Kansas State University

Kathleen Antonioli

• “How Colette became a feminist: Selling Colette in the United States 1960-1985.”  Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 41, no. 4, Summer 2018 (forthcoming).
• “Collaborative Perspectives on Translation and the Digital Humanities in the Advanced French Classroom.” Co-authored with Melinda Cro.  French Review, vol. 91, no. 4, May 2018, pp. 130-145.
• “Myth, Dialogue and Collaboration in the ‘French Freedom Papers’: De Gaulle and Anglo-French Correspondence.”  Co-authored with Melinda Cro.  French Studies, vol. 72, no.3, January 2018, pp. 35-52.   
• “Women, politics, and work: Walter Benjamin interviews Colette.” Women in French Studies, Special Issue on Fluidity and Femininity, 2017, pp. 89-103.
• “Simone de Beauvoir as a Reader of Women’s Writing: Dialogue and Profession.” Women in French Studies, vol. 23, 2015, pp. 54-68.
• “Classic and Modern: Colette Criticism in the Interwar.” Modern & Contemporary France, vol. 23 no. 3, August 2015, pp. 369-386.
• Book review: “The Livres-Souvenirs of Colette: Genre and the Telling of Time.” Modern Language Review. 109.4 2014: 1088-1089.

Rebecca Bender

• Article: “Fashion, Ekphrasis, and the Avant-Garde Novel: Carmen de Burgos’s La mujer fantástica (1924).” Ciberletras, vol. 39 (Dec. 2017), n.p. http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ciberletras/v39/bender.htm> 
• Book Chapter: “Modernity and Madrid: The Gendered Urban Geography of Carmen de Burgos’s La rampa (1917)”. In Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience. Ed. Deborah Simonton. Routledge, 2017.
• Book Chapter: “The Body of Venus: From Eroticism to Maternality in José Díaz Fernández’s La Venus mecánica (1929). In Modernism and the Avant-garde Body in Spain and Italy. Ed. Nicolás Fernández-Medina and Maria Truglio. Routledge, 2017.
• Article: “Theorizing a Hybrid Feminism: Motherhood in Margarita Nelken’s En torno a nosotras (1927).” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 93.2 (2016): pp. 131-48.
• Article: “From New York to Cuba: Distinct Representations of Convergent Ideologies in Federico García Lorca’s Poeta en Nueva York and Nicolás Guillén’s Motivos de son.” Latin American Literary Review 83.1 (2014): pp. 7-30.
• Article: “Maternity Ward Horrors: Urban Motherhood in Carmen de Burgos’s La rampa (1917).” Cincinnati Romance Review 34 (201): pp. 79-96. <www.cromrev.com/volumes/vol34/006-vol34-bender.pdf>.

Necia Chronister 

• “The Enduring Impermanence of Jenny Erpenbeck.” World Literature Today. July 2018. 48-51.
• “Conceiving of a Realfictional Body: Material Feminisms and Jenny Erpenbeck’s Geschichte vom alten Kind (1999)” The German Quarterly 91.2 (Spring 2018): 123-137.
• “The Poetics of the Surface as a Critical Aesthetic in Judith Hermann’s Alice (2009) and Aller Liebe Anfang (2014)” Gegenwartsliteratur. Ein germanistisches Jahrbuch 14 (2015): 265-289.
• “Judith Hermann’s ‘Sommerhaus, später’: Gender Ambiguity and Smooth versus Striated Spaces.” German Women Authors and the Spatial Turn: New Perspectives. Ed. Carola Daffner and Beth Ann Muellner. Berlin: DeGruyter, 2015. 149-165.
• “Language-Bodies: Interpellation and Gender Transition in Judith Hermann’s ‘Sonja’ and Antje Rávic Strubel’s Kältere Schichten der Luft.” Germen Women’s Writing in the 21^st Century. Ed. Hester Baer and Alexandra Merley Hill. Rochester: Camden House, 2015. 18-36.
• Book chapter “Judith Hermann’s ‘Sommerhaus, später’: Gender Ambiguity and Smooth versus Striated Spaces” appeared in the volume New Perspectives on German Women Authors and the Spatial (Re)Turn. Ed. Carola Daffner and Beth Ann Muellner.  Berlin: DeGruyter. July 2015
• "Narrating the Fault Lines: German Literature since the Fall of the Wall" as an online exclusive for the literary magazine World Literature Today.
• "Domestic Disputes: Envisioning the Gender of Home in the Era of Re-privatization in Eastern Germany" was published in _Heimat Goes Mobile: Hybrid Forms of Home in Literature and Film_. Ed. Gabi Eichmanns and Yvonne Franke. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.

