Research and Innovation

One site of Hebrew study has been virtually ignored by stakeholders in the enterprise: Hebrew language programs at American public schools. Despite the fact that these programs exist – and in many cases are expanding and thriving – they remain a virtual black box in Jewish educational research, and are often disconnected from broader Jewish communal and institutional structures. We contend, on the other hand, that Hebrew language instruction, even in public schools, has implications for Jewish education.

OpenITI AOCP is a multi-institutional initiative led by a highly interdisciplinary team of humanities, computer science, and digital humanities principal investigators from Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland (Roshan-UMD); Northeastern University’s (NU) NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks; the Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (London) (AKU-ISMC); the Department of History, University of Vienna; and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, UMD (MITH-UMD). OpenITI AOCP proposes to address the technical and organizational barriers currently stymying the development of Arabic-script OCR and digital text production in a three-stream work plan. OpenITI AOCP’s technical work (workstream #1) will focus on integrating standards-compliant text export functionality (e.g., TEI XML) and the latest advancements in machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing with eScriptorium (an open-source and user-friendly OCR pipeline). This work will result in a robust digital text production pipeline for Arabic-script languages that will enable researchers, students, and citizen scientists to produce high-quality, open-access, and standards-compliant digital texts in a user-friendly environment for the first time. OpenITI AOCP team will also build digital capacity in the field of Islamicate Studies and cultivate networks of OCR researchers and interested users through a combination of experts workshops, biannual teleconferences, and pedagogical materials—efforts that will both improve the quality of AOCP’s final deliverables and expand their community of users.

The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Language Teaching: metodologías, contextos y recursos para la enseñanza del español L2 provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art account of the main methodologies, contexts and resources in Spanish Language Teaching (SLT), a field that has experienced significant growth world-wide in recent decades and has consolidated as an autonomous discipline within Applied Linguistics. Written entirely in Spanish, the volume is the first handbook on Spanish Language Teaching to connect theories on language teaching with methodological and practical aspects from an international perspective. It brings together the most recent research and offers a broad, multifaceted view of the discipline.

The Spanish Enlightenment writer Gaspar de Nava Álvarez interrogated eighteenth-century notions of masculinities and sexualities in 'Poesías asiáticas' (Asian Poems 1833), a reworking of original Arabic and Persian verses. I argue that the homoeroticism expressed in 'Poesías asiáticas' forges an Enlightenment-inspired masculine identity of Muslim men that deconstructs stereotypical images of lascivious and violent Islamic predators. The deployment of positive imagery of desire between Muslim men redirects Spanish Enlightenment poetry away from French influences and invokes Islamicate discursive images as a sort of new Arcadia in the Spanish collective imaginary and as a source of poetic inspiration.

Focusing on recently translated cookbooks from medieval Arabic and early modern Persian culinary traditions, this essay suggests that recipes and other culinary texts in translation can do more than simply diversify the contours of food studies: they can invite food scholars to question the categories and assumptions of our "gastronomic epistemologies," to borrow Jon Holtzman's phrase.

Gastronomica (2019) 19 (2): 87–95.

In a time when literature is accused of being self-centered and overly narcissistic, women’s autofiction in France since the turn of the millennium has been received with controversy because it disrupts readily accepted ideas about personal and national identities, gender and race, and fiction versus autobiography. Through the study of polemical writers Christine Angot, Chloé Delaume, and Nelly Arcan, I contend that, by recounting personal stories of trauma and sexuality, and thus opposing themselves in opposition to social convention, and by refusing to dispel doubts regarding the fictional or factual nature of their texts, autofiction resists and helps redefine categories of literary genre and gender identity. This book analyzes concurrently the textual and sociopolitical implications that underlie the (de)construction of the autofictional subject, and particularly how these writers constantly redefine themselves through performance and self-fashioning made possible by media and technology. Moreover, this work raises important questions relating to the media’s complicated relationship with women writers, especially those who discuss themes of trauma, sexuality, and violence, and who also question the distinction between fact and fiction. Proposing a new understanding of autofiction as a form of littérature engagée, this work contributes to a broader understanding of the French publishing establishment and, of the literary field as a cultural institution, as well as new insight on shifting notions of identity, the Self and nationalism in today’s ever-changing and multicultural French context.

