SEE ALSO Ongoing Events in the Department

Fall Orientation: Information for Romance Languages Fall Orientation may be found on the Department's Events Calendar. Click here for a copy of the Orientation Schedule.

Departmental Pot Luck! Members of the Department of Romance Languages will be gathering at Flinchum's Phoenix for a party to commemorate the start of the semester. The gathering will be on September 9th from 6 to 10 p.m. Directions available here.

PORTUGUESE STUDIES & LACSI OPEN HOUSE Enjoy Portuguese, Latin American and Caribbean activities with live music from Incatepec, Capoeira, Brazilian and Portuguese food, and more! From 3:00 to 6:00pm at the LACSI House, 290 South Hull Street. All welcome! Come and enjoy the music, the food, the company, and consider studying Portuguese or Spanish, because one day you may want to visit South America. Who knows?! Find out more about LACSI and Romance Languages programs! See the flyer.
An event sponsored by:
LACSI, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute,
The Department of Romance Languages
BSA, the Brazilian Student Association at UGA

Flagship Program in Portuguese at UGA UGA has been awarded a prestigious federal grant to establish the nation’s first and only Undergraduate Flagship Program in Portuguese, thanks to a joint ROML/LACSI proposal. The goal of the Flagship Program is to increase the number of students who graduate with a high level of Portuguese proficiency. The program will consist  of intensive language instruction, Skype language partners in Brazil, and a year long study abroad experience at the State University of São Paulo (UNESP). Undergraduate students of all majors who demonstrate a unique commitment to the study of Portuguese are welcome to apply. More information.

Graduate Student Workshop Editing & Publishing Papers… in 45 minutes! with Dr. Stacey Casado, Dr. Dana Bultman, and Dr. Francis Assaf. For All UGA Romance Languages Graduate Students please join us… Wednesday, November 16, 2011, Gilbert LRC Room 118, 3:30-4:15 p.m. Questions? Contact your graduate student representative:
Spanish, Bethany Battig
Romance Languages, Cris Lira
French, Irène Xia
We're excited to announce a call for papers within our own department, for our own ROML grad students. Please consider submitting - or encouraging someone you know to submit - an abstract for our upcoming graduate student colloquium. This is a great chance to get and give feedback on academic papers in a friendly environment, and would look spiffy on a C.V. or resume, as well.

Graduate Students Colloquium. The Graduate Students Representatives of the Department of Romance Languages would like to welcome graduate students to the Romance Languages Graduate Students Colloquium 2012. Do you have an idea that you want to share? Have you written a paper that you believe is interesting, and you want to get feedback on it to move forward trying to publish it? This is your opportunity! The Graduate Students Colloquium 2012 is going to be a one day journey to be held on March, 2nd from 3:30 to 5:00 at Gilbert Hall room 115. Three works will be selected to be presented. Each presentation will have 20 minutes followed by 10 minutes of questions/comments for each.
Guidelines:
- Papers on all aspects of literature will be considered. Even though the subject may be about French, Spanish, Portuguese or Italian world, the presentations must be given in English.
- Abstracts should not exceed 300 words and should be submitted to Bethany Battig.
- Submissions will be chosen in a double-blind selection.
- Deadline for submission of abstracts is January 13th.
- The announcement with the selected papers will be given on January 27th.
Questions? Contact your graduate student representative:
Spanish, Bethany Battig
Romance Languages, Cris Lira
French, Irène Xia

LRC Workshop On Friday, September 23rd at 3:30pm, Dr. Rimma Ableeva will be conducting a workshop on Digital stories in second language teaching and learning. Digital storytelling has become an increasingly popular way to engage students in a course-length project involving the creation of multimedia narratives in a second language. This workshop will show how digital stories can be integrated into a content-based course as well as into a language classroom at the beginning, intermediate and advanced levels. We will meet at the LRC in room 116. You may bring some digital pictures with you to make your own story. Hope to see you there.

Multicultural Faculty, Staff and Student Coffee Hour. The Office of Multicultural Services and Programs cordially invites you to its Multicultural Faculty, Staff and Student Coffee Hour Friday, September 30, 2011 11:30 a.m. Until 1 p.m. Memorial Hall Ballroom. Please be our special guest as we honor faculty, administrators, students and community members with the L.K. BATES MEDALLION OF EXCELLENCE and as we unveil the newest members of the HALL OF PEACE AND REVOLUTION.

Reading and Discussion. The UGA Department of Romance Languages invites you to a reading and discussion with French author Olivier Sebban, Monday, October 3rd 3:30 pm, 350K Gilbert Hall. A reception will follow. Olivier Sebban is the author of Amapola (Seuil, 2008) and Le Jour de votre Nom (Seuil, 2009). Amapola, a picaresque novel inspired by Don Quixote, is set during the Spanish Civil War. Le Jour de votre Nom, situated on the border and between two world wars, tells the story of a man who escapes Republican Spain, defeated in 1939, for France, where he is immediately interned in a camp. The novel figured on the lists for the Renaudot, Médicis, and Méditerrannée prizes and was awarded the Francois-Victor Noury prize by the Institut de France. Sebban is currently researching a novel to take place in New York, thanks to an award from the Mission Stendhal of the Institut Francais. This will be a trilingual event, the reading in French and the discussion in French, Spanish, and English. Please contact Rachel Gabara with any questions.