Robert Clark 

• ‘Jacques Copeau médiéviste: Le Miracle du pain doré aux Hospices de Beaune (1943)’ (with Isabelle Ragnard). Nouveaux Cahiers de la Comédie-Française 2 (2014): 39-43.
• “Spiritual Exercises: The Making of Interior Faith.” in The Oxford Handbook of the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford UP) pp. 271-86.
• Edited The Ritual Life of Medieval Europe: Papers by and for C. Clifford Flannigan, volume 52/53 2014 of ROMARD: Research on Medieval and Renaissance Drama. London, Ontario: First Circle Publishing, 2014. 

Melinda A. Cro 

• “Collaborative Perspectives on Translation and the Digital Humanities in the Advanced French Classroom.” Co-authored with Kathleen Antonioli.  French Review, vol. 91, no. 4, May 2018, pp. 130-145.
• “Myth, Dialogue and Collaboration in the ‘French Freedom Papers’: De Gaulle and Anglo-French Correspondence.” Co-authored with Kathleen Antonioli.  French Studies, vol. 72, no.3, January 2018, pp. 35-52.  
• “Antiroman ou métaroman? Extravagance, fragmentation et metafiction dans l’histoire comique.” Œuvres et critiques. XLI.2 (2016): 21-32.
• “Onomastic Deviations and Metaliterary Consequences in the Gascon extravagant.”  Romance Notes. 56.2 (2016): 269-280.
• “’fanciulla tanto scioccaquantobella’: Women in Early Modern Italian Pastoral.” Female Identity and Its Representations in the Arts and Humanities. Eds. Silvia Giovanardi Byer and Fabiana Cecchini. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Book Chapter. Forthcoming.
• “Pastoral Geography and Utopistic Considerations in Honoré d’Urfé’s L’Astrée.” Moreana. 51: 195-196 (2014): 1-15.
• “Montaigne’s Italian Voyage: Alterity and Linguistic Appropriation in the Journal de Voyage.”South Atlantic Review 78. 3-4 (Summer 2013): 150-166. Special Issue: “Text as Memoir.”
• “Folly’s Tyranny: Theatricality in Erasmus’s and Labé’s Portraits of Folly.” Moreana. 49: 189-190 (2012): 1-16.
• “Ekphrasis and the Feminine in Sannazaro’s Arcadia.” Romance Notes. 52:1 (2012): 71-78.

María Teresa DePaoli 

• “Can the Undocumented Immigrant Speak? Exploring Decolonial Thinking in Mexican and Latinx Literature and Film." Migrations and Borders in the United States: Discourses, Representations, and Imaginary Contexts. Eds. Susanne Berthier and Paul Otto London: Palgrave–McMillan, 2018 (forthcoming).
• “The Ethics of Actuality in the Scripting of Enrique Rosas’s The Gray Automobile.” Ethics in Screenwriting: New Perspectives. Ed. Steven Maras. 121–141. London: Palgrave–McMillan, 2016.
• “Mexico and its Movement into Narrative Film: Mexican Women Writers.” Women Screenwriters an International Guide. Eds. Jule Selbo and Jill Nelmes. London: Palgrave-McMillan, 2015.

Derek Hillard 

• "Are There Painful Images? Ernst Jünger and Beholding Pain in Photography" in "Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies" Volume 50, Number 4 (461-82).

