Of Note
• Bruno Perreau was named a “knight in the order of academic palms” by the Prime Minister of France. This is the highest distinction for professors in France. The French Academic Palms recognizes those who have rendered eminent service to French education and have contributed actively to the prestige of French culture. For those who are named and promoted in the Order of the French Academic Palms (l’Ordre des Palmes académiques), this esteemed distinction acknowledges their merits, talents, and exemplary activities. Congratulations Bruno! • MIT SHASS NEWS ARTICLE
• ‘Song of the human’ by the British composer Pete M. Wyer composed under a commission from Arts Brookfield is premiering in the Winter Garden of the WFC on October 12, with an installation to follow starting on October 15. One source of the idea for this original orchestral and choir piece came from Shigeru Miyagawa’s Integration Hypothesis. MORE INFO
• Students in the Brazilian Music and Society course, taught by Nilma Dominique, attended a concert September 15 by Lenine at the Hard Rock Cafe, in Boston. Winner of five Latin Grammys, Lenine is one of the greatest representatives of current Brazilian popular music. He has composed over 500 songs, which have been sung by numerous Brazilian artists. Students had the opportunity to meet the artist before the show. Participation in this event was made possible thanks to a CAMIT grant.
• A “Brazil at MIT” Open House on September 16, organized by nine MIT associations and programs related to Brazil, drew members of the MIT community, and representatives of Brazilian companies and the Brazilian Consulate in Boston. Nilma Dominique spoke about the Portuguese program and former and current students participated and shared their experiences.
• Emma Teng was elected to the Board of Directors of Mass Humanities for a three-year term beginning September 2016.
In the Media
• Elizabeth Wood was interviewed by MIT News about a series of programs to bring Russian culture and language to MIT including lectures, gallery talks, and a film night being held in conjunction with the exhibition “Architecture at the End of the Earth: William Craft Brumfield’s Photographs of the Russian North” on display at the Wolk Gallery (bldg. 7-338) from September 8, 2016, to January 13, 2017. As part of this series, “Photographer’s Talk with William C. Brumfield in discussion with Elizabeth Wood” was held on September 14.
• Bettina Stoetzer and her colleague Elaine Ganwere were interviewed by Bad At Sports about a workshop last April with Prof. Anna Tsing at the Anthropocene Campus, organized by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max-Planck Institute in Berlin. The article, “The Multispecies World of Technology” appeared online in August.
• Emma Teng was interviewed in July about her research on mixed race for Pacific Underground, an Asian American radio show on KBOO public radio station in Portland, Oregon (air date to be announced).
Publications
• Shigeru Miyagawa, Nobuaki Nishioka and Hedde Zeijlstra authored an article “Negative sensitive items and the discourse-configurational nature of Japanese” just published in a prestigious international journal Glossa: a journal of general linguistics.
• Ian Condry published a new essay in the Japanese journal Eureka in which he uses quantum entanglement as a metaphor for thinking about the films of famed anime director Makoto Shinkai. Available for download in Japanese or English.
• Bettina Stoetzer published an essay in August titled “Infrastructure: Peripheral Visions and Bodies that Matter” in Engagement, by the Anthropology and Environment Society, a section by the American Anthropological Association.
• Eric Grunwald recently published a flash fiction piece, “Congo,” online at Cease, Cows.
Conferences and Lectures
• Haohsiang Liao will chair a panel September 24 at the Second Harvard International Conference on Chinese Pedagogy. On the same day, he is invited by the New England Association of Chinese Schools to give a talk in Newton entitled “From Learners to Participants: Prepare Students of Chinese to Perform the Future.” Haohsiang Liao was also invited to serve on the program committee of the 2nd International Conference for Chinese Heritage Education, held in August in Bethesda, Maryland. He gave a presentation entitled “A Macro-Approach Curriculum Design for Chinese Heritage Adult Learners in STEM.”
• Bettina Stoetzer will present a paper titled “Re-Wilding the East” and also a commentary as part of a panel series on “Ecologies of Socialism” at the Annual Meetings of the German Studies Association held at the end of September in San Diego.
• Bruno Perreau presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, on “The Bioethical Citizen: Sexual Politics in France” on September 1.
• Takako Aikawa and Masami Ikeda both presented papers in August at the Canadian Association of Japanese Language Education Annual Conference in Fallsview, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. Takako Aikawa presented “Variance in Error Correction among Language Teachers.” Masami Ikeda presented “Impact on Classroom Activity of Increased Self-Learners.” Their papers paper will soon be published in the Proceedings of the conference. • PAPER ABSTRACTS
• Jane Dunphy attended the Pronunciation in Second Language Learning & Teaching Conference in Calgary, Canada, in August. The conference theme this year was the “Role of Technology in L2 Pronunciation Research & Teaching,” a topic of great interest to the lecturers in Global Studies & Languages. Jane reported, “The last five years have seen many developments in smartphone apps and websites geared to second language (L2) pronunciation, or accent modification. The ELS group piloted a web-based pronunciation system last year with mixed results, and we’re interested in learning as much as possible about the most up-to-date alternatives being developed or used in our higher education community of practice. This intimate conference offered easy access to international experts in L2 pronunciation who engaged in a series of round table conversations with plenty of participant interaction. The plenary speaker this year was John Levis, whose work on evidence-based approaches to teaching intelligibility in L2 learning is extremely useful and applicable to our students.” Jane contributed to the Round Robin conference session comprising practitioners who shared tips and strategies for teaching pronunciation in the internationalized academy. Jane also attended the Second Language Research Forum at Columbia University September 22-24.
