Department of Modern and Classical Languages

Leeman receives Fulbright to study sociolinguistics in Spain

Colleen Rich — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 19:07:30 +0000

Leeman receives Fulbright to study sociolinguistics in Spain Colleen Rich Fri, 04/19/2024 - 15:07

Jennifer Leeman, professor of Spanish linguistics in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at ��AV, has been selected as a recipient of a 2024-25 Fulbright Scholar Award.

Jennifer Leeman. Photo provided

Leeman will spend the fall semester at the Universidad de Murcia in Spain, where she will lecture on topics in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, as well as aid in the supervision of doctoral students. She will also carry out a research project, an empirical study of language attitudes among international university students studying in Murcia, Spain.

“Murcia is a particularly interesting site for this research because the Murcian varieties of Spanish are often stigmatized or considered ‘incorrect,’ but they also convey ‘covert prestige’ and serve as markers of ‘authentic’ local identities,” Leeman said. “A lot of the previous research on Spaniards’ attitudes toward regional varieties of Spanish has been conducted by faculty and doctoral students at the Universidad de Murcia, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with them, while also making connections to my own prior research on attitudes and ideologies in Spanish language teaching and study abroad.”

Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. government. Fulbright Scholar Awards are prestigious and competitive fellowships that allow scholars to teach and conduct research abroad in order to establish long-term relationships between people and nations.

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Mason’s 2022 Writer-in-Residence speaks about the wonders of language and poetry

Shayla Brown — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 15:47:20 +0000

Mason’s 2022 Writer-in-Residence speaks about the wonders of language and poetry Shayla Brown Thu, 11/03/2022 - 11:47

Photo by Leeya Mehta/Cheuse Center

Elena Medel published her first book of poetry at the age of 16. Now she’s the editorial director of La Bella Varsovia, a publishing house in Madrid that focuses on poetry as well as a successful poet and author.

Medel was hosted by the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center from September 25 to October 15 as ��AV’s 2022 International Writer-in-Residence. She attended four events during her time at Mason and got to interact with both students and faculty. 

“I was telling the students about my experience as a writer. It’s obviously not a universal experience, but maybe it could be useful or interesting to them,” said Medel. “I am a full-time worker, not a professional writer. I spoke about the problems I have when I want to write [but don’t have the time].” 

Medel’s favorite poet from whom she finds inspiration is Federico Garcia Lorca. Her favorite work of Lorca’s, a book of his poetry, is titled “Poet in New York.”  

“When I was a teenager, his poems were really important for me as a writer and also for me as a person,” said Medel. “I think I write poetry because of Lorca.” 

Medel spoke with Spanish language professor Rei Berroa and some of his students about her writing process and her debut novel, “The Wonders.” 

The novel is told through the perspectives of María and Alicia, two women generations apart who face many similar experiences in different ways with different attitudes.  

“When we read a novel with a male main character, we think that the book speaks about the great subjects of humanity. But in the same story told by female voices, it’s like it’s only for female readers; we have this prejudice,” said Medel. “I wanted to talk about universal things like money and social classes, but told by the voices of these women.” 

Medel and Berroa have worked together before when Berroa invited Medel to the Maratón de Poesía del Teatro de la Luna in 2017, a poetry marathon that he and his colleagues began in 1992 to bring together the Spanish poets of the Washington, D.C., area before expanding to include international poets as well.

“We need poetry to survive,” said Berroa. “[I had my] class read ‘The Wonders’ as well as some of her poetry.”

“This is the first time I’ve attended a symposium or book reading anywhere,” said Frankie Romero, a senior foreign languages major with a concentration in Spanish, and one of Berroa’s students. “I found it complemented the class. We got to see a real-world scenario of somebody involved in the writing process and how they go about creating the products they put out there, be it a book, a poem, a short story.”

Students got the opportunity to ask Medel questions during their conversations. “I asked her if she ever suffers writer’s block, and I didn’t quite expect the answer given,” said Romero. “She said that she experiences writer's block every day.”

Her process for overcoming writer’s block is writing about things she remembers, he said. “She would say ‘I remember... when I was a child or when it was raining’ and then all of a sudden, she starts writing naturally.”

“I think poetry is in everything that I write because it’s in the language and the attitude of the writing,” said Medel. “When you write a poem you have to go to the essence of the poem, and I’m trying to do the same in fiction. I try to go to the heart of the story.”

Medel’s residency was sponsored by the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain. 

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Film festival explores ‘the way of life’ in various Spanish-speaking countries

Colleen Rich — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 17:12:48 +0000

Film festival explores ‘the way of life’ in various Spanish-speaking countries Colleen Rich Wed, 09/07/2022 - 13:12

In an effort to expose students to some of the social and political problems of the vast Spanish-speaking world, ��AV’s Department of Modern and Classical Languages is hosting a Spanish Film Festival that is free and open to the public.

The festival, ongoing through November 2 and coinciding with Spanish Heritage Month, features five films. Javier Avilés, assistant professor and the festival’s organizer, selected the films with the support of some of his colleagues in the department, and specifically the Spanish Program.

“I picked five films to help students better understand some of the challenges, the way of life, and the diversity within the Spanish-speaking world,” said Avilés, who is at Mason as a Spanish lecturer of the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation and Development (MAEC-AECID) under the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation

Avilés said he and the department selected films featuring a range of different places, such as Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Southern California, to reflect the growing diversity of Spanish-speaking students and professors at Mason.