I analyze this volume departing from the privileged position that my wide experience as a glocal emcee grants me. Departing from this insider position, the following recurrent issues were identified in this volume: 1) a failure to offer a critical reflection of what the authors consider by Hip-Hop; 2) a lack of positionality towards Hip-Hop; 3) an over focus on, and legitimation of, mainstream music industry ideologies and practices; 4) erasure (Irvine & Gal, 2000) of Latinxs in the US context. To avoid repetition, I will analyze the first three of these recurrent issues that intersect many of the chapters after I offer a qualitative review of the strengths and weaknesses observed in every chapter. The recurrent issue of erasure of Latinxs in Hip-Hop, since is an issue limited to the US context, will be analyzed in its corresponding chapters within the next section.

In the past decade, there has been a resurgence in the study of Hebrew in traditional andcharterpublicschools. However, the types of schools teaching Hebrew and the demographics of students studying Hebrew do not resemble those of earlier iterations of public school Hebrew programs that trace back to the early 20th century. Although the majority of Hebrew programs still disproportionately serve Jewish students, many schools in urban and suburban districts across the country are teaching Hebrew to students from diverse racial, religious, linguistic, and ethnic backgrounds. This project set out to take measure of these programs and provide some baseline information about Hebrew teaching in public schools in 2018 by investigating their demographics, instructional approaches, and language learning objectives.

This text considers contemporary China’s language ideology and how it supports China as a rising global power player. It examines the materialization of this ideology as China’s language order unfolds on two front, promoting Putonghua domestically and globally, alongside its economic growth and military expansion. Within the conceptual framework of language ideology and language order and using PRC policy documents, education annals, and fieldwork, this book explores how China’s language ideology is related to its growing global power as well as its domestic and global outreaches. It also addresses how this ideology has been materialized as a language order in terms of institutional development and support, and what impact these choices are having on China and the world. Focusing on the relationship between language ideology and language order, the book highlights a closer and coherent linguistic association between China’s domestic drive and global outreach since the turn of the century.

Juan Carlos Quintero-Herencia, professor Spanish and Portuguese in the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, received a grant from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) to host an symposium at the University of Maryland in Spring 2019 on Spanish Caribbean literature and culture.

This proposal describes the design and organization of an experimental symposium focused on the critical reconsideration of periods, situations and texts that have been polemics in the modern and contemporaneous Spanish Caribbean. It is, in addition, an intriguing proposal for its promise to combine esthetics and policy, literary critique and analysis of the current political, economic and environmental uncertainties that confront the societies of the Caribbean.

In Latin America, the Caribbean occupies a secondary or inferior position, and is often overlooked.  This project makes a significant effort to increase the academic visibility of this region, therefore it obtained a high score in the evaluation of the potential of its impact criteria.

The organizers and participants in the symposium, who come from different countries in the Hispanic Caribbean and other countries, show an excellent transnational and hemispheric commitment that includes the United States, Canada, Europe and Latin America, and seek to be involved in the proposed discussion and to supply texts to established and emerging academics, from a great variety of institutions. In summary, it is an original project, it is very well developed and is clear in its proposals, objectives and use of the budget.

 Selection Committee:

The project selection committee in this cycle was presided over by Mara Viveros-Vigoya, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Vice President of LASA and President-elect, and included the participation of María Victoria Murillo de Columbia University; Emiliana Cruz, from Ciesas, México DF, Vivian Andrea Martínez-Díaz, Universidad de los Andes and Jaime A. Alves of CSI/CUNY and Universidad ICESI/Colombia, former winner of the FORD-LASA grant in 2015.