What courses are required for the Middle Eastern Studies minor? How many courses in the French minor can double-count in the Core Curriculum? Can I double major in Spanish and Business and graduate in four years? What 黑料不打烊 programs abroad are available for students interested in German?

To get answers to these questions and many more, stop by first-floor Carlton Commons on Wednesday, October 28 between 12 and 2 p.m.  Faculty members from the Department of World Languages and Cultures and staff members from the Global Education Center will be available to offer some advice before you meet formally with your academic advisor. Or just stop by and say hola to professors and enjoy an international beverage or treat.  A bientot!

Latin Americanists Dr. Rebeca Olmedo and Prof. Ketevan Kupatadze participated in the panel, “The Knowledge Within: Balancing Chaos in the Works of Contemporary Latin American Writers – Severo Sarduy, Gloria Gervitz, Myriam Moscona, Alberto Blanco, Jordi Soler and Ignacio Padilla.”

Dr. Olmedo analyzed how the Cuban novelist Severo Sarduy created a revolutionary art which parodied conventional aesthetics, thus exposing to deeper scrutiny the artistic canon as well as issues of gender and identity.

Professor Kupatadze explored the work of Mexican novelist Ignacio Padilla in Amphitryon (2000), which inquires into the theme of literary hospitality as a fascinating but simultaneously violent encounter. This is a text that borrows from other texts and as such is presented by the author in a dual character, as host that invites previous traditions and as guests that ask for their readers’ hospitality. All of this takes place within a process that can be described as violence caused by purposeful erasure and forgetfulness.

The University of North Carolina at Wilmington hosted the 58th Annual Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference Oct. 9-11.

With the help of a grant from the Carolina and Duke Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Rebeca Olmedo, an assistant professor of Spanish, spent the summer doing research for a new course offered by the Department of Foreign Languages: “Gender, Race and Religion in Latin America.”  

Through the close reading of primary texts and the analytical viewing of visual cultural products, students enrolled in SPN 372 will a acquire intercultural competence as they develop an understanding of the cultural diversity of Hispanic America.

Teaching the class in Spanish, Olmedo embraces the philosophy of the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages which states, “Language and communication are at the heart of the human experience. The United States must educate students who are linguistically and culturally equipped to communicate successfully in a pluralistic American society and abroad.”

A Latin American specialist, Olmedo has conducted research on colonial life in Peru. This spring she and student Laura Weber traveled to Cuzco to present papers at the Congreso Internacional de Literatura Hispánica.

Weber presented the results of her senior thesis research, “Bananos y hombres de Carmen Lyra: la crítica sociopolítica de la United Fruit Company en Costa Rica.”