Major Awards and Grants
• Jing Wang was awarded “Overseas Distinguished Professorship” by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. This is a 5-year award to be held at the University of Communication of China.
• Takako Aikawa won ULVAC-Hayashi MISTI Seed Grant for “Creative VR Design for Language Learning” Project (in collaboration with Kanda University of International Studies, Chiba, Japan), December 2017.
• Sonia Gomez received a one-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University. The fellowship is a part of the Center’s Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Seminar on the topic of migration and the humanities.
Publications
• Bruno Perreau‘s book, Qui a peur de la théorie queer?, was published on March 15, 2018, by Presses de Sciences Po. An expanded French-language version of Queer Theory: the French Response offers new pages on populism, and republicanism under Trump and Macron, as well as new developments on theories of community and belonging. He presented the book at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland in February 2018. In March 2018, he will present at a number of venues: Sciences Po, Violette and Co bookstore, EPF Écoles d’Ingénieur.es, national radio broadcasts, online media, and newspapers (France Culture, Regards, Libération, etc.).
• Catherine E. Clark published a book chapter “The Vanishing of Les Halles” in Paris: Beyond the Flaneur edited by Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau (London: British Film Institute/Palgrave), 2018, p76-86.
• Emma Teng published “Hong Kong’s Eurasian ‘Web’ Viewed through the Lens of Inter-Asian Studies” in the Journal of Asian Studies (Volume 76, Issue 4), November 2017; and “Early Chinese Students in Boston and Community Activism” in the Chronicle of the Chinese Historical Society of New England, Fall 2017. Also, a Chinese translation of Emma Teng’s work, Taiwan’s Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895 (台灣的想像地理: 中國殖民旅遊書寫與圖像1683-1895), with a new author’s preface and a foreword by Academia Sinica’s academician Lung-chih Chang, was published by the National Taiwan University Press in December 2017, and a second print run came out in January 2018.
• Michelle Ho published “Tracing Tears and Triple Axels: Media Representations of Japan’s Women Figure Skaters” in the International Journal of Cultural Studies 20(6).
• Shigeru Miyagawa together with Cora Lesure (2nd-year MIT linguistics) and Vitor Nóbrega (former visitor, University of São Paulo Ph.D. student) recently published an article on the relationship between prehistoric cave paintings, symbolic thinking, and the emergence of language in Frontiers in Psychology, available here. The article was featured in MIT News. The story was also subsequently picked up by the Boston Globe and the National Geographic.
Lectures, Seminars, and Conference Presentations
• A.C. Kemp presented “The User-Friendly Classroom: Clear Speaking” at the 2017 International Teaching Assistant (ITA) Professionals Symposium on March 4, 2018, in Pittsburgh, PA. This presentation focused on a video-in-progress that will become a part of The User-Friendly Classroom series on OpenCourseWare. The first parts of this series, designed for the International Teaching Assistant Training, can already be found at OCW MIT. The video series was developed with funding from The Gilberte Furstenberg & Douglas Morgenstern Fund for Innovation in Language Instruction and the Alumni Class Funds.
• Catherine E Clark gave a talk titled “From Paris to Beijing and Back Again, 1973-1974” at the School of Historical Studies’ Lunchtime Colloquium, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, February 2018. She also gave a talk “Urban Planning, Architecture, and the Reconstruction of France’s Global Image in Shanghai, c. 1984-1991” at the Society for French Historical Studies Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, March 2018.
• Emma Teng delivered several talks on her curated exhibit, CHINA COMES TO “TECH”: 1877-1931/麻省理工学院早期中国留学生: 1877-1931, to the MIT Partners Program in December, to the Committee for the Promotion of Diversity and Inclusion, MIT Libraries in January, and to a group of Andover students in February. The exhibit was featured at MIT’s Maihaugen Gallery from February 7, 2017, to March 2, 2018, and welcomed 8,687 visitors. A closing celebration was held on March 2, 2018. She is also an invited speaker with the talk, “Scholastic Argonauts: Educational Migration and Risk for Chinese Students in the US, 1870-1930,” at the Migration and Risk in the Pacific World conference, Princeton, March 2018.
• Haohsiang Liao was invited by the Southern California Council of Chinese Schools to give a keynote speech at 2018 Spring Conference on Chinese Language Instruction on February 11, 2018, at Chapman University, CA. His presentation was entitled “Between Technology and Humanity: My Pedagogical Training at W.H.O.M.”
• Jane Dunphy was involved in two professional activities: “Developing a Culture of Constructive Classroom Observation,” Tennessee State University, Nashville, TN and “Presenting Research: The Academy, Government, and Industry,” a seminar for the blended Supply Chain Management (SCMb) Program, January 2018.
