Category: Modern Languages

La Peña — Spanish Conversation Hour

students sitting a a table smiling

Join us! Learn Spanish quicker through interaction with other Spanish speakers. Join us in a relaxed environment to practice and improve your conversation skills. Speak Spanish, play games, have a snack, and make new friends! Bring a friend!
To receive reminders, email Leyre Alegre at lalegref@mtu.edu

Tuesday, February 25 at 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Tuesday, March 3 at 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm

Walker Arts and Humanities Center, 120A (HDMZ)
1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI 49931

Modern Languages Holiday Celebration

Earth globes as Christmas ornamentsJoin Modern Languages faculty and students from 5 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, December 4th, in Walker 134 for a unique celebration of French, German, and Spanish holiday traditions. Appearing live will be the French Canadian group, Maple Sugar Folk, as well as Sue Ellen Kingsley and Friends.

Learn holiday songs in each language for the sing-along and listen to traditional holiday music. Play Christmas Bingo and enjoy a variety of holiday treats from different cultures. No prior language experience required. Families are welcome.

For more information, contact Karin Schlenker.

Francophone Migration

Line drawing of a city mapUnderstanding how French-speaking people migrated throughout North America from the 1600s to 1940 means tracking them at work, school and home spatially and archivally.

Michigan Technological University is a partner in the $2.4 million “Trois siècles de migrations francophones en Amérique du Nord (1640-1940) (Three centuries of migrations by French-speakers to North America)” funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Sarah Scarlett, assistant professor of history, and Don Lafrenière, associate professor of geography, in the Social Sciences department, will use the Keweenaw Time Traveler and a combination of spatial and archival datasets to focus specifically on whether French-Canadians were socially mobile as they migrated from Canada to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula during the period of 1860 to 1940.

Read the full story on Unscripted.

Growing Up In East Germany

 

Dr. Thomas Werner, Associate Professor, Biological Sciences, presented his story to about growing up in East Germany and living a political double life in a socialist country at an event hosted by Modern Languages on April 10th. Werner talked about what it was like for him to have a personal spy who tried to send his parents to prison, and how his home country dropped out of existence overnight.

After the Berlin wall fell, Thomas studied Biology in Jena, Germany, and then moved to Umeå, Sweden, where he did his PhD in cell and molecular biology. He moved to Madison, Wisconsin as a postdoctoral fellow studying the evolution and development of color patterns in fruit flies. Thomas is now a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Michigan Tech. He lives in Houghton with his wife Megan, daughter Natalia, and sons Oliver and Oscar

Modern Languages Holiday Celebration Date Announced

Earth globes as Christmas ornamentsJoin Modern Languages faculty and students from 5 to 6 p.m. Wednesday (Nov. 28) in Walker 134 for a unique celebration of French, German and Spanish holiday traditions. Appearing live will be the French Canadian group, Maple Sugar Folk, as well as Sue Ellen Kingsley and Friends.

Learn holiday songs in each language for the sing-along and listen to traditional holiday music. Play Christmas Bingo and enjoy a variety of holiday treats from different cultures. No prior language experience required. Families are welcome.

For more information, contact Karin Schlenker.