Lavinia Horner

• Literary Arabic and Islamic Values as the New Conditioned Stimuli For the “Good Citizen” Status in Maïssa Bey’s Bleu blanc vert – forthcoming in “Romance Notes”   (2019)

Laura Kanost

• “Mobility and the Modern Intellectual: Translated Images from Early 20^th-Century Literary
• Works in Spanish by Carmen Lyra and Luisa Luisi”. Disability Studies Quarterly 38.1 (2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v38i1.5861
• A Dead Rose. Critical introduction and translation of La rosa muerta by Aurora Cáceres(1914). Stockcero, 2018
• “Spanish after service-learning: A comparative study”. Journal of Service-Learning in Higher Education 3 (2014). http://journals.sfu.ca/jslhe/index.php/jslhe/article/view/63/20

Sara Luly

• "From Material Substance to Mental Influence: Remarks on the Embodied Media of Animal Magnetism and their Gendered Implications." (Forthcoming: Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert. 2019).
• “The Horror of Coming Home: Integration and Fragmentation in Caroline de la Motte Fouqué’s ‘Der Abtrünnige’” The Goethe Yearbook. 24. 2017. 175-195.  
• “Polite Hauntings: Same Sex Eroticism in Sophie Albrecht’s Das höfliche Gepsenst.”  Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies. Feb 52:1. 2016. 60-79.
• “Language in Context: A Model of Language Oriented Library Instruction.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship. Luly, Sara & Holger Lenz. 41:2. 2015. 140-148.
• "Magnetism and Masculinity in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Magnetiseur." The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture and Theory.  88:3. 2013. 418-434. 
• “Emasculating Fear: Gothic and Gender in Caroline de la Motte Fouqué’s Der Cypressenkranz” Monatshefte. Summer 2012.  180-193.

Benjamin McCloskey

• “Xenophon’s Democratic Pedagogy.” Forthcoming from Phoenix.
• “Xenophon the Philosopher: E Pluribus Plura.” American Journal of Philology, 138.4. December 2017. 605-640.
• “Achilles' Brutish Hellenism: Greek Identity in the Heroikos.” Classical Philology, 112.1, January 2017. 63-85.

Li Yang

• Book chapter: “Pragmatics learning and teaching in L2 Chinese.” In C. Ke (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Second Language Acquisition, 2018. 
• “The effects of L2 proficiency on pragmatics instruction: A web-based approach to teaching Chinese expressions of gratitude.” L2 Journal, 9:1. 2017, 62–83.
• “The development of pragmatic competence of American Learners of Chinese at different linguistic levels in a target language environment.” 不同水平的美国汉语学习者在目的语环境中语用能力的发展. Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies 语言教学与研究, 182:6. 2016, 37–47. 
• Yang, L., & Zhu, J. “The effects of pragmatic consciousness-raising activities on the learning of speech acts in the Beginning CFL classroom.” Applied Language Learning, 26:2. 2016, 53–68.
• “Learning to express gratitude in Mandarin Chinese through web-based instruction.” Language Learning & Technology, 20:1. 2016, 191–208.
• “Acquisition of expressions of gratitude by American learners of Chinese in the target language environment.” 目的语环境中美国留学生汉语感谢言语行为的习得. Chinese Teaching in the World世界汉语教学, 29:4. 2015, 562–575.
• A draft version of an online textbook on Chinese pragmatics has gone live, which will be available to anyone who might be interested in learning about Chinese pragmatics in the university community after it is finalized. Grounded in the cognitive approaches to SLA and prior empirical research, the online textbook provides students with explicit instruction on appropriate communication in Chinese, various awareness-raising exercises/activities, and rich multimedia resources (e.g., videos, images, etc.). 2015
• “The effects of pragmatics instruction on L2 learners’ acquisition of Chinese expressions of gratitude: A pilot study.” Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, 49:1. 2014, 95–115.

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature (STTCL) Volume 39 issue number 1 of the department's open access journal, appeared in March 2015

2018

• Necia Chronister delivered a paper on Jenny Erpenbeck at the 2018 Puterbaugh Festival at the University of Oklahoma, March 8, 2018, which honored Jenny Erpenbeck as the 2018 Puterbaugh Fellow.

2017

• Rebecca Bender presented a conference paper: ““La moda, o el arte de la indumentaria”: Fashion and Ekphrasis in Carmen de Burgos’s La mujer fantástica (1925).” Representations of Fashion and Clothing in Hispanic Literatures / Representaciones de la moda y el vestido en las literaturas hispánicas. Sponsored by Lehman College (CUNY) and the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY). Lehman College, Bronx, NY. April 7-8.
• Necia Chronister delivered the paper “The Economics of Clean Energy: Monika Maron’s Bitterfelder Bogen and Juli Zeh’s Unterleuten” at the 59^th Annual Convention of the Midwest Modern Languages Association in Cincinnati, Cincinnati, November 10, 2017.