Hispanic Linguistics Symposium The Department of Romance Languages at the UGA is pleased to be hosting the 2011 Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (HLS), which will be in Athens, GA on October 6-9, 2011. For the past 15 years, the HLS has been the premier venue in the United States for researchers with an interest in Spanish and other Iberian and Latin American languages. The HLS encompasses a wide range of theoretical and applied approaches to the study of Spanish and Portuguese linguistics and has a reputation for supporting interdisciplinary research and cutting-edge methodologies. This year's HLS will feature plenary lectures by Prof. José del Valle (The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, CUNY), Prof. Kimberly L. Geeslin (Indiana University), and Prof. Paula Kempchinsky (University of Iowa). The conference is also hosting a pre-conference tutorial entitled "Selected mono- and multifactorial statistics with R" presented by Prof. Stefan Th. Gries (University of California, Santa Barbara). For more information regarding conference activities, registration, travel, and hotel arrangements, please visit the conference website. We look forward to welcoming you to Athens!

Hispanic Heritage Month Film Festival The theme of the festival is: Immigration and Transnational Experiences. We will be showing five films, all related to questions of immigration, in light of the recent laws that were passed in the state of Georgia. All the films will be introduced by speakers who will lead the discussions afterwards. There will be screenings every Thursday at 6:30 pm*, from September 15th through October 13th, at the Georgia Museum of Art, on South Campus. All the films are either in English or have English subtitles. The admission is free. Please, encourage your students to attend this event.
This is the schedule of events and screenings:
September 15th – Precious Knowledge (2011), Dir. Ari Palos, USA. English 5:30 pm – Reception with Ari Palos and Eren McGinnis (film directors) at the Museum, with food from Big City Bread. 6:30 pm – Introduction of the film by Ari Palos and Eren McGinnis. Screening of the film, followed by Q&A with the directors.
September 22nd – Norteado (2009), Dir. Rigoberto Pérezcano, México. Spanish with English Subtitles. 6:30 pm – Introduction of the film. Screening of the film followed by Q&A. Speaker to be announced.
September 29th – Los que se quedan (2009). Dir. Carlos Hagerman and Juan Carlos Rulfo, México. Spanish with English Subtitles. 7:00 pm –Introduction of the film by Jaime Chavez, graduate student from Romance Languages. Screening of the film, followed by Q&A.
October 6th – Grandma Has a Videocamera (2010). Dir. Tania Cypriano, USA. English. 6:30 pm – Introduction of the film by Dr. Susan Quinlan. Screening of the film followed by Q&A with the director Tania Cypriano via Skype.
October 13th – Biutiful (2010). Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, México. Spanish with English Subtitles. 6:30 pm – Introduction of the film by Dr. Catherine Simpson, lecturer from Romance Languages. Screening of the film, followed by Q&A.
This program is supported in part by the President’s Venture fund through the generous gifts of the University of Georgia Partners, the Department of Romance Languages, the College of Education, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute, the Georgia Museum of Art, the UGA Parents and Families Association, and the Office of Inclusion and Diversity.
There will be other activities during the festival that will be announced later on.

Romance Languages Colloquia Free and open to the public, most colloquia will be from 3:30-4:30 in Gilbert Hall Room 115 unless otherwise noted.
September 16: Dana Bultman, “Baroque Nature: Rivers and Winds in Andalucía Circa 1605”
October 14: Lorgia García-Peña , “Reframing the Past Through Fiction: A Literary History of the 1937 Haitian Massacre”
October 21: Jonathan Krell and Rachel Paparone, “Denatured Humans and Other Issues in French Ecocriticism”
November 9: Timothy Gupton, “Collaborative Learning in the Spanish Linguistics Classroom: A Pilot Project” *12:15-1:15, room 320
November 11: Nannette Mosley, “Mythical Mélusine -- the Healing 'Star' of André Breton's Arcane 17”
For more information please contact Louise Goodman lmarieg@uga.edu or Dana Bultman dbultman@uga.edu. Click here for a copy of the flyer.

The UGA Department of Romance Languages invites you to a talk of Dr. Samira Sayeh Wednesday, October 12th 3:30 – 5:00pm, 118 Gilbert Hall, The Ambiguous “Muslim writings” of Pre-Revolutionary Algeria (1950-1954). Some questions and concerns of history remain taboo. The Algerian war of independence, for instance, has been a sensitive subject on both sides of the Mediterranean since 1962, overshadowing more than one hundred years of Franco-Algerian political affairs, socio-cultural relationships, and artistic bonds. This presentation aims at lifting the veil from an unprecedented colonial experience and reflecting on the meaning and identity of Algerian literature before 1954. Samira Sayeh is an Associate Professor of Francophone Studies at the University of Kansas. She is the author of La Génération de 52: Conflits d’hégémonie et de dépendance. Reconsidérations identitaires de la littérature algérienne en langue française d’avant l’indépendance (Paris: Publisud, 2010) and of numerous articles on North African literatures, cultures, and history. Languages : English and French. Please contact Rimma Ableeva with any questions. *This event was cancelled.*

Undocumented & Unwelcome: Stories of how Georgia's immigration laws and practices are affecting undocumented immigrant students. Come hear students along with their teachers from Cedar Shoals High School and Clarke Central High School who had hoped to attend UGA but are now "unwelcome.” Please come and share your perspective on this critical issue. Wednesday, October 26 from 5:30-7:00 P.M., Room 481 Tate Center. Light Refreshments. Sponsored by the College of Education Dean's Office, Faculty Senate, and the Dean's Council on Diversity.

