In this Spanish-language presentation, writer and Romance Studies Professor Edmundo Paz Soldán will present his recent novel, Área protegida (2024, Editorial Almadía) in dialog with Paulo Lorca Fuentealba (Fellow, Society of the Humanities).

From the Publisher:

En esta novela de Edmundo Paz Soldán el fin del mundo es un hecho. Los personajes viven sabiendo que los días de la Tierra están contados, apenas distinguen las diferencias entre los cuerpos de carne y hueso y los que son producto de los hologramas. Pero siguen, extrañamente, teniendo esperanza en algo que está más allá de la vida. Novela futurista y a la vez contemporánea, ciencia ficción compuesta en nuestro mundo sin límites —donde todas las facetas de la vida están mediadas por la tecnología—, lo estremecedor y lo fecundo, lo atractivo y lo temible de este texto es su imaginería y su proximidad con nuestro tiempo. Área protegida es una zona de interés de los privilegiados invadida por quienes todavía creen, no ya en una vida para las generaciones futuras, sino en un final alejado del caos. ¿Cómo serán los últimos días de la Tierra? ¿En qué o en quién vamos a creer cuando sea evidente que ya no hay solución? ¿Si nuestro lenguaje, nuestras ideas y nuestra historia permanecen en las máquinas y ellas sí aguantan los efectos del cambio climático, podríamos decir que sobrevivirá alguna parte de lo humano? La Comunidad, un grupo de personas que cree en la vida extraterrestre y en la solución de la crisis climática a través de la espiritualidad (meditando, interpretando los sucesos por medio de los astros, ayunando o volviéndose veganos) se enfrenta al gobierno y a las empresas poderosas de la amazonia. Lo que está en juego es el Área Protegida: una zona que antes servía para beneficiar a los más ricos y ahora es el hogar de quienes creen que el fin del mundo se aproxima. En esta novela de ciencia ficción, tecnología, ovnis y medio ambiente, Edmundo Paz Soldán crea un panorama de conflicto político en el que se asoman los problemas contemporáneos más graves, pero sobre todo las formas —no menos sorprendentes— que tenemos de enfrentarlos.

On the author:

B.A. in Political Science, University of Alabama-Huntsville (1991); M.A. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures, UC-Berkeley (1993); Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures, UC-Berkeley (1997). Winner of the Bolivian National Book Award (2003), and the Juan Rulfo Short Story Award (1997). He has published Alcides Arguedas y la narrativa de la nación enferma (2003), and is the coeditor, with Gustavo Faverón, of the volume of critical essays Bolaño salvaje (2008), and, with Alberto Fuguet, of the anthology of short stories Se habla español: Voces latinas en U.S.A. (2000). He teaches Modern and Contemporary Spanish-American Literature, Andean Literature, Narrative and Mass Media, Speculative Fiction, and Creative Writing. He is the author of fourteen novels (among them Área protegida, La mirada de las plantas, Los días de la peste and Norte), and six books of short stories (among them La vía del futuro, Las visiones, and Billie Ruth). His work has been translated to twelve languages.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Romance Studies.

The undergraduate minor in Latin American Studies spans across disciplines and allows you to explore the history, culture, government, politics, economy and languages of Latin America and the Caribbean. Qualifying courses can be found in many of the colleges.

Register here. Can’t attend? Contact lacs@cornell.edu.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program supports U.S. citizens to study, conduct research in any field, or teach English in more than 150 countries. Students who wish to begin the program immediately after graduation are encouraged to start the process in their junior year. Recent graduates are welcome to apply through Cornell.

The Fulbright program at Cornell is administered by the Einaudi Center for International studies. Applicants are supported through all stages of the application and are encouraged to start early by contacting fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Register here. Can't attend? Contact fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

The Amit Bhatia ’01 Global PhD Research Awards fund international fieldwork to help Cornell students complete their dissertations. Through a generous gift from Amit Bhatia, this funding opportunity annually supports at least six PhD students who have passed the A exam. Recipients hold the title of Amit Bhatia ’01 Global PhD Research Scholars. All disciplines and research topics are welcome. The award provides $10,000 to be used by the end of the sixth PhD year for international travel, living expenses, and research expenses. Applications are due March 7, 2025.

