Ohio Wesleyan University

Professors Abdelaal and García-Olano taught a second semester Spanish course in the Spring of 2021 that provided students with a critical and complex understanding of some of the current and most relevant social, economic, and political issues affecting Latin American countries (i.e. immigration, war on drugs, governmental corruption, pollution and deforestation, attacks on the press, ideological, racial and class divide, historical revisionism, exploitation, segregation and marginalization of indigenous peoples, human trafficking, sexual trafficking and sexual violence, etc.) and of the di

Faculty members from three institutions (Eugenia Romero, OSU, Eva Paris Huesca, Ohio Wesleyan University, and Dosinda Alvite, Denison University) collaborated on a one-semester team taught course on contemporary literature, film, and popular culture from Spain in spring 2019. Faculty members produced shared teaching modules, travelled to partner institutions to lecture, and presented an inter-institution symposium in which students met to compare and contrast interpretations of gender issues in modern Spain.

Professors of Spanish Dosinda Alvite and Ramiro Garcia-Olano (Denison University) and Eva Paris Huesca (Ohio Wesleyan University) organized a virtual Hispanic Film Festival in fall 2020 featuring virtual screenings of five international award-winning films released in 2018 and 2019 directed by six women filmmakers. Each of the films featured post-screening discussions via Zoom led by scholars in Spanish and Latin American film studies, and question and answer sessions in English and Spanish led by three of the films’ directors.

Professors of French (Anna Navrotskaya, Denison University and Marie Anne Lewis Cusato, Ohio Wesleyan) and Arabic (Hanada Al-Masri, Denison University) collaborated to bring French-Algerian poet and performer Alima Hamel and musician Vincent Ferrand to their colleges for a public performance of French-Algerian music and meetings with students to foster increased language skills.

Professors Jianhua Bai and Chengjuan Sun at Kenyon enriched their Chinese language classes by incorporating lectures by Hsiu-Chaung Deppman, chair of the Oberlin East Asian Studies Department and Chinese professor Rujie Wang (College of Wooster) via Zoom. The guest professors shared their expertise on Chinese cinema and modern Chinese literature in fall semester 2018.

Faculty members in Arabic and Spanish (Hanada Al-Masri and Jason Busic, Denison, Abeer Abdelaal, Ohio Wesleyan) will lecture in one another’s classroom in spring 2019 to share research about the sociolinguistic/diglossic situation in the Arab world, increase students’ awareness of Arab culture, and, in Spanish classrooms, discuss Christian-Muslim identities and mutual influence in medieval and early modern Iberia. Faculty members will present a panel discussion about their current research in these areas at both institutions.

Professors Clara Román-Odio (Kenyon), Juan Armando Rojas Joo (Ohio Wesleyan), and Dosinda Alvite (Denison) coordinated their syllabi in three courses to provide enrichment activities for all their students on the topic of Latinx cultural production including a poetry reading, a lecture on Latina art, and a theater performance.

Professors Andrea Colvin (Ohio Wesleyan) and Mirela Butnaru (Denison) gave public guest lectures and team-taught classes at partner campuses on their personal and academic knowledge of Latin American military dictatorships.

Professors Glenda Nieto-Cuebas (Ohio Wesleyan University) and Francisco López-Martín (Denison University) involved students, consortial colleagues, and academics from across the country in a theater workshop and performance from a visiting Spanish theater troupe on a Friday evening and then an academic symposium on Spanish theater of the Golden Age on the following day. The many events that comprised the project were designed to engage scholarship, teaching, and performance of this body of canonical texts.