Dear Colleagues, on Tuesday, November 29th, Dr. Marial Iglesias Utset will give a lecture on her recent research on Cuban history: “A Creole Family and Its Slaves in Saint-Domingue and Cuba: A Narrative of a Trans-Atlantic Experience.” Date:Tuesday, November 29th, 2011. Time: 3:30 p.m. Location: 150 Miller Learning Center
A family of French planters in Jérémie, in southern Saint-Domingue, whose world falls apart due to the revolution in Haiti, recreates the economy (material and moral) of the coffee plantation in Cuba. The lives of the Despaignes, both masters and slaves, descendants of Europeans and the offspring of Africans, were tied for three generations to a piece of land in the mountains of el Cobre, near Santiago de Cuba, whose exploitation resulted in a bonanza for the white owners and in physical violence and dehumanization for its victims. Half a century later, the outbreak of the Cuban wars of independence from Spain emancipated the numerous slaves from the plantation. Their citizen status, in the Cuban Republic of the twentieth century, was put to the test as the 1912 uprising of the Independent Party of Color traumatically brought back the memory of Haiti to Cuba.
Marial Iglesias Utset worked as a professor of philosophy and history at the University of Havana for the past 25 years. Her book Las metáforas del cambio en la vida cotidiana, a history of everyday life in Cuba during the US military occupation (1898-1902), has received several prizes, including the Clarence H. Haring Prize, a quinquennial prize awarded by the American Historical Association. The book has been recently translated into English and published by the University of North Carolina Press under the title A Cultural History of Cuba during the US Occupation, 1898-1902. For her current research project, “A Creole Family and Its Slaves in Saint-Domingue and Cuba: A Narrative of a Trans-Atlantic Experience,” a narration of the Atlantic travels of a single family and its slaves that links the lives of Europeans born on the French Atlantic coast, people from west-central Africa, and Caribbean Creoles, she has been awarded a long-term fellowship from the John Carter Brown Library.
This event is possible with the Support of The Office of Inclusion and Diversity Leadership, the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, the Department of Romance Languages and the Department of History.
Free and open to the public.

Comparative Literature colloquium. Dr. Masaki Mori of the Comparative Literature department will be presenting this month's Comparative Literature colloquium on Friday, November 11 at 2:30 in MLC 267. The title is "Murakami's 'Second Bakery Attack,'" and the paper deals with general as well as sociopolitical aspects inherent in the short story, "The Second Bakery Attack" (1985), by Murakami Haruki (1949-). Murakami Haruki is one of the most popular contemporary authors in Japan and has enjoyed international success. His most recent novel,1Q84, has been published to widespread acclaim, continuing a 30-year career as an author of novels, short stories, and essays. Those who are not familiar with Murakami Haruki's work, or who would like a refresher, can find "The Second Bakery Attack" in the short story collection The Elephant Vanishes. The monthly Comparative Literature colloquium is organized and sponsored by Compass, the graduate student organization of the Comparative Literature department at UGA.

Dr. Cathy Jones, Professor of French and Provençal, has taken over as faculty ombudsman at the University of Georgia. Congratulations! Read the announcement in the Athens Banner-Herald.

Michael Burriss: A Modern Pilgrim PhD student Michael Burriss is featured in the UGA Graduate School's magazine. Take a look!

Kudos! Cris Lira, doctoral candidate in Portuguese, has been chosen for the Future Faculty Program! "Participants in this program are experienced teaching assistants who have been recognized at the institutional level for their outstanding teaching and are preparing for careers in higher education. The purpose of the CTL Future Faculty Program is to provide graduate preparation which reflects future faculty roles, to develop discipline based pedagogy and to increase peer mentoring in academic departments."

ONGOING EVENTS

French Table
This weekly discussion group meets Thursdays, 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. at The Globe, Downtown Athens. Contact Yasmina Fawaz at fawaz23@uga.edu for more information.

Italian Table
This weekly discussion group meets Mondays, 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. at The Globe, Downtown Athens. Contact Concettina Pizzuti at pizzuti@uga.edu.

Portuguese Table
This weekly discussion group meets Wednesdays, 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. at The Globe, Downtown Athens. Contact Cris Lira at clira@uga.edu. Portuguese Conversational Hour will be held at LACSI from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. every Wednesday.

Spanish Table
This weekly discussion group meets Tuesdays, 5:00 p.m. at The Globe, Downtown Athens. This is a great opportunity for you to practice and improve your Spanish. Contact Jaime Chaves at chavejr@uga.edu.