• Leanna Rezvani organized a panel on “Representations of Women’s Experience, Political Power, and Faith in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron” for the Renaissance Society of America Conference in New Orleans, LA on March 22-24, 2018. She also presented a paper entitled “The Heptaméron’s 22nd Tale: The Saintly Suffering of Sister Marie Héroët.”
• Maria Khotimsky has organized a panel stream on “Translation Studies in Slavic Contexts” for the AATSEEL 2018 Conference in Washington, D.C. in early February 2018, bringing together scholars from the US and Europe to discuss a range of topics, such as translation ideology, self-translation, and translingualism.
• Michelle Ho co-organized the panel “(Un)Belonging: The Politics of Sexuality, Gender, and Race in Japan” at the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Annual Conference held in Baltimore, Maryland in mid-November 2017. In the same panel, she presented her paper, “Living in Between: Alternative Belonging in Tokyo’s Male-to-Female Crossdressing Culture.” In addition, she co-organized the panel “Mapping an Anthropology of Affect in Japan” at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting held in Washington, DC in late November/early December of 2017. There, she also presented her paper, “Reparative Practices in Ethnography: The Case of Crossdressing in Tokyo.”
• Min-Min Liang presented a paper, “Cultural Elements and Language Learning for Mandarin Language Heritage Learners,” at the International Conference on Heritage/Community Languages, in National Heritage Language Resource Center, Los Angeles, CA, in February 2018.
• Paul Roquet presented a talk, “Mixed Realism and Composited Violence in the Light Novel/LitRPG” at the Association for Japanese Literary Studies annual conference at Oberlin on February 16, 2018.
• Sabine Levet gave a keynote on cross-cultural communication at the pre-service seminar of the Harvard Department of Romance Languages and Literatures on August 28, 2017. She also gave a talk at the Foreign Language Education Symposium, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, entitled “Teaching Culture in the Language Classroom: preparing students to deal with a complex world,” October 28, 2017.
• Takako Aikawa is presenting a talk “Toward the Development of AI Tutor: Incorporation of Machine Learning and Its Results” at the AATJ Annual Spring Conference, Washington DC, March 2018. She is also giving a keynote speech “Impact of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) on Language Learning” at the World Languages and Literatures, 2nd Pedagogy Symposium, Boston University, Boston, MA, March 2018.
In the Media
• Bruno Perreau spent two weeks in Paris with seven GSL students during IAP in the context of the 2018 January Scholars in France program. It was the 13th time when the program is offered to students. The highlight of this year’s trip was a private tour of Palais Garnier given by opera principal dancer, Germain Louvet. Read more about this trip here. The trip was featured in MIT News and SHASS News. Also, one of the JSF students, Anelise Newman, wrote a great piece on JSF for MIT Admissions.
• Ellen Crocker‘s intermediate-level students in “Germany Today” IAP 2018 planned and produced an hour-long radio show that was broadcast live on MIT’s WMBR on January 24, 2018. The students designed their show around the question “What is German music today?” and collected current German popular vocal music that reflects the broad array of cultural influences in the German music scene. Listen to the radio show here.
• Ian Condry organized a conference and music/sound festival, Dissolve Music, which brought together musicians, sound creators, and scholars of music and sound studies to discuss the diversity of music and experimental sound, March 7-9, 2018. The conference was featured in the New York Times and the Boston Globe.
Of Note
• Carrie O’Connor took her French I students (this class was a part of IAP) to the LCE breakfast, where they had an incredible opportunity to communicate with other French-speakers, January 2018.
• Kang Zhao taught “Chinese Calligraphy,” which is a new Global Studies and Languages subject and was offered for the first time in IAP 2018. Read more about new IAP course here.
• Leanna Rezvani took a group of French II students to a concert by Carla Bruni at the Berklee Performance Center, February 2018.
• Margarita Ribas Groeger along with Mariana San Martin brought 33 students to Madrid, Spain during January IAP 2018. Read more about the trip here.
• Nilma Dominique’s Portuguese students enrolled in the course The Beat of Brazil organized, as their final assignment, a concert of Brazilian Music at the Lewis Music Library on December 8, 2017. The show included songs from different Brazilian music styles, covering a period from the late 19th century to the present. Also, on January 9, 2018, the GSL Portuguese Program, with the support of the Brazilian Consulate General in Boston and the Brazilian Women’s Group in Boston, opened the 2nd Digaaí Brazilian Film Festival with the screening of Vazante. Filmmaker Daniela Thomas was present and participated in the Q&A. Nilma Dominique also organized and moderated the GSL Brown Bag Lunch Series: Developing Hybrid Courses for Language Instruction with presenters from the language faculty of Wellesley College.
• The École Normale Supérieure, Cachan, France, organized an event around Professor Perreau‘s work and trajectory titled “Bruno Perreau: de Paris au MIT.”