Lingua Franca*

Dear Friends of RALL,

We had another very productive and exciting year as a department, with many outstanding achievements to celebrate. This year we welcomed three new faculty members: Siham Bouamer, Assistant Professor of Global French, Leah Adelson, Assistant Professor Educator of Spanish and Coordinator of Basic Spanish, and Pavel Andrade, Visiting Assistant Professor of Mexican/Latinx Literature. Pavel will be starting in the Fall as Assistant Professor of Mexican Studies in Texas Tech University’s department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures. We will miss him and send him all our best wishes! Carmella Scorcia Pacheco, who is completing a PhD in Spanish and Border Studies at the University of Arizona, will be joining us in the Fall as a new Visiting Assistant Professor of Mexican/Latinx Literature. Additionally, Muhammad Faruque started this year in his new position as Inayat and Ishrat Malik Assistant Professor. He will be on a Taft Center Fellowship next year. Patricia Valladares-Ruiz, Mauricio Espinoza, and I will also be on sabbatical leaves. We invited two prominent writers/scholars to teach for us in Spring 2024: Moroccan writer and filmmaker Abdellah Taïa (who was also one of the Keynote Speakers for our 2023 Cincinnati Conference on Romance and Arabic Languages and Literatures) and Miguel Rocha Vivas, a Colombian writer and scholar from the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá. It should be another exciting year!

This past academic year, Kara Moranski, Juan Godoy Peñas, and Anne Lingwall Odio received a very impressive $715,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to create a new Language Resource Center at UC. The Department of Education selected UC to be the new home of one of the national LRCs that will be funded from 2022-2026 (with the possibility for renewal). Kara Moranski and Juan Godoy Peñas are the Co-Directors and Anne Lingwall Odio the Associate Director for Projects and Partnerships of this new Curricular Enhancement, Development, Access, and Research Language Resource Center (CEDAR LRC). Muhammad Faruque, Anne Lingwall Odio, Nuria López-Ortega, Shureka Nyawalo, and Grace Thome are all individual CEDAR Project Directors (https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/2022/08/uc-to-become-nationwide-resource-center-for-language-instructors.html).

Our French, Arabic, and Italian Day and our Spanish and Portuguese Day, as well as our 2023 43d Cincinnati Conference on Romance and Arabic Languages and Literatures (CCRALL), and our end-of-the-year RALL Ceremony were all resounding successes. The 2023 CCRALL, directed by Nicasio Urbina and co-chaired by graduate students Francisco Barraza Alonzo and Rachel Rider with the help of Head GA Emma Mills, featured Moroccan writer and filmmaker Abdellah Taïa as the Keynote Speaker for French and M. Rafael Salaberry (Rice University) as the Keynote Speaker for Spanish. 

Among many other achievements this past year, volume 53 of Cincinnati Romance Review, edited by Patricia Valladares-Ruiz (as Executive Editor) with the help of Assistant Editor Olga Sanz-Casasnovas, was published. You can read and download its ten articles and four book reviews at https://www.artsci.uc.edu/crr.html. Maria Paz Moreno will be stepping into the Executive Editor position while Patricia Valladares-Ruiz is on leave this next year.

Among other miscellaneous news and events for this busy past academic year, Danae Orlins started in her new role as A&S Language Advisor. We organized several pop-up promotional days on campus to advertise our programs and rented a booth at the Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in Columbus, OH. This year was largely dedicated to preparing our move to the brand-new Clifton Court Hall building, our new departmental home. Goodbye Old Chem! Steve Hofferber retired and we welcomed a new Program Manager, Cam Kruse, who is also a French MA Graduate from our department. We are elated to have him back in RALL in this new capacity! 

RALL was very well represented in UC faculty award ceremonies this year: Juan Godoy Peñas received a Faculty Excellence Award in A&S, Maria Paz Moreno the University Distinguished Research Professorship in AHSS (Arts, Humanities or Social Science), and I received the Outstanding Unit Head Leadership Award. Our PhD student Violeta Orozco read her poetry at the All-University Faculty Awards Ceremony. 

