World Languages Newsletter- Part Two
May 2024
Note: This month’s newsletter features two parts, we couldn’t fit all the great updates from students, faculty, and staff into one email!
French beyond France: An interdisciplinary outreach project
Boise State University offers several community outreach opportunities, but in Brittney Gehrig’s French 400 class, they are taking it a step further and learning about a minority you may not think about while in the Treasure Valley. French 400, Careers and Community, is a two-credit course focused on real-life French-speaking, outside of the classroom. This Spring, they are conducting a collaborative project with two other departments, Film and Humanities, and interviewing Francophones in the Boise area. Francophones, if you didn’t know, are French speakers who aren’t necessarily from France. This could include French speakers from Quebec, Canada, or people from French-speaking areas such as West or North Africa. There are many ways these Francophones may have ended up in the Treasure Valley, many being refugees who left Africa and ended up over here. The French, film, and humanities students are eager to learn about the lives of these people and learn about other minorities in the area who maybe don’t get their stories told as much as they should.
Spanish 481 Students Translate Brochures for Concurrent Enrollment Program
As their community engagement project for spring 2024, the students in Spanish 481 Introduction to Court Interpretation translated into Spanish the “Concurrent Enrollment Student and Parent Brochure”. For the final proofreading the class met with Ms. Diana Arbiser, a former World Languages graduate, from the Office of the Federal Public Defender, District of Oregon. Arbiser is a certified translator of English into Spanish by the American Translators Association (ATA). Here is what student Josie Baeza had to say about the project: “It has given me a sense of fulfillment and empowerment, knowing that I am making a difference in reducing language barriers and fostering a more inclusive learning environment not only for students but also for their families, who are a crucial part of their learning and student life.”
Brochure Project from Spanish 101 Student, Kenny Liberty
Kenny created this travel brochure for traveling to Guadalajara in her Spanish 101 course this semester.
Thank You, Colby, from Spanish Conversation Lab Students!
My students have been raving about Colby being the best lab assistant they’ve ever had. My current students have been telling me that Colby is relatable and makes labs comfortable and engaging. He has been open about his own learning process with Spanish and has made the labs so effective and enjoyable for his students. Thank you, Colby!
Josu Bieter (Bachelor of Science in Nursing and Basque Studies Minor, 2021)
Josu Bieter, now living in Azpeitia (Basque Country) and completing graduate studies to become a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist at Cedar Crest College, Allentown, PA, was interviewed in Basque by Euskadi Irratia, the Basque Public Radio station. He held his own!
There are no language barriers for “Boise State World Languages” Broncos! Yes, he cooked and brought twice baked potatoes to the studio :-) Well done, Josu!!!!!
The Chinese Club and Japanese Club hosted an Asia Culture Event on Thursday, April 11th, from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. in Jordan Ballroom A, SUB. We presented Chinese calligraphy, Chinese paper cutting arts, Japanese origami, a Japanese drum show, and several Korean games. About 100 students participated in our event.
The 2024 Academic Affairs Recognition Reception - Provost
The College of Arts and Sciences recognized the following Adjunct Faculty members with ten years of service:
Franziska Borders
Stefanie Saltern
Mary Shawver
Faculty receiving tenure and promotion to Associate Professor:
Ziortza Gandarias Beldarrain
Faculty promoted to Professor:
Kelly Arispe
Jason Herbeck
An article written by Dr. Jason Herbeck, Chair and Professor of French, was recently published in Romance Notes 63.2 (2023): 427-440. In his article entitled “Point de rencontres: Une étude de passages ‘infrahumains’ dans le Rond-point d’Évelyne Trouillot” (“Meeting Points: A Study of ‘Infrahuman’ Passages in The Rotary by Évelyne Trouillot”), Herbeck examines the literal and figurative significance of the eponymous rotary as a means of understanding the conversely precarious trajectory of social interactions in present-day Haiti. On a fundamental level, rotaries are meant to ease gridlock by maintaining the flow of circulation and, in so doing, prevent the worst type of accidents—namely those that occur in head-on collisions. By illustrating how this civil engineering design resembles the dynamics of contemporary Haitian society, whereby members of different—and most often upper—social classes attempt to avoid interaction with one another, Herbeck then turns his attention to the unintended yet arguably inevitable impact of this individually and socially engineered segregation.
Amber Hoye
Amber Hoye recently published an article titled “Thinking Outside the Box: Creating An Interactive Infographic for World Language Professional Development Using H5P” on the creation of interactive infographics in The FLTMAG.
Beret Norman
Dr. Beret Norman, Associate Professor of German, took part in the university's research and creative activity social event at the Stein Luminary: it was called “SPARC”: Showcasing Projects and Research Creativity Mixer - Energy Edition, showcasing research as it relates to the theme of “Energy,” using the Luminary’s one-of-a-kind, all-digital museum space.
Dr. Norman’s presentation, “Water's Energy: Tectonic Shifts in a Literary Trilogy by German writer Antje Rávic Strubel,” was based on a 2021 publication and discussed how Strubel’s three novels all position writers on water–most often on dynamically changing space like islands. The author’s and her writerly figures’ writing itself incorporates water’s energy of erosion happening on the land around these figures; more significantly the writers’ ideas, like water, erode ideologies and ideas, causing shifts in society.