The Einaudi Dissertation Proposal Development Program supports 12 students over the course of a year to participate in seminars, workshops, and mentoring sessions and receive up to $5,000 for summer research. Applicants’ research projects must focus on global issues, but the proposed research setting may be international or domestic. In addition to six weeks of summer research, the program includes community-building and mentoring events. Applications are due by March 2, 2025.

Register here. Can't attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.

"Dyslexia, ADHD, Autism: Encouraging and Supporting All L2 Learners"
Sara Lee
Associate Teaching Professor of German, Arizona State University

Up to 20% of people in the U.S. have dyslexia, which means that about 4-6 students in every classroom struggle with reading and writing, spelling, and executive functions. How does this manifest in second language acquisition?
This workshop will introduce dyslexia from a medical and educational perspective and explain how it presents in second language learning. We will conduct error analyses on writing samples to determine which errors are developmentally expected in language acquisition or could point toward auditory processing challenges or dyslexia.
In the second part of the workshop, we will focus on classroom methodology to support learners with dyslexia and consider how universal design can help address the heterogeneity in learner needs in general activities and assessments.

Bio: Sara Lee is an Associate Teaching Professor of German at Arizona State University. She is a certified K-12 teacher and dyslexia therapist. Sara combines her knowledge and experience to be a strong advocate for neurodiverse learners of world languages. Her current research is developing an error analysis and intervention to increase spelling proficiency for learners of German. As a German Educational Multiplier, she travels nationally and internationally to give workshops and presentations on how language educators can support their neurodiverse learners. Sara is the 2024 Southwest Conference on Language Teaching (SWCOLT) Teacher of the Year and a finalist for the 2025 ACTFL National Language Teacher of the Year.

This 90-minute workshop will be held in person in G25 Stimson and will also be streamed live over Zoom (registration required). Join us at the LRC or on Zoom.

The event is free and open to the public.

Co-sponsored by the German Educational Multipliers Network, established by the American Association of Teachers of German and the Goethe-Institut.

"Linguistic Perception and Production in Heritage Language"
Gláucia Silva
Professor of Portuguese, UMass Dartmouth

Heritage language (HL) speakers tend to assess their linguistic competence in binary terms, such as "good" and "bad," and to consider that they speak "slang" or a "broken" language (Byram et al., 2021). However, research on HL production does not confirm these perceptions: Rinke et al. (2024) show that structures that prove most challenging for HL bilinguals are also problematic for monolingual speakers. Furthermore, Torregrossa et al. (2023) indicate that age and formal instruction in the HL may lead to better performance in those challenging structures. Drawing on examples from Portuguese grammar, this talk discusses research on linguistic production in HL, including gender and verb tenses, as well as the perception of learners in relation to instruction and to their own abilities in the HL.

Bio: Gláucia Silva is a Professor in the Department of Portuguese at UMass Dartmouth. She specializes in heritage and foreign language learning, with a focus on Portuguese. Professor Silva has co-authored four Portuguese language textbooks and is the author of Word Order in Brazilian Portuguese (De Gruyter, 2001/2013). She has also published several scholarly articles and book chapters, both in English and in Portuguese. Her graduate advisees have investigated different aspects related to Portuguese language and linguistics, such as the roles of attitude and motivation in learning Portuguese, service encounters in Portuguese in Massachusetts, gay articulations of desire in Rio de Janeiro, the impact of anxiety on learning Portuguese, using songs in the foreign language classroom, task-based language teaching, and mother-child interactions in a bilingual family, among others.

This event will be held in person in G25 Stimson and will also be streamed live over Zoom (registration required). Join us at the LRC or on Zoom.

The event is free and open to the public.