Moving past the pandemic, we were able to plan and conduct continuing and new study abroad programs this year in Spain, France, Canada, and Italy, with a new Spring study abroad program led by Beatriz Celaya Carrillo, “Spanish Visual Arts from the Margins,” and a new summer study abroad program led by Patricia Valladares-Ruiz and Juan Godoy Peñas in Queretaro, Mexico. Juan Godoy Peñas will also lead the third edition of the Summer Spanish Local Immersion Program.

Finally, I want to express my gratitude to the department, which I have been serving as head for these past five years. I will be stepping down from my position in August and Michael Gott will take over. I am also thankful to Nicasio Urbina, who will be stepping down as Director of Graduate Studies and be replaced by Carlos Gutiérrez. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to work with him and everyone else in the department these past five years. 

I wish everyone a great and safe summer!

Thérèse Migraine-George

Leah Adelson published an article in March 2023: “F2F versus Online: Student Perceptions of Foreign Language Learning in the Time of COVID-19” in The Journal of Educators Online (JEO): https://www.thejeo.com/archive/2023_20_2/adelson__keen

Pavel Andrade published this article: “Capitalist Thresholds: La muerte de Artemio Cruz and the Mapmaking of Modern Mexico” in Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, vol. 76, no. 3, pp. 127-140 (10.1080/00397709.2022.2127197). The article was awarded the Harold G. Jones Award for Best Essay by Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures and received an Honorable Mention for Best Article in the Humanities, by the Latin American Studies Association’s Mexico Section. Symposium made the article free to access through 2023.

He received a Research and Creative Fellowship for Faculty from the Niehoff Center for Film and Media Studies, which allowed him to organize these virtual talks as part of the Center’s year-long program on “Borders, Boundaries, and Limits in (and of) Screen Media”: “‘I didn’t draw that line; it was drawn by history’: Realism and the Horror of Social Boundaries in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighboring Sounds” (Emilio Sauri, University of Massachusetts Boston), Niehoff Center for Film and Media Studies, University of Cincinnati, March 24; “Echoes of Migration in Prayers for the Stolen by Tatiana Huezo” (Emily C. Vázquez Enríquez, University of California, Davis), Niehoff Center for Film and Media Studies, University of Cincinnati, February 10.

With support from RALL, he received a Taft Competitive Lecture Grant to organize this talk: “Necropolitical Romeo and Juliet: Migrant Sonority against Dehumanization in Emiliano Monge’s Among the Lost” (Tamara L. Mitchell, University of British Columbia), Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati, February 23.

Finally, he participated in these public-facing events organized by the Niehoff Center:

- Border Perspectives Series. Screening, presentation, and discussion of Los lobos, directed by Samuel Kishi. Niehoff Center for Film & Media Studies and Taft Representations of Human Mobilities Research Group, Esquire Theatre, Cincinnati, OH, November 2.

- “Migration and Borders.” Screening, presentation, and discussion of La sombra del desierto (o el paraíso perdido), directed by Juan Manuel Sepúlveda. Niehoff Center for Film & Media Studies and the Cindependent Film Festival, Woodward Theater, Cincinnati, OH, October 26.

Pavel also received the Best Professor of the Year in Spanish Award from the Graduate Students.

Ashley Anneken co-authored: Anderson, Andie N., Ashley N. Anneken, and Jennifer Vojtko Rubí. Creating a Virtual Escape Room to Promote Learner Engagement in a Gamified Context. Connections, vol. 10, 2022, pp. 9-16. https://www.flanc.net/connections-main.

