘besieged island,’ as a mode of severing the effects of the U.S. embargo on knowledge and to explore the transforming task of the translator with regard to the island’s ‘opening,’ or the U.S.’s opening to Cuba.” “Honest reckoning with knowledge,” Professor Loss states, “entails discomfort, misunderstanding, and even a few ‘dislikes.’” Since the first entry, she has welcomed the contributions of translators, including Kristin Dykstra, Anna Kushner, and Dick Cluster, along with the writer Osdany Morales, who have spoken to her about all sorts of topics, from the poetic persistence of Trotsky’s assassin to Pete Seeger’s “Guantanamera” to the impossible to translate language of “security.” Check out these links for more information on Translation Magic and Cuba Counterpoints.

Professor Elaine DalMolin in China

Posted on December 22, 2015March 23, 2019 by

Last spring, Professor of French, Francophone and Film Studies Eliane DalMolin was approached in Paris by a Professor of Comparative Literature at Fudan University, Shanghai, who was familiar with her work. This professor asked DalMolin to consider a fully funded invitation to Fudan in October 2015 to speak about her past work on Baudelaire and Modernity, Psychoanalysis and Feminist Deconstruction, and her current work on Zoopoetics and Ecolyricism. As Professor DalMolin is keen to point out, “all good stories start in Paris.”

Accompanied by a French philosopher and specialist of Jacques Derrida and René Girard, DalMolin spent two weeks in Shanghai, from October 6 to October 19, where she enjoyed “the best possible conditions and experienced the remarkable Chinese sense of hospitality.”

The invited speakers presented their work in a series of four seminars to a mixed audience of graduate students and professors from all disciplines, both from Fudan and other Universities in Shanghai. Professor DalMolin remarks that the exchanges “were intense, stimulating, rich and all so rewarding.”

The final chapter of the invitation was DalMolin’s participation in a colloquium organized by the Department of Chinese and the Department of Literary Theory, on the topic of “French Theory”. She was asked to open the colloquium with a full review and account on the major proponents of “French Theory,” from Barthes, Lacan, Foucault to Derrida. The second part of her presentation was dedicated to Ecocriticism and Zoopoetics as contemporaries discourses that have inherited from French Theory.

During the colloquium, Professor DalMolin and the other presenter were also interviewed by a journalist from the Wen Hui Daily newspaper, touching on a variety of topics from French theory to the upcoming American presidential elections and world politics.

Special Events

Posted on December 22, 2015March 23, 2019 by

Here is a brief recap of some of the happenings so far this Fall semester

In September, the Medieval Studies section hosted the third iteration of Medieval Live! A Multimedia Middle Ages, organized by Professor Andrea Celli. In addition to performances by students and faculty of texts in original languages of the medieval period, Visiting Scholar Professor Dyan Elliot of Northwestern University delivered a talk titled “The Corrupter of Boys: the Medieval Church and Child Abuse”. In November, Professor Celli – along with the Italian and Medieval Studies sections – hosted “Leaves that scatter through the universe,” a seminar on Dante’s works in context. Presentations by invited speakers included Giovanni Spani of College of the Holy Cross’ piece “Who Were Dante’s Merchants?”; Francesco Marco Aresu of Wesleyan University’s “Dante’s Books: Materiality and Textuality of the Comedy”; and Michael Papio of Umass Amherst’s “Creative Interpretation in Bocaccio’s Commentary on Dante’s Inferno”.

November also saw a visit to campus by Michigan University Professor Bill, who came to speak about his work in the field of language acquisition. VanPatten – who’s extensive résumé currently lists him as Professor of Spanish and Second Language Studies, affiliate faculty member in Cognitive Science, Director of Romance Language Instruction, and co-editor of the international journal Studies in Second Language Acquisition at Cambridge University Press – argues that the traditional rules-based model of language instruction fails to form underlying linguistic representation in the learner’s mind. Linguistic “rules” as we generally understand them, according to VanPatten, exist exclusively on the level of explicit knowledge and are never internalized to generate implicit understanding of linguistic structures. The consequences of this line of thought for language instruction and research in language acquisition, as VanPatten suggests, may prove to be transformative.

The Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life celebrated its 36th anniversary this November with a panel discussion by Center alumni and long-term contributors and UConn Professors Arnold Dashefsky and Stuart Miller. The event also featured a keynote address by David Ruderman, Professor of Modern Jewish History and Director of the Herbert D. Katz Center Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, presenting an overview of the evolution Judaic Studies over the past 36 years.

LCL’s Spanish section, in association with the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center, and LANGSA, sponsored a presentation by Professor Danae Diéguez of the Facultad de Arte de los Medios de Comunicación Audiovisual de la Universidad de las Artes (Cuba). Professor Diéguez, who is a specialist in gender and sexuality as well as Cuban and women’s film, gave a Spanish-language talk titled “Tensiones y (dis)tensiones entre el cine cubano y la institucionalidad. Diálogos posibles” [“Tensiones and (dis)tensions between Cuban Film and Institutionalism. Possible dialogues”] which was interpreted live for the English-speaking audience.

The 2015 Deutsch-Kolloquium (sponsored by LANGSA) is presenting two talks this Fall semester. On November 19th, PhD candidate Silke Gräfnitz will present her piece “Female, foreign, flee(t)ing – Female voices from war and conflict zones”. Then on December 2nd, Professor Katharina von Hammerstein will deliver “Germany’s ‘Other Genocide’: Essential Witnesses to Mass Killings of the Herero in German Southwest Africa, 1904-08”.

On December 3rd, the Medieval Studies Program will host Professor Laura K. Morreale, Associate Director of Medieval Studies at Fordham University, for a presentation titled “Telling the Story of French. After the Linguistic, Spatial, and Digital Turns”. The talk will focus on the emergence and circulation of early French-language texts in the Eastern Mediterranean and elsewhere.

Message from the Department Head

Posted on December 22, 2015February 18, 2018 by

Gustavo Nanclares, department head in Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, teaches a graduate class in November 2015. The class was about the film The Spanish Earth, a 1937 propaganda film made during the Spanish Civil War.

After several years of hiatus, Linguae – the newsletter of the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages – is back in production. The birth of Linguae 2.0 responds to the changing material realities of publishing today, embracing the digital format in order to facilitate distribution while eliminating the costs and waste associated with paper printing. The goal of this newsletter is to foster a sense of community among those – Alumni, professors, staff, and students – who continue to shape and define LCL as a departmental unit. By highlighting the projects and achievements of our constituent parts we hope to intensify communications within the whole and, of course, to stimulate the growth of new connections. To these ends we have also ventured into the digital landscape of social media, creating a departmental Facebook page and Twitter outlet, in an effort to extend the reach of LCL-related news and announcements to include a broader audience. The social dimension of these platforms opens new possibilities for intra/extradepartmental engagement whose full potential remains to be seen.