Co-sponsored by the Language Resource Center, the Department of Romance Studies, and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program through its Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language (UISFL) grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

"Doing It (Gender) Justice: Reimagining Language Education Through Trans Knowledges"
Kris Aric Knisely
Associate Professor of French and Intercultural Competence, University of Arizona

As people who teach, learn, and research language, the time for us to work toward forms of gender justice that honor and revel in the knowledges and linguistic practices of trans people has long since been here and it grows ever-more overdue in the ongoing wake of globalized and localized forms of anti-trans, anti-education, and other oppressive actions (Knisely, 2023; Knisely & Russell, 2024). If we are to move toward gender justice in language education, we need not only increasingly inclusionary pedagogies, materials, research, and languaging, but also to think beyond the confines of inclusionary discourses alone. When we unscript the cisheteronormativities and cislingualism that are engrained in much of our field, we open ourselves up to new ways of thinking about language-as-social-verb, learning as participation in languaging communities, and education as a site for gender justice, among other key concepts (e.g., trans translanguaging, undoing competence). In this session, we will engage with some of the burgeoning research into trans ways of doing and teaching language in order to reimagine what we do as language scholar-educators, deepen our understanding of what it means to work toward gender justice in our field, and, ultimately to “stand in the tensions of our own humanity, our own languaging and gendering, our own doing and undoing, and look through it for what might be our greater potentiality” (Knisely & Russell, 2024, p. 254). Together, we will ask: What will we do to work toward a world where language enriches the livability of all of our lives?

Bio: Dr. Kris Aric Knisely (Ph.D., French and Educational Studies, Emory University) is Associate Professor of French and Intercultural Competence as well as affiliated faculty in both SLAT and TSRC at the University of Arizona. Knisely’s research focuses on the interplay between the social, relational practices of doing language and doing gender, particularly as they relate to language education and to trans linguacultures. Dr. Knisely’s work has appeared in a variety of venues including Contemporary French Civilization, CFC Intersections, Critical Multilingualism Studies, Foreign Language Annals, The French Review, Gender and Language, and The Modern Language Journal, among others. Knisely is also co-editor (with Eric Russel, UC-Davis) of Redoing linguistic worlds: Unmaking gender binaries, remaking gender pluralities (Multilingual Matters).

This event will be held in person in G25 Stimson and will also be streamed live over Zoom (registration required). Join us at the LRC or on Zoom.

The event is free and open to the public.

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www.emiconference.com

This talk will explore the critical intersection of war rhetoric and the state of exception in Ecuador. This topic unveils how language and legal frameworks shape political authority and societal responses in times of crisis. War rhetoric, often employed to evoke urgency and solidarity, has been a recurring tool in Ecuadorian political discourse, especially in addressing issues such as organized crime, drug trafficking, and social unrest. This rhetoric frames these challenges as existential threats, demanding extraordinary measures to safeguard national security and public order. Such discourse justifies and amplifies the use of states of exception, a constitutional mechanism that temporarily suspends certain human rights to empower the state to act decisively. However, the state of exception has also been used to expedite the discussion of tax statutes in the legislative and to evade the independent control of public expense in defense. This raises critical questions about the balance between state authority and constitutional limits and the potential for abuse under the guise of emergency powers.

In Ecuador, the deployment of war rhetoric has become increasingly evident in recent years, particularly as the government confronts escalating violence and organized crime. While these measures may be very popular in certain sectors of society, they also normalize authoritarian practices and undermine democratic institutions. This lecture will examine war as a legal category, the facts that were used to justify the application of the state of exception, the response of the judicial institutions, and the response of a significant portion of the society that decides to ignore legal institutions to support the establishment of an authoritarian regimen. Ultimately, we will reflect on the delicate balance between addressing genuine threats and preserving the constitutional guarantees that underpin a democratic society.

David Cordero-Heredia, J.S.D. ’18 is a Law Professor of Law at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador currently affiliated to Cornell University as Visiting Fellow of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program. He has been a visiting professor at the Andean University Simón Bolívar (UASB), the University of the Americas (UDLA), and the University of Azuay (UDA). From 2018 to 2019, he co-taught the International Human Rights Clinic: Policy Advocacy at Cornell Law School as a Senior Teaching Postdoctoral Fellow. His research work deals with the interaction of social movements and the legal field with a focus on indigenous peoples.