She presented: “Alternative Summative Assessments.” American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Convention, Boston, MA. Co-presented with Jen Vojtko-Rubí, a former colleague from RAL, and "RPGs for Task-Based Multi-Unit Review in the Language Classroom.” Cincinnati Conference on Romance and Arabic Languages and Literatures, April 2023, Cincinnati, OH. Co-presented with Andie Anderson. 

Siham Bouamer published a co-edited volume ‘Taking up Space’: Women at Work (University of Wales Press, 2022). The book includes an introduction and her chapter titled “‘Be proud of all the Fatimas’: From Alienated Labour to Poetic Consciousness in Philippe Faucon’s Fatima.” In addition, her article “Humor, Love, and Universalism: “Happy Ending” for Undocumented Migrants in Samba (2014)?,” appeared in Contemporary French Civilization. In November, she co-organized the 2^nd  Diversity, Decolonization, and the French Curriculum Conference. She also gave an invited talk at Tulane University (as part of The Transnational Maghreb Series) and one at the The Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing (London, UK). In her presentations, she discussed part of her current research on her book in progress on women’s travel writing during the protectorate in Morocco. For that project, she was awarded a Taft Summer Fellowship and a UC Niehoff Center for Film & Media Studies Fellowship. She also received a Taft Competitive Lecture award to invite Moroccan author Abdellah Taïa who gave a keynote at the RALL conference and joined students for conversations on his work in her seminar on Queer Francophone Literature and Film, as well as in Michael Gott’s Global Film class. 

Muhammad Faruque was awarded a competitive Taft Center Fellowship for the next academic year. He will work on completing a second monograph, The Interconnected Whole: Sufism, Climate Change, and Ecological Awareness (working title). (This is the second consecutive year that a Taft Center Fellowship is awarded to a RALL faculty, which is a notable achievement for our department). Finally, he received the “Society and Culture Research Advancement Program Award” from UC's Office of Research and a Taft Summer Fellowship to work on his book project.

Juan Godoy Peñas was the recipient of a Faculty Excellence Award in A&S. This award, co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the Office of Research, honors faculty who have demonstrated excellence in teaching, research, and/or service. Along Claudia Quevedo-Webb, he was also the Keynote Speaker for the 25^th Chicago Language Symposium: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the World Language Classroom.

Michael Gott's monograph Screen Borders: From Calais to cinéma-monde was published by Manchester University Press in 2023. He also launched a study tour program in Quebec for French and Film & Media Studies students in 2022. The program introduces students to the culture and film and media industries in the province of Quebec. Students on the tour work with film directors to undertake place-based storytelling projects inspired by specific neighborhoods in Montreal and their history: https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/2022/09/u-of-cincinnati-canada-film-tour-offers-new-perspectives.html

Anne Lingwall Odio published an article in December 2022: Lingwall Odio, A. & Grinstead, J. (2022) Collective-Distributive Interpretations in Bilingual Spanish-English-Speaking Children. Isogloss: Open Journal of Romance Linguistics: https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/v8-n4-lingwall-grinstead She will also be hosting the inaugural CEDAR Summer Language Institute for K-16 world language instructors. She has received additional funding through Taft (a Chair’s Contingency Award) and the UC Office of Research to support the workshop.

Thérèse Migraine-George was awarded the 2023 Outstanding Unit Head Leadership Award at UC. She organized the panel “Queering/Reading Against the French Canon” for the 2023 CCRALL. She received an Academic Leave for Fall 2023 and a Taft Faculty Release Fellowship for Spring 2024 to work on her new book project Transatlantic Foodways: From French Gastronationalism to New Convivialities.

Kara Moranski was awarded U.S. Department of Education Title VI funding to establish the Curricular Enhancement, Development, Access, and Research (CEDAR) Language Resource Center at UC ($715k over four years). The grant was co-written with colleagues Juan Godoy-Peñas and Anne Lingwall Odio, and Project Directors include seven faculty members within RALL and two colleagues from other institutions: https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/2022/08/uc-to-become-nationwide-resource-center-for-language-instructors.html

She was awarded a Taft Center Fellowship for the 2022-23 academic to develop the project “Language learning in local immersion contexts.”