2016

• Rebecca Bender presented two conference papers and was invited for a lecture. Conference paper: “Mother or Monster? Exploring Female Subjectivity through Science, Medicine, and Literature in early 20^th Century Spain.” The Mid-America Conference on Hispanic Literatures (MACHL). The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. Nov. 3-5. Conference paper: “‘Las madres son más que los dioses’: The Art of Maternity in Federica Montseny’s La indomable (1927)”. Kentucky Foreign Language Conference (KFLC). University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY. April 14-16. Invited Lecture: “Las 13 Rosas: The Glorification of Traditional Motherhood in Contemporary Spanish Cinema.” Sponsored by the Department of World Languages and Literatures and the Club de Cine Iberoamericano. California State University, San Bernardino. San Bernardino, CA. March 10.

2015

• Melinda A. Cro presented "Pastoral Galleries in Remy Belleau’s Bergerie (1565): The Function of Collectionist Ekphrasis in Belleau’s Conception of the Pastoral Mode" to the division on Sixteenth-Century French literature at the Modern Language Association annual convention in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Cro also presented “Onomastic Deviations and Metaliterary Consequences in the Gascon extravagant (1637)” to the seventeenth-century French literature panel at the Southeast Coastal Conference on Languages and Literatures in Savannah, GA on Friday, March 27.
• Robert Clark presented a paper, "In Your Skin: Incarnation and Our Humanity," at the meeting of the Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association, Vancouver, Canada, January 12, 2015.
• Derek Hillard presented: "Emotions and the Divided Self in 1900 Austria." Association of Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting. Seattle, March 2015.
• Yasmin Gavigan presented “This is Your Brain in Spanish” at the Big XII Conference for Teaching and Learning in Stillwater, Oklahoma on July 30, 2015. The presentation was co-authored by Mary Copple, and is part of a larger research study on instructional strategies supporting cognitive processing when learning second languages, supported by the Teaching and Learning Center.
• Sara Luly presented the paper "The Role of Quacks in Legitimizing Animal Magnetism" at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies annual meeting on March 19th.
• Benjamin McCloskey presented a paper titled "Cowards and Slaves: Greeks on the Periphery in the Cyropaedia" at the 111th annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in Boulder, CO, which met from March 25-28th.

2014

• María Teresa DePaoli presented "Defying Culture: Women Screenwriters’ Struggle in the Mexican Film Industry, and the Dynamics of Fashion in the Workplace." Screenwriting Research Network 7th International Conference, Oct. 16-19, at the Film University Babelsberg-Konrad Wolf in Potsdam, Germany.
• Melinda A. Cro presented "The Function of Space in Honoré d'Urfé's L'Astrée: The Interplay of Physical, Textual, and Imaginary Spaces" at the annual meeting of the Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies in London, Ontario, Canada on October 16, 2014.
• Laura Kanost presented “Exploring Kansas Service Learning Practitioners’ Usage of Best Practices.” With co-presenters Anna M. Page and Carrie J. Lane. Campus Compact Heartland Conference. Oct. 2, 2014.
• At the German Studies Association conference in Kansas City in September, four Modern Languages faculty members made presentations:
  • Sara Luly presented a paper, "Observing Pain: Women, Physicians and the Case Studies of Animal Magnetism"
  • Necia Chronister presented a paper, "Death in the New Economy: Reevaluating the Oberflächenästhetik in Judith Hermann’s Alice "
  • Derek Hillard was on a roundtable, "Conclusions and Perspectives: The Body and Emotions, 1500–1990."

2013

• Laura Kanost presented “Screenplay Translation and Skopos: Practical Examples from Works by Mexican Women Screenwriters.” Screenwriting Research Network International Conference. University of Wisconsin-Madison. August 21, 2013. 

2018

• María Teresa DePaoli received two K-State FDA grants in the amounts of $2,750 and $2,496 respectively for her work with "Guillermo de Toro's Creative Process: Writing the Vampire in The Invention of Cronos and the Strain." 11th Screenwriting Research Network (SRN) conference hosted by Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Milan, Italy. September 12-16; and “Can the Undocumented Immigrant Speak? Exploring Decolonial Thinking in Mexican and Latinx Literature and Cinema.” Conference: Migrations and Borders in the United States: Discourses, Representations, Imaginary Contexts. Université Grenoble Alpes. Grenoble, France. March 29-31.

