Welcome to the Department of Modern Languages

The Department of Modern Languages offers students of every discipline a wide range of opportunities. Come experience both the intellectual and personal enrichment that comes with learning new languages, and encountering the diverse cultures that they represent. Our department features some of the most skilled teaching faculty on campus, and much of the department's research is aimed at acquisition of additional languages, and enhanced learning through literary and cultural studies as well as technology.

Department News:

The Department of Modern Languages is proud to be hosting the 2012 Second Language Research Forum (SLRF). The conference, one of the premier conferences on second language research in North America, will be held from October 18-21 on the Carnegie Mellon campus.  SLRF 2012 is being organized by students and faculty in the Ph.D. program in Second Language Acquisition, together with students and faculty from the Departments of Linguistics, Psychology, and Instruction and Learning at the University of Pittsburgh.

Professor Felipe Gomez received a Berkman Grant to support a research project on Hispanic Comics and Graphic Novels, and a Falk Fellowship to support his ongoing work on the Grupo de Cali.

November 7-8, 2011, the Department of Modern Languages welcomed Dr. Carol Chapelle, Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of TESL/Applied Linguistics at Iowa State University. Dr. Chapelle delivered a plenary presentation entitled "Cultural Content from Canada and Québec: What's Taught and Learned in French Classes in the US—and What's Really Going On up There?". A DVD of her talk is available from the Modern Language Resource Center.

We extend a warm welcome to our new faculty:

María del Mar Rosa-Rodríguez (Ph.D. Emory University), Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies, joins us from Purdue University-Calumet. She conducts research on the literary and religious traditions and interconnections of Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Spain with a focus on Judeo-Spanish literature, Judeo-Arabic literature, and Aljamiado texts using Arabic alphabet for transcribing Romance languages.

Candace Skibba (Ph.D. University of Wisconsin) assumes with us a new position as Assistant Teaching Professor of Hispanic Studies. Her research is in the field of twentieth-century Spanish Peninsular Studies, particularly Post-Franco literature and culture. Her current work connects with disability, illness, and pain studies and focuses on the relationship between corporeality and literature in contemporary Spanish narrative and film.

The Department of Modern Languages welcomed its first cohort for the Masters in Applied Second Language Acquisition, this fall. The degree is a one-year, intensive program preparing U.S. and international students for careers in second language teaching in Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, and English as a Second Language (ESL).  The program draws on strengths of the Department of Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon in the areas of second-language acquisition, cultural studies, language pedagogy, and technology-enhanced learning. For the academic year beginning fall 2012, applications are due on February 1, 2012.

Professor Mariana Achugar received a 2011 research grant from the Uruguayan government. Funded through the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, Professor Achugar, a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow, will continue her research on how high school students from different family, social, and educational backgrounds learn about the Uruguayan military dictatorship of the 1970's. Read the Carnegie Mellon Today article about her experiences in Uruguay.

Amy Hubbard, Modern Languages A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, is one of the recipients of the inaugural Rothberg Awards for Brain Research.  She will be investigating how brain activity and speech production change when second language learners begin to produce speech-accompanying movements, facial expressions, head and eyebrow movements and hand gestures that naturally co-occurs with their second language. These awards are supported by the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition and the Scientific Imaging and Brain Research Center to foster innovative research in human brain imaging.

Shuai Li was the 2010-2011 recipient of the H&SS Graduate Student Teaching Award.

Professor Stephen Brockmann received a Fulbright Award to participate in a Fulbright German Studies Seminar in Germany during summer 2011.  The topic of the Seminar is German national identity and the question of ethnicity in an increasing globalizing world.

Professor Naoko Taguchi is recipient of a Hakuhou Foundation Fellowship to conduct research in Japan on the development of pragmatic competence by international students of Japanese.

Professor Yoshihiro Yasuhara received a 2011 Falk Grant to support his research in Japanese post-World War II author Ishikawa Jun.

Professor Elisabeth Kaske received 2011 Berkman and Falk Grants to support the development of her manuscript on Chinese fiscal history.

Professor Therese Tardio received a 2011 Berkman Grant to support her work on the development of Spanish Online.

Department Alumni News:
Through the extremely generous support of alumna, Patricia Askwith Kenner, who established the Endowed Fund for International Studies, our department is able to enhance international experiences for both undergraduate and graduate students. The fund enables us to provide study abroad scholarships, publication of Polyglot, the multilingual newsletter which is written and produced by our undergraduate students, and many other extracurricular activities.