Modern Languages & Cultures is happy to host a celebration of our Minor students, especially those graduating this Spring and Summer 2024 with a minor in French, German or Spanish. We will gather on Wednesday, April 10th, 6-7.30PM in Walker, 134.
Mingle with us, play games, sing karaoke songs in the four languages, meet people and have fun! Taste a snippet of our foods.
Several of our graduate students in the Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture program have been recognized this spring for achievements in both teaching and research!
Basanti Timalsina was awarded a Spring 2024 Finishing Fellowship by the graduate school, which is funding her research for the spring semester as she finishes her doctoral dissertation and prepares for her thesis defense. Click Here too learn more about Basanti’s research and the topic of her dissertation. Congratulations and good luck, Basanti!
Reid Devoge has been recognized with the Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award, which is granted to graduate student instructors who have displayed excellence in teaching within their department. Reid is a PhD student in the Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture program, as well as the Deputy Director of Michigan Tech Public Safety and Police Services. Congratulations, Reid!
Brilynn Janckila has been awarded the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Scholarship, which recognizes excellence among graduate students in the year of their graduation. Students may be nominated for the award who display outstanding qualities in areas such as research, teaching, leadership, dissertation quality, and departmental involvement, to name a few. Brilynn is scheduled to complete her PhD in Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture this year. Congratulations and good luck, Brilynn!
Stephanie Rowe, German professor in the Humanities Department, is hosting an Alumni Student event on Friday, May 10, 2024 during the faculty-led study abroad program Topics in Germany. Event details and RSVP can be found on the alumni event page Dresden, Germany Alumni Student event, organized by Stephanie Rowe (’95), Associate Teaching Professor, MTU.
Alumni are invited to join the students for an evening on their study abroad, including a leisurely stroll through the Zwinger grounds, where students and alumni will have an opportunity to get to know each other, dinner at the Sophienkeller, and a walk past the porcelain Fürstenzug to Neumarkt, where we will cap of the evening with a concert in the Frauenkirche.
Congratulations to Victor Wiesen on a successful proposal for the SURF scholarship!
Victor is interested in examining the environmental impact of traditional practices of preparation and disposition of remains and comparing those impacts with “green” or “natural” burial practices. In this initial stage of research, Victor will utilize ethnographic research methodology to reveal attitudes and compare social and cultural practices and beliefs surrounding end-of-life disposition practices in Germany and the United States. When we understand the impediments to reducing the environmental impact of these cultural practices, we can more effectively map a pathway to preferable funereal practices. This research reflects a critical aspect of sustainability, especially when one considers that within one lifetime, 8 billion dispositions will take place. Through this type of research, we can potentially accomplish this with minimal impact on the planet.
Stephanie Rowe, Associate Teaching Professor in Humanities, is the faculty mentor for this research. Victor Wiesen is a first year ME student.
The annual film series sponsored by Modern Languages returns this week for spring 2024! Each of the languages offered, French, Spanish, and German, will be represented by one of the films, which all screen at 7pm in Fisher Hall and are free and open to the public!
Here is the lineup for this year:
Thursday March 21
Québexit
Demers 2020, Canada
When a transnational pipeline leads to a successful Québec sovereignty referendum, a small border road becomes a lightning rod of conflict between the new Québec military, the Canadian Armed Forces and two indigenous women who traverse the border frequently.
Wednesday, March 27
Argentina, 1985
Mitre 2022, Argentina
A team of lawyers takes on the heads of Argentina’s bloody military dictatorship during the 1980s in a battle against odds and a race against time in order to bring justice to victims of the junta.
Thursday, March 28
The Silent Revolution
Kraume 2018, Germany
Based on the true story of a group of twelfth-grade students in East Germany who decide to show their solidarity with the victims of the 1956 Hungarian uprising by staging two minutes of silence during lessons.
For more information on Modern Language minors at Michigan Tech, visit https://www.mtu.edu/humanities/undergraduate/modern-languages/
There will be an open house for the modern languages program on Monday, August 21st from 2:30-4:00pm in Walker 120A. Students are invited to come with any questions they may have about modern language minors and courses, as well as meet faculty members and fellow students.
Those who have not already taken placement tests may do so at this time as well.
The Idler’s Club: Humour and Mass Readership from Jerome K. Jerome to P.G. Wodehouse, written by faculty member Laura Kasson Fiss, is set to be released on January 31, 2023, from Edinburgh University Press. A release party will take place Friday, February 3, from 12-1 PM at the Van Pelt and Opie Library to celebrate the publication.
The Idler’s Club explores the humor of the key contributors to the Idler literary magazine, “. . . finding connections between people that we don’t really think of today as being connected.” Fiss explains, “They were all in this social network.” By creating humor around the idea of the Victorian social club while simultaneously using “The Idler’s Club” column to create one of their own, authors from Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes stories) to J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan) to Israel Zangwill (whose book, Melting Pot, inspired the oft-used metaphor) created these social and literary connections.
“A lot of them were outsiders, trying to foster social mobility at one point or another.” Fiss observes that the club was “. . . a kind of double-edged sword” that could be both appealing and damaging, and “often both at the same time.” But humor offered these writers and contributors a way to convey multiple meanings simultaneously.
Fiss’ passion for Victorian literature and humor began as an undergraduate, when she studied both English and Music and wrote a thesis for each, both centered around the comedic theatrical partnership Gilbert and Sullivan. Her graduate studies continued to focus on the topic of humor, which would lay the groundwork for The Idler’s Club.
“I’m really proud of it! I’m really excited to have other people read it, and I’m really hoping to have more people take up the topic of Victorian humor.”
