Month: February 2015

Humanities Modern Language Program Announces Film Series

Film Series Poster_Spring 2015_bigThe Modern Language program is excited to kick off its bi-annual Film Series this semester on the theme “Alternate Realities.” The films selected for this semester are Africa Paradis, The Wall, and The German Doctor. All have English subtitles.

The first event is the French-language film Africa Paradis, which will screen this Thursday, February 12 at 7:00 pm in Walker 134Africa Paradis turns our worldview on its head by imagining the Africa of the future as a world economic power, prosperous and united, while Europe has suffered a devastating political and economic crisis. When an unemployed French couple illegally enter the “United States of Africa” to find work, they encounter the politics of racism and tolerance.

There will be opportunities to learn more about our language programs and study abroad opportunities, as well as refreshments.

The event is free and open to the whole campus and the community. For more information, please email Dr. Ramon Fonkoué.

Download the poster here.

MTU Alumna Cheryl Ball Receives Grant From the Mellon Foundation

WVU photo by Brian Persinger
WVU photo of Dr. Cheryl Ball by Brian Persinger

Twenty-first century research and scholarship is changing. At one time, researchers could only submit written manuscripts to academic journals. The journals would send copies of the text to experts in the field who would determine if the manuscripts were fit for publication (peer review). Nowadays, both the content of those manuscripts and the process for evaluating them is changing.

Cheryl Ball is a 2005 PhD alumna of MTU’s RTC graduate program, and she’s now  an associate professor of digital publishing studies in the Department of English in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University.

Ball has been rethinking the process for publishing multimedia-rich scholarship. Along with Andrew Morrison, professor of interdisciplinary design and director of the Centre for Design Research at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design in Norway, Ball is co-principal investigator for a project that that will build a digital tool that will allow experts in a variety of disciplines to review, critique and edit these 21st-century manuscripts.

To support these innovations the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded West Virginia University a $1 million grant, the University’s first Mellon grant. The three-year Mellon Foundation grant will support the development of Cairn, an online, free and open-source system that will help editors of scholarly multimedia journals, books and data sets engage in building and reading multimedia-rich, peer-reviewed content.

You can learn more about the Ball’s work and the grant here.