The unexpected challenge of teaching foreign language and culture classes online at UGA in late spring and summer 2020 has catapulted our community into an exciting, albeit at times exhausting, few months of innovative experimentation with online teaching. As we prepare to teach our fall semester partially, or, in some cases, possibly fully online, this online morning colloquium offers an opportunity to share the collective wisdom and questions we all gathered during this productive time.

Doctoral student in Romance Languages Linguistics Diogo Cosme has won UGA's Excellence in Teaching Award, the top teaching award for graduate students at UGA. This highly competitive award recognizes teaching assistants who contribute to teaching at UGA beyond their own assigned classroom responsibilities. 

Romance Languages faculty members Jonathan Haddad, Lesley Feracho, and Alberto Villate are currently completing their year as 2019-20 fellows with UGA's Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.

Elizabeth Wright of the Department of Romance Languages has been named Distinguished Research Professor. One of UGA's highest honors, the title is awarded to faculty who are internationally recognized for their original contributions to knowledge, and whose work promises to foster continued creativity in their discipline.

Dr. Nora Benedict, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Digital Humanities at UGA, will walk us through the complications and opportunities provided by translating print materials into a digital format in her current digital project, “Global Networks of Cultural Production,” which analyzes the emergence of a transatlantic literary print culture in Argentina during the twentieth century.

Dr. Jennifer Palmer, Associate Professor of History, will present a lecture entitled "'She persisted in her revolt': Slavery and Freedom in the French Caribbean" at the IWS Friday Speaker Series Lecture.

Julio Premat (Université Paris 8 - Institute Universitaire de France) will be giving a lecture titled "La Utopía del Pasado en La Literatura Contemporánea" on Tuesday, February 4 at 5:00 pm in Gilbert Hall 115. The lecture will be in Spanish and the discussion will be in Spanish, French and English. Premat comes to UGA as a Willson Center Distinguished Lecturer.

There will be coffee and refreshments in Gilbert 115 immediately before the talk (4:45 pm).

The Council of Editors of Learned Journals presented its 2019 award for Best Journal Design to Elizabeth Wright, Professor in the Department of Romance Languages, at the Modern Language Association's January conference. Wright is the editor of Bulletin of the Comediantes, now based at UGA; CELJ  praised the journal’s multicultural perspectives and cover designs that speak to the cultural and material history of Spanish “Golden Age” theater.

Catherine Jones, Professor of French and Provençal in the Department of Romance Languages, has been named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French Ministry of Education. This honor, originally created by Napoleon in 1808, is awarded to distinguished academics to recognize their service to French culture.