Achievements, honors, awards

  • Takako Aikawa was awarded a Hakuho Foundation Japanese Research Fellowship, which is awarded to leading international researchers of the Japanese language, Japanese language education, or Japanese literature and culture. Her research topic is: “Re-examination and Revitalization of Error Analysis in the Field of Japanese Language Education.”
  • Masami Ikeda was certified in February as an ACTFL Assessment of Performance toward Proficiency in Languages rater for Interpersonal Listening and Speaking and Presentational Writing in Japanese.
  • Emma Teng was invited to be a Fellow in the Radcliffe Summer Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She was also reelected to another three-year term on the Board of Directors of Mass Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Publications

  • Panpan Gao received a contract for her co-authored Chinese textbook, New Insights into Chinese Culture and Society, from Cheng & Tsui Press.
  • Maria Khotimsky  is a contributor to and co-editor of The Poetry and Poetics of Olga Sedakova. Origins, Philosophies, Points of Сontention, University of Wisconsin Press, co-edited by Stephanie Sandler, Maria Khotimsky, Margarita Krimmel, and Oleg Novikov. BOOK COVER
  • Emma Teng published “Roast Beef v. Pigs’ Trotters: Knowledge-in-Transit in the Work of a Chinese Food Evangelist,” a chapter in Asia Inside-Out: Itinerant People; issued in March by Harvard University Press; edited by Tagliacotto, Perdue, and Siu. Teng also had an article accepted for publication in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History.
  • Kang Zhou created a new website for the 21G.111 Chinese Calligraphy course. This website is primarily used as a platform to show students’ individual learning processes, their diverse interpretations of Chinese calligraphy, and to share their works of art.

In the media

  • MIT News reported on the March 7-8 visit to MIT by Buddhist nuns: “Buddhist nun Sister Dang Nghiem invites MIT community to practice mindfulness
  • Marie-Hélène Huet participated in a BBC radio program celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. It was taped on March 19 and will be aired on April 14.
  • Bruno Perreau was interviewed on March 13 for the French Radio Broadcast, “La Matinale de 19h” on Radio Campus Paris. LISTEN. Bruno was also  interviewed for the French weekly magazine L’OBS, for an article called “Ni fille ni garçon : la révolution du genre” [Neither male nor female: the gender revolution], published March 27.

Out and about

  • The American Association of Teachers of Japanese held its Annual Spring Conference March 21 in Denver, CO. GSL was well-represented: Takako Aikawa gave a presentation, “Changing teacher’s role(s) in language education: Myths associated with machine translation,” and was also Session Chair of Language and Technology Papers for that conference. Masami Ikeda gave a presentation titled “Enhancing Japanese Learner’s Awareness of their own Learning – Cultivating Lifelong Learning Skills beyond the Classroom
  • Javier Barroso was the keynote speaker for the opening event of MIT’s Mes Latino celebration on March 8. The event was titled “Spanglish – Phenomenon of American Hispanic Culture”. Javier gave a talk and led a student discussion regarding Spanglish at the Latino Cultural Center Lounge. MIT’s Mes Latino encompasses a series of events at the Institute to celebrate Latino culture.
  • Catherine Clark gave the annual Philip Bankwitz Lecture in the History Department at Trinity College in Hartford, CT on March 5. On March 14-15 she participated in the “Method” Workshop of the Interacting with Print Research Group at Concordia University in Montreal. At both of these events she presented part of her research on French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work in China in 1948-1949, work which she also shared with the MIT community during the March 20 GSL Colloquium. She also gave a lecture on March 13 about celebrity and cabaret culture in late-nineteenth-century Paris as part of a seminar accompanying the “Toulouse-Lautrec and the Stars of Paris” show at the Museum of Fine Arts.
  • Jane Dunphy was a member of the Institute Excellence Awards & Collier Medal Committee this year (for the second time).  The award ceremony was on Friday, March 21, in Kresge Auditorium. Jane gave an invited paper at Vanderbilt University on Tuesday, March 26, “Constructing-Deconstructing-Reconstructing: Mapping Culture and Language for L2 Students in the Digital Age.”
  • Carrie O’Connor presented a paper March 22, “Feeding on the City of Light: Americans at the Parisian Table,” at the 50th Annual NeMLA Convention in Washington, DC.
  • Maria Khotimsky participated in the in the Poetry Translation Workshop  at Princeton on March 13-16, as part of the “Your Language My Ear” project (translations of contemporary American poetry into Russian, and Russian poetry into English).
  • Min-Min Liang presented  “Empowering Learners: Student-centered Teaching and Learning” at the 2019 Boston Area Pedagogy Conference at Boston University, on March 22.
  • Paul Roquet presented a talk, “The Telepresence Enclosure: Virtual Reality and Demographic Change,” at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, March 6.
  • Emma Teng spoke as part of the “Great Presenters” series at the Wayland Free Public Library on the topic of “Forbidden Love: Chinese & White Mixed Families in the 19th Century” on March 5.

Upcoming events