• Leanna Rezvani presented “Early Modern Women and the Internet” at the National Convention of the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF) in Austin, Texas, in July. She also presented a paper entitled “Saint Barbara and Rolandine’s Aunt: A Saint’s Life and the Heptaméron’s 40th Tale” at the Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference in Bruges, Belgium in August.
• Takako Aikawa presented “Language Learning in a Shared Virtual Space: JaJan, an Application of the Next Generation” in July to the 20th Japanese Language Education Conference in Europe, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy. Aikawa also participated in the following AP Japanese related activities: attended an AP Japanese Content Development Committee Meeting sponsored by the College Board and Educational Testing Services (ETS) in Princeton, New Jersey, in August; attended an AP Japanese Reading as a Reader sponsored by the College Board and Educational Testing Services (ETS), in Salt Lake City, Utah, in June.
• Marie-Hélène Huet participated in the annual meeting of the North American Jules Verne Society in July and gave a paper entitled “Engineering Fiction.”
• Tong Chen gave a presentation entitled “Integrating Software with the Classroom Experience to Increase Efficiency of Class Time” at The 9th International Conference and Workshops on Technology and Chinese Language Teaching held at the end of May at University of Macau, Macau, China. Tong also chaired a panel at The 9th International Conference and Workshops on Technology and Chinese Language Teaching.
• William Uricchio gave number of talks in May including the keynote at “Virtually There: an international conference on virtual reality” at MIT. In May he presented two talks in Budapest: “Interaction, Immersion and the Implications of User-Enacted Experiences” for the Central European University’s Visual Studies Platform & Center for Media, Data and Society; and “Digital Journalism: Transmission, Ritual, and the Re-Imagined Civic” for the Central European University’s Center for Media, Data and Society. In June he gave a workshop in Vienna: “The Strange Case of Colin Ross” for the Austrian Film Museum & the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society; and a lecture in Paris: “Space, Place, and Mobility in the Digital Documentary” at the Sorbonne. He also gave a keynote at the University of Nottingham “Rethinking the cultural economy in the digital age” at Developing sustainable business models for the creative, cultural and heritage sectors within a platform economy.
Global Studies Forums Fall 2016
Wed 9/28 • 5:30pm • 14E-304 • “Crisis and Sovereignty: Posthegemony, Affect, Illiteracy” • Abraham Acosta, University of Arizona.
Mon. 10/03 • 5:00pm • 14E-304 • “How Albert Camus’s L’Etranger became The Stranger: Literary translation and the long life of a classic” • Alice Kaplan, Yale University • Global France Seminar.
Tue. 10/04 • 12:00pm • 14E-304 • “The Chinese in Paris, the French in Beijing: Jean Yanne’s 1974 Les Chinois à Paris and Georges Pompidou’s official visit” • Catherine Clark, MIT • GSL Brown Bag Lunch Series
Thu. 10/06 • 5:30pm • 4-237 • Can Xue, avant-garde writer, China. Also: authors Porochista Khakpour and John Donatich • re:VISION, Women Writers Reading Series
Thu. 10/27 • Racial Regimes, Digital Economies symposium
12:00pm in 14E-304: Feng-Mei Heberer (MIT), Michelle Cho (McGill University), Lilly U. Nguyen, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill • 5:00pm in 3-133: Kara Keeling, University of Southern California, Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan
Tue. 11/01 • 1:00pm • 14E-304 • Language Pedagogy Round Table featuring GSL lecturers • GSL Brown Bag Lunch Series
Wed. 11/02 • 4:00pm • 14E-304 • “When the United States Spoke French” • François Furstenberg, John Hopkins University • Global France Seminar
Thu. 11/17 • 6:00pm • 32-155 • “Myths about Teaching Chinese as a Second Language” • Professor Shou-hsin Teng, Chungyuan Christian University, Taiwan
Other events:
The Portuguese program also hosts a monthly Portuguese-language lunch table: Solta a Língua. Come practice your Portuguese speaking skills, improve your pronunciation, build up your vocabulary and enjoy one hour of fun learning about the Lusophone cultures. Brazilian lunch will be served. Free and open to the MIT community. Held monthly on Fridays: 9/30, 10/28, and 12/2. From 12 PM to 1 PM in 14N-417.