2017

• Necia Chronister was accepted to the Notre Dame Berlin Seminar (July 9-20, 2017) on the topic of the German literary and publishing industry. Acceptance came with a $1200 travel stipend. She was also awarded a Faculty Development Award in the amount of $1522 to support travel to this seminar

2016

• Sara Luly (in collaboration with Janice McGregor) received $3,500 from the International Incentive Grant for JLU Gießen & LMU Munich: Site visits and program development.
• Laura Valentín-Rivera and Li Yang were awarded a USRG grant of $7,824.99 in the Spring for their research on Writing Processes across Two Languages and Working Modes: Understanding Individual and Collaborative Writing Strategies in Spanish and Chinese FL contexts.
• Laura Valentín-Rivera and Angélique Courbou received $5,000 from the Alternative/Open Textbook Initiative to develop an open access textbook for their Spanish Composition and Grammar course.

2015

• Melinda A. Cro was awarded a Faculty Development Award in the amount of $1000 to support her travel to the MLA annual convention in Vancouver, BC, Canada to present her research. (2015)
• Laura Valentín-Rivera was awarded a USRG grant of $2,836.25 in the Fall, for her research on Understanding the Writing Practices of Spanish Heritage Language Learners.

2014

• Melinda Cro and Kathleen Antonioli, in collaboration with the French section, received a competitive "Tournees" grant from the French government to host a French film festival at K-State this Spring. (2014)

Awards

2018

• María Teresa DePaoli received the "Faculty Member of the Year, 2018" award from the Department of Housing and Dining Services. Kansas State University.

2017

• Angélique Courbou received the "Outstanding Faculty For the College of Arts & Sciences" award from the Mortar Board Honor Society for her dedication to student success and the betterment of the University.  

2014

• María Teresa DePaoli was one of only four, out of more than 400 nominated, awarded the Verizon Nueva Latina Estrella Award 2014. Dr. DePaoli was the recipient in the category of education.
• Laura Kanost received the Excellence in Engagement Award for her project, “Language and Culture with Community: Conversation, Bilingual Leadership, and Translation through Service Learning.”   
• Li Yang was awarded the Faculty Enhancement Program funding ($10,000) and the Open/Alternative Textbook Initiative ($2,250) for the design and development of an instructional website that teaches students how to appropriately communicate in Chinese, which is available to anyone who is interested in learning about Chinese in the form of an online textbook. 

2013

• Laura Kanost selected as one of the three distinguished faculty members from Kansas colleges as 2013 engaged faculty fellows.

2010 to present

German faculty have taken students to Berlin, Leipzig, and other cities in Germany on the summer faculty-led study abroad program KSU in Leipzig every year since 2010.

2015

As part of the Spanish in Action CAT Community, Angélique Courbou took a group of 14 freshmen for 10 days to Atenas, Costa Rica, in January 2015 on a service learning study abroad trip. Students used their leadership and Spanish skills to negotiate and learn to build a partial playground out of concrete in a nutrition center for children. They also painted and helped clean up the center. This was the 3rd year the program went back to Atenas and worked with the same community.

2014

As part of the Spanish in Action CAT Community, Laura Kanost took a group of 11 freshmen for 10 days to Atenas, Costa Rica, in January 2014 on a service learning study abroad trip. Students used their leadership and Spanish skills to organize themselves and repaint a nutrition center for children. This was the 2nd year the program went back to Atenas and worked with the same community.

2013

Maria Teresa DePaoli traveled to Mexico City, during the month of September 2013, to conduct research on the Mexican screenplay. She reviewed archives at the National General Archive of Lecumberri, in UNAM Filmoteca, and in the National Cinemateque, and was able to collect copies of documents that are fundamental to her research project. In addition, she viewed various films that are only available onsite.

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature is published by the Kansas State University Department of Modern Languages through New Prairie Press, an academic press housed at Kansas State University Libraries. An online, Open Access format enhances the journal’s sustainability and broadens its global readership.