Readers can save 30% off Idler’s Club by pre-ordering the book before its official release date on Tuesday using the code NEW30 on the Edinburgh University Press web site.
Humanities PhD candidate Laura Vidal-Chiesa has been inducted into the American Association of Colleges and Universities Future Leaders Society, presented at the AAC&U Annual Meeting in San Francisco Jan 18-20 2023.
“First of all, I would like to thank Dr. Andy Fiss and Dr. Maria Bergstrom for the nomination to the K. Patricia Cross Award. While I wasn’t a winner, I was selected as one of the finalists, which means I have been inducted into the AAC&U Future Leaders Society. I’m very excited about all of the resources that come with it, and looking forward to bringing as many of those back into our department and sharing them with our instructors and faculty,” said Vidal-Chiesa.
According to AAC&U’s web site, “The Inductees into the AAC&U Future Leaders Society share a profound commitment to high-quality teaching and learning, equity, and community engagement.” Membership includes access to “unique, cross-disciplinary opportunities for professional development, networking, and mentorship” as well as training and development resources for future educators.
“The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) is a global membership organization dedicated to advancing the democratic purposes of higher education by promoting equity, innovation, and excellence in liberal education. ”
Laura is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture (RTC) Program, as well as the Assistant Director for the Composition Program. In addition to writing and composition, her research includes topics like emotional labor, organizational communication, feminism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI.) She hopes to graduate this upcoming summer, 2023.
Congratulations, Laura!
Humanities faculty member Andrew Fiss has been awarded Best Book in Technical or Scientific Communication by the Conference on College Composition and Communication for his 2020 book Performing Math: A History of Communication and Anxiety in the American Mathematics Classroom.
Performing Math discusses the history of mathematics education in nineteenth-century American colleges, the anxiety that surrounded (and still surrounds) the subject, and the often performative nature of mathematics teaching and learning. In a review for the book Amir Alexander, author of Proof! How the World Became Geometrical, said “Through an impressive array of evidence and historical accounts, Performing Math convincingly shows that mathematics education has often had a significant theatrical component. Without a doubt this book illuminates mathematics and its place in American culture in new and surprising ways.”
In a press release for the award, the CCCC selection committee noted “Compelling, well-researched, and a very interesting read. Though Fiss’s book focuses on the historical instruction of math, his ideas about classroom performance can be translated to other fields.” And, “While it is historical, it covers a technical topic and anxiety in a way that provides some insight into the resistance seen with technology projects and tools. The takeaways from the book … can be applied broadly to pedagogy, workplace, and any other situation where anxiety exists.”
In light of the award, Fiss reflected on Performing Math, “…its first printing was in November 2020, so it wasn’t possible to acknowledge the COVID-19 pandemic or the changes in education as a result. Specifically, though I talk about written testing in math, I feel like the book does privilege oral, face-to-face communication (including in student songs and plays about math). What those historical stories mean for education has changed since 2020, as the general expectations of post-2020 education are still developing.”
Andy also expressed pride in being able to bring the award back to the Humanities department, and gratitude for the inspiration received from prior Humanities award recipients. Works like Bob Johnson‘s Romancing the Atom (which also won the TSC Best Book) and the multiple awards both won and inspired by the work of Beth Flynn all had an impact on Fiss. “It was so inspirational! I hope this news similarly helps other people along in their work.”
The award will be presented at the CCCC Annual Convention in Chicago on Friday, February 17. “The Conference on College Composition and Communication, with more than 4,000 members and subscribers, supports and promotes the teaching and study of composition, rhetoric, and communication skills at the college level, both in undergraduate and graduate programs.”
New Humanities faculty member Richard Canevez has won the 2023 Meheroo Jussawalla Research Award, presented by the Pacific Telecommunications Council at their annual conference for the best participant research paper.
Canevez’s paper, “All-Encompassing War: An Exploration of Information Disorder Countermeasures Through Smooth and Striated Space,” discusses the various measures both taken and in consideration by Western states to combat disinformation and malinformation originating from adversarial states like Russia, China, and Iran in an evolving digital information landscape. Canevez uses the concept of smooth and striated spaces to explore how information—particularly with harmful intent—flows through digital space, how measures to combat disinformation and malinformation struggle with the unique challenges of digital information flow, and how this evolution is changing the nature of warfare to more closely integrate state, military, civil society, and private industry in a way that contrasts traditional, centralized notions of war.
“These changes in the way that war is fought stand to have a fundamental change in the structure of society we are still coming to grips with. In wartime, and in peacetime.” Canevez posits that where warfare was once a binary comprised of physical states of “at war” or “at peace,” we are transitioning into more of a spectrum of aggression, where states are always involved in some level of information aggression or defense. Add to this that the target of information warfare is, most often, civilian, and “when we fight wars, we fight them as a whole society, rather than as the domain of the state.”
Canevez will present his paper at the Pacific Telecommunications Council annual conference on January 17th as the culmination of a two-year postdoctoral fellowship with the University of Hawaii, Manoa. His fellowship was funded by the Computing Innovation Fellows program, which sought to offset the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the academic job search for new PhD graduates in computing. (See a blog post that Richard made about the evolution of his research for CIFellows here.)
“I must express infinite gratitude to my postdoctoral mentor, Jenifer Sunrise Winter, and to the CIFellows program for preparing me for a faculty position in a way that I was not previously ready at the end of my graduate studies.” Of the award, Richard said, “It’s certainly validating! I’m honored to have my work associated with Meheroo Jussawalla, who contributed so much to the telecommunications field.”
Canevez hopes to take the energy and enthusiasm from this work as he begins his time at Tech in the spring 2023 semester.