Her research study, published in Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, is titled "Spanish L2 development in a short-term domestic immersion program." It was written in collaboration with Juan Godoy-Peñas, Bernard Issa, Mandy Faretta-Stutenberg, and Harriet Wood Bowden.

Maria Paz Moreno is the 2023 recipient of the University's Distinguished Research Professor Award in AHSS (Arts, Humanities or Social Science). The awarding of this title represents the highest level of recognition for achievements and contributions in AHSS research at the University of Cincinnati.

Pat O'Connor wrote the introduction to María Martínez Sierra: A Great Playwright Hidden in Plain Sight

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/mar%C3%ADa-mart%C3%ADnez-sierra-a-great-playwright-hidden-in-plain-sight-9781350300194/

"This edited collection features three plays by María Martínez Sierra, translated by Helen and Harley Granville-Barker, along with an introduction by Patricia O'Connor, University of Cincinnati, US, which examines María's extraordinary life and work, and the battle for her authorship to be recognized in both the Spanish-speaking and anglophone world."

Nicasio Urbina published “Nicaraguan literature. Introductory Essay and Annotated Bibliography.” Handbook of Latin American Studies. Vol. 78. The Library of Congress, 2022. “La Coca-Cola del perdón.” Mingas de la imagen. Estudios indígenas e interculturales. Miguel Rojas Sotelo, Astrid Paola Molano y Miguel Rochas Vivas (Eds.) Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2022. He presented “Ficción y no ficción en la literatura nicaragüense” at the XXXI Congreso Internacional de Literatura Hispanoamericana. October 21-22, 2022. “Rubén Darío: el hombre y su obra”. I Simpósio Internacional Diálogos Interamericanos: Rubén Darío y Juan Ramón Molina. Centro Cultural Sesc Glória, Espirito Santo, Brazil. July 23, 2022. “La novela nicaragüense en el siglo XXI.” Paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association´s conference. San Francisco. May 8, 2022. Poetry Reading at the XV Festival Internacional “Palabra en el mundo” Chiapas, Mexico. May 6-7, 2022. Poetry Reading at the XVIII Festival Internacional de Poesía de Granada. Nicaragua, February 15, 2022.

Patricia Valladares-Ruiz published the following articles:
-“Experiencia migratoria y trauma social en el teatro venezolano contemporáneo”, Latin America Theatre Review 56.2, 2023.
-“Transgenerismo y denuncia social en Llámenme Casandra, de Marcial Gala”. Dossier: “Performando el género, la raza, la nación: el giro queer en la literatura latinoamericana contemporánea (1990-2021)”, Whatever: A Transdisciplinary Journal of Queer Theories and Studies, vol. 5, 2022
- “Resistencia y agencia en personajes femeninos afrodescendientes del nuevo cine caribeño”, El ojo que piensa. Revista de cine iberoamericano, vol. 24, 2022.

She was awarded a Taft Faculty Release Fellowship (Spring 2024) to work on her book project "Placing Displacement and Homeland Imaginaries in Venezuelan Cultural Productions."

Congratulations to the following students who graduated with their MA in French: Eric Dontong, Emma Mills, Rachel Rider, and Azizeh Saleh. We wish them the best in their future endeavors and hope to stay in touch. Congratulations also to Maria Daniela Granja for her Taft Dissertation Fellowship this past year.

Tomás Emilio Arce published a book review titled Romper el límite. La poesía de Roberto Juarroz de Alfredo Saldaña (Universidad de Zaragoza, 2022). The text was included in the Fall 2022 edition of the Cincinnati Romance Review.

He will publish a peer-reviewed article called ‘‘El límite de la tipología picaresca en El cielo llora por mí, Ya nadie llora por mí y Tongolele no sabía bailar de Sergio Ramírez Mercado” in Revista Iberoamericana, vol. LXXXIX, no. 284, julio-septiembre 2023, 717-735 pp.