“What excites me the most about this festival is the representation,” said Fabi Rosales, a freshman computer science major who was born in Puerto Rico and is half Mexican. “Anytime there's a movie that takes place in a Spanish-speaking country, the characters are usually either on vacation or it's a paradise. But we are more than our beaches. We are our own people with our own struggles and stories.”

Rosales said she plans to see all the films, but she’s most interested in two: “Adriana's Pact,” in which the director, Lissette Orozco, tells the story of her aunt who is accused of belonging to the secret police during Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship in Chile; and “Here and There,” written and directed by Antonio Méndez Esparza, about the return of a Mexican migrant to his hometown after working in the United States.

Thanks to the support of Pragda, a distributor for the newest Latin American, Spanish, and Latinx cinema, Avilés reviewed more than 100 films that he said would otherwise be difficult to obtain for viewing. It was important, he said, that the chosen films were those students could connect with and would prompt educational conversations.

For example, “Vicenta,” a film concerning the right to abortion in Argentina, was chosen in part because “it is a subject that is also in debate in American society right now,” Avilés said.

The other goal of the festival is to show students a different way of producing films as art.

“It’s very difficult to get access to these kinds of movies from other countries,” Avilés said. “This festival can give students a different perspective on cinema and how stories can be told.”

Noah White, a sophomore majoring in special education and minoring in Spanish, said he’s attending the festival to improve his Spanish language proficiency and be introduced to different cultures, but also to get a glimpse of different film techniques.

This festival was organized once before by Professors Esperanza Roman-Mendoza and Lisa Rabin in 2015. The contributions of Pragda, as well as SPAIN arts & culture, a program that promotes Spanish culture in the United States, have made this second Spanish Film Festival possible, Avilés said.

Some professors in Mason’s Spanish Program are offering their students extra credit for attending, Avilés said.

For more information about the festival, visit here.

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Hispanic Heritage Month

Groundbreaking graduate certificate program teaches heritage speakers of Spanish, social justice

Colleen Rich — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 13:05:38 +0000

Groundbreaking graduate certificate program teaches heritage speakers of Spanish, social justice Colleen Rich Mon, 08/09/2021 - 09:05

Jennifer Leeman

The number of people who speak languages other than English at home is growing, and particularly the number of people who speak Spanish at home, said Jennifer Leeman, director of ��AV’s Spanish Heritage Language Education (SHLE) graduate certificate program and professor of Spanish linguistics.

Beginning this fall, ��AV’s Department of Modern and Classical Languages in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) will offer a new graduate certificate in Spanish Heritage Language Education. The 15-credit program was approved in April and can be completed fully online. The deadline for applications has been extended to Aug. 15.

“The program’s goal is to prepare teachers and educational professionals to understand, advocate for, and teach heritage speakers of Spanish,” said Leeman. She said this is the only program of its kind in the state of Virginia, and one of only a few nationwide focused on heritage speakers.

Leeman said the certificate program is taught by well-recognized experts in the field, with three of the four required courses taught in Spanish. She will be teaching FRLN 575 Heritage Language Education in English this fall, with a focus on Spanish in the United States, but also covering languages such as Arabic, Greek, Korean and Japanese.

Sara Ramirez

“The Heritage Language Education course showed me the many ways that heritage speakers are different than second-language learners and taught me about the ways that traditional Spanish classes promote negative ideas about heritage speakers’ dialects,” said Mason alum Sara Ramírez, who graduated in 2017 with a MA in foreign languages with a concentration in Spanish. “As a result, heritage speakers can have insecurities regarding their language abilities. It is our job as educators to teach learners to reject these linguistic ideologies and promote acceptance.”

Leeman said that this program expands Mason’s view of anti-racism and social justice by focusing on language as an anti-racist issue.

“Students will learn about Spanish speakers in the U.S., how language is connected to not just culture, but to critical social justice issues. And they will learn how to meet the needs of their students by designing and implementing materials and curricula,” Leeman said.

The program has sparked interest from practicing teachers, including people in other parts of the country, Leeman said.

“We are hoping to help not just educators, but affiliated professionals, researchers, counselors, or parents to understand better who these students are and how policies and educational practices have reproduced racism and inequality in the schools,” Leeman said.

Rima Elabdali

Leeman is confident that the program’s flexibility will serve as an incentive for nondegree students who want to earn a certificate, or for those students who want to pursue a master’s degree. All the courses in the certificate also count toward a master’s in foreign language with a concentration in Spanish.

“The Heritage Language Education course sparked my interest in issues related to heritage language education and offered me the background needed to research the topic,” said Rima Elabdali, a PhD candidate in applied linguistics at Georgetown who enrolled in the Heritage Language Education class at Mason via the Washington Area Consortium. “I loved the balance between the theoretical and practical aspects in the course.

Elabdali added, “The online format was really a plus because I would not have been able to take the course on campus. And it was great to be able to revisit the class recordings when I needed to clarify certain points.”

Leeman said states don’t require expertise in heritage language education teaching in order to get licensure, but it’s something that the Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese says that all Spanish teachers should have.

“Traditional foreign language classes are designed for second-language learners, so they don’t always meet the need,” she added.

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