STTCL is committed to publishing high quality, anonymously peer reviewed articles written in English on post-1900 literature, film, and media in French, German, and Spanish. The journal is devoted to theory and criticism in the modern languages, and encourages interdisciplinary and collaborative submissions. A book review section appears in every issue. Many acclaimed literary critics and theoreticians have appeared in STTCL and served as guest editors of STTCL special issues dedicated to one language or theme. Likewise, the editorial advisory council includes esteemed authors, critics, and theoreticians in French, German, Spanish, and Comparative Literature. From 1976 to 2003, the journal was known as Studies in 20th Century Literature, and through 2013, it appeared in print form, twice a year (winter and summer) with articles written in English on literature in French, German, Russian and Spanish. The journal began as a project of Kansas State University faculty in Modern Languages who made personal donations and shared responsibilities associated with mailing and handling in order to maintain the viability of the journal during the most critical time of its development.

2017

• Rebecca Bender attended The 4^th Annual Gender and Sexuality in Kansas Conference at Wichita State University with undergraduate Spanish major Amy Hein. Amy worked with Professor Bender to translate and revise her Spanish American Literature seminar paper and expand the cultural analysis. Bender and Hein co-presented the revised and extended paper, entitled “Soulless Angels: The Dehumanization of the Traditional Housewife in ‘La muñeca menor’ and The Stepford Wives,” in Wichita on March 3.
  
• Melinda A. Cro received an Open/Alternative Textbook grant in the amount of $5000 to develop a fourth-semester French textbook. 

2016

• Rebecca Bender worked with Spanish Club to organize the Celebración Cervantina / Cervantes Celebration: Reading Don Quixote in recognition of the 400 years since the death of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of the renowned novel Don Quixote de la Mancha. The event included and interactive workshop and guest lecture by Dr. Mirzam Pérez. Over 100 students and faculty from across campus attended this interdisciplinary event in Hale Library’s Hemisphere Room. Professor Bender worked with students in Spanish Club to secure a Student Governing Association Grant of $575. The event was sponsored by SGA, The Department of Modern Languages, and K-State Libraries. 
• Melinda A. Cro published two articles articles in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals and was awarded a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Kansas Hall Center for the Humanities to work with her co-author, Dr. Kathleen Antonioli, on designing an advanced-level translation course with a strong digital humanities course based on the "Freedom Papers" archive at K-State's Hale Library. The articles  stem from a secondary research interest in the rise of the comic novel and notions of fiction in seventeenth-century French literature. The first article, “Onomastic Deviations and Metaliterary Consequences in the Gascon extravagant” was published in Romance Notes, a peer-reviewed journal published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Onésime de Claireville’s comic novel, the Gascon extravagant (1637), has challenged readers with its seemingly fragmentary structure. This article proposes that the structure’s complexity is not a result of an unintentional fragmentation on the part of the author but rather a carefully composed metanovel that evokes the comic novel genre as a whole.  The second article, “Antiroman ou métaroman? Extravagance, fragmentation et metafiction dans l’histoire comique,” was published in Oeuvres et critiques, founded in 1976 and focused on the critical reception of literary works in French. I contributed to a special edition focused on the comic novel and edited by Francis Assaf, a foremost expert in the field. T In my contribution, I propose that, examined through the lens of fragmentation and folly, one could better understand the comic novel as an example of metafiction rather than as an anti-novel as it is typically described. 
• Laura Kanost translated over 400 loan profiles for crowdfunding microfinance nonprofit Kiva.org as part of its translation and review volunteer team.

2015

• Laura Kanost edited a Spanish translation of K-State’s Human Ecology guide, and edited a translated New Family Guide for Kansas 4-H with Modern Languages alumna and Kansas 4H intern Ruddy Yáñez. Her Spring 2015 students’ Spanish translation of web content for the Eisenhower Museum was published at http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/about_us/espanol.pdf. Kanost also passed a translation test in order to begin serving as a volunteer translator for microfinance nonprofit Kiva, which will allow her to learn more about microlending in Latin America and regional language variation.
• Kumiko Nakamura, with two of her students from Japanese 6, attended the 29th annual Japanese language speech contest at Consulate General of Japan at Chicago on March 21, 2015. Tori Matta and Weiyuan Xu delivered their speech flawlessly and received awards, respectively. She also met with a group of