He will also publish a book chapter titled “Palabras mágicas and Heredera del viento: Two Diagnoses of the Sandinista Revolution’s Decay” in The Rise of Central American Film in the Twenty-First Century, ed. by Jared List & Mauricio Espinoza. (University Press of Florida 2023).

Gabriela Falconi Piedra received the Dean's Dissertation Completion Scholarship (2022-2023).

She designed and taught two courses for the Local Spanish Immersion Program: SPAN3040: Spanish Language and Culture Issues / “Nation, Identity and Gender in the Andean Region” (2023); and SPAN3040: Spanish Language and Culture Issues / “Indigenous Communities of Andean Culture and its Representations” (2022).

She presented her research at these conferences: “El cuerpo religioso y el cuerpo nacional: una relectura sobre dos representaciones de santa Rosa de Lima en el siglo XVII”. Querencias 2023: Culturas entrelazadas at the University of New Mexico, April 21, 2023; “Santa Rosa de Lima como Modelo Ejemplar en dos representaciones del siglo XVII”. Co-organizer of the panel: “El Cristianismo y lo Femenino en Representaciones Coloniales Hispanoamericanas”, 43th Cincinnati Conference on Romance & Arabic Languages & Literatures (CCRALL). April 7, 2023; “Santa Rosa de Lima: lectura interseccional sobre las apropiaciones políticas propuestas por el Grupo Chaclacayo en "Rosa Cordis" (1986)”. Track: Culture, Power and Political Subjectivities. LASA 2022 Hybrid Congress: Polarización socioambiental y rivalidad entre grandes potencias. May 6, 2022.

Her work was part of the Flight Without Borders installation at the Taft Museum, November 2022 - January 2023; and she guided two Wire Sculpture Workshops in collaboration with the Taft Museum/Su Casa Collaboration, December 15, 2022; and Boys & Girls Club of West Chester/Liberty. November 4, 2022.

Dani Granja will publish a book chapter titled “Film and Gender in Central America: Five Voices” with Interviews by Mauricio Espinoza and Jared List, Translated by Mauricio Espinoza, Jared List, and Ana Pérez Méndez. In The Rise of Central American Film in the Twenty-First Century, ed. by Jared List & Mauricio Espinoza. (University Press of Florida, 2023).

A short film she co-wrote, titled “Época de plagas,” directed by Gabriela Calvache, will start production in September.

Juan Pizzani published the following works:
-An art book / textbook parody / protest against Venezuelan regime Nuevo Abesedario: https://www.andantebooks.com/store1/Nuevo-Abesedario-p130175620

“This was possible thanks to the RALL Conference, since it was there where I contacted Arendt Spencer, Violeta's editor, and he became interested in my project when I showed him my mockup. The book was printed in Rome and is selling in NY and Chicago now.”

- He also published digitally 12 bilingual photo-poems: Café. “I wrote them / photographed them between 2021 and 2022, putting in verses what I saw on the coffee stains left on my home-brewed coffee cup. Here is the link to the page in the digital only publisher (Petalurgia), that has them available for free download (click on Descargar yellow link at the bottom):” https://petalurgia.com/books/cafe-de-juan-pizzani/

Adriana Prieto Quintero received the Taft Enhancement Grant Fellowship in 2022 at UC to work on her research: “El hilo que se rompe: una mirada ecofeminista a la novela Distancia de rescate de Samanta Schweblin.”

One of her chronicles about immigration was included in the Anthology: “Venezuela, 70 años de historia de migrantes” published by Banesco (2022). Caracas, Venezuela. 

Her poem “Hay una línea hacia el sur” about immigration was included in the art exhibition “Toca la lectura, la lectura te toca” at CEVAZ (Centro Venezolano Americano del Zulia) from April 16 to March 30, 2023.  

She received a RALL Professional Development Award 2023 to develop a Community Testimonial Writing Workshop for migrant women who reside at the Casa de Paz women’s shelter in Cincinnati, Ohio. 

She was invited to have a community workshop for parents and caregivers: “How to promote literature at home” April 2023. Fairfield Lane Libraries. Cincinnati, Ohio. https://lavanguardiausa.com/bookjoy-un-dia-de-cuentos-de-fairfield-lane-library/

She was invited to participate at the Story time at Fairfield Lane Libraries, to read her book: “Where Are We from?”. April 2023. Cincinnati, Ohio. 

She was invited to participate at the Story time at Dayton Metro Libraries, to read her book: “Where Are We from?”. September 2022. Cincinnati, Ohio.  https://legacy.daytonmetrolibrary.org/latinxculture

Violeta Orozco received the prestigious Latino Book Award in Los Angeles. She received the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Book of Poetry written in English medal for her book The Broken Woman Diaries. (“I am so proud that the book was launched in our RALL conference for the first time, and that you were all there to see it”). In April 2023, she won the honorific mention for the Academy of American Poets Prize for Best Single poem as part of the English Department Writing Prize competition open to UC Graduate Students.

In January 2023, Jacar Press published her second poetry collection in English Stillness in the Land of Speed in North Carolina and UNAM published her first non-fiction collection in Spanish Como caminar una ciudad sin despertarla in Mexico City.

Olga Sanz-Casasnovas was invited by the Asociación Aragonesa de Escritores (Association of Writers of Aragón), in Zaragoza (Spain) to talk about her poetry and read some poems. This is part of a set of events dedicated to young Aragonese poets ("La voz de jóvenes poetas"). One of her poems was published in the legendary Aragonese journal Turia, no. 141-142 (https://www.ieturolenses.org/revista_turia/index.php/revista-cultural-turia-numero-141-142.html).

“It was very rewarding to share that space with prestigious Spanish writers such as Miguel Casado, Ana Rosseti or Marta Sanz!” 

For this academic year 2022-23 in RALL, we are celebrating a total of 22 RALL Majors, 66 Minors, and 29 Certificates. We are also celebrating the following undergraduate student awards:

Recipients of the Betty Jane Hull Memorial Award (for French Majors, sophomores or juniors)

Jaquelynn Mcgraw
William Bowman
Ana Ramirez

Recipients of the Edward Coughlin Scholarship (for Spanish Majors at any level)

Morgan Palcisko
Alexandra Norton 
Jerod Barhorst 

Recipients of the Dr. Karen L. Gould Scholarship in Foreign Language Studies Endowment Fund

In French:
Michael Shobe
Quinn Anderson

In Spanish:
Sophie Allen
Madeline Baenziger
Alexandra Norton
Morgan Palcisko
Hannah Rimstidt

32 RALL students in Spanish have been awarded a Pat O’Connor Grant for International Studies (in Spain and Mexico)

5 RALL students have been awarded an Emily Frank Adler Award for Study Abroad in France

Recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship Program
Adam El Zarka  

Recipient of the CLS (Critical Language Scholarship) Program
Saba Rehman

RALL Students Nominated for Phi Beta Kappa

Charlotte Lickliter – BA in French, Organizational Leadership
Greta Davis  –  BA in Spanish, Psychology
Megan Miller – BA in Spanish
Jillian Ketz – BA in Spanish, BS in Psychology

RALL Most Outstanding Students 

Rebecca Docea – French Major and Ballet, High Honor
Charlotte Lickliter – BA in French and BA in Organizational Leadership, High Honor
Greta Davis  –  BA in Spanish, WGS Minor, High Honor 
Megan Miller – BA in Spanish, High Honor 

Mirela Butnaru (PhD 2015) was appointed Assistant Professor, non-tenure track, at Denison University. She also published her book, Centroamérica: literatura revolucionaria y revoluciones literarias. Madrid: Pliegos, 2022.

This year, Dr. Tiffanie Clark became an Assistant Professor at Central State University and has continued her post as Professor of Latin American Literature at Ashland University in service of incarcerated college students. This is her third year at Ashland.  She has published two articles and delivered three academic presentations about Central American Literature, Translation, and Higher Education. Espinoza, Mauricio and Tiffanie Clark. “Women Poet Voices of the Central American Diaspora: An Intersectional, Transnational Reading.” The Never-Ending Journey:  Interdisciplinary Approaches to Central American Migrations in 21st Century, edited by Mauricio Espinoza, Miroslava Arely, Rosales Vásquez, and Ignacio Sarmiento, The University of Arizona Press, 2023. “Transcending Societal Woes: 4 Poems by Costa Rican Poet, German Salas.” Article published at DELOS: Journal of Translation, 04/2023. “The Future of Education: An Echo of Gioconda Belli’s Revolutionary World,” Brown Bag Presentation, Central State University. 04/2023. “The Future of Education: An Echo of Gioconda Belli’s Revolutionary World,” Xavier Futures Conference Presentation, 04/2023. “Translating the Poetry of German Salas,” Presentation, 43rd Annual Romance and Arabic Languages and Literatures Conference, The University of Cincinnati. 04/2023.

Miriam Yvonn Márquez Barragán (PhD. 2019) is currently an Associate Professor of Literature and Humanities at Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP) in Mexico. In May 2022, she organized the event “Dialogar con los que leen”, in collaboration with the Penguin Random House publishing house, which invited the writer Cristina Rivera Garza to talk about her award-winning book El invencible verano de Liliana. In August, she published the article “Que el arte nos sane y nos salve”, in the magazine Conexión UDLAP. In addition, she published the article "¿Sueñan los dragones con tesoros eléctricos?", in Milenio, an important newspaper from Mexico. In October 2022, she organized the colloquium "El cuerpo femenino en la literatura mexicana: aliado o enemigo", which had around 50 academics from institutions such as University of New Mexico, El Colegio de México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and many more. In November, she was invited as one of the speakers at the conference "El centralismo y la escritura en la periferia”, organized by the Human Rights Commission of Tlaxcala, as part of the Feminist Conference on Literature 2022, convened by the Miguel N. Lira Museum. In the fall 2023 she will be promoted as coordinator of the Spanish area of the Universidad de las Américas Puebla.

Lucas LaVere Proper, who graduated with an MA in French from our program, is pursuing a PhD in the department of French and Italian at the University of Pittsburgh. He participated in our 2023 CCRALL and presented a paper titled “Queering the Imagined Banlieue Space: Androgyny and (Re)centering in Divines.”

Although many donors prefer to remain anonymous I would like to thank all those who have donated to the department for their tremendous generosity, which has had a powerful impact on our department, on both our undergraduate and graduate students, and on our faculty. Among other sources of funding I would like to acknowledge the Pat O’Connor Fund for Cultural Enrichment, the Betty Jane Hull Scholarship, the Emily Frank Adler Award for Study Abroad, the Edward Coughlin Scholarship, the Dr. Karen L. Gould Scholarship in Foreign Language Studies Endowment Fund, the French Culture and Francophone Studies fund, and the Susan Cogan Romance Language fund. Donations are allowing us to support our undergraduate students’ study abroad experiences and our graduate students’ research activities, to buy material and equipment for our department, and to support our many social, cultural, and scholarly events in RALL throughout the year. Donations allow us to grow and thrive and we are deeply grateful to all our donors for their generosity.

If you would like to give to our department please consult this webpage: https://www.artsci.uc.edu/departments/rall/giving.html

You can also email the head of the department, Thérèse Migraine-George: migrait@ucmail.uc.edu for more information on the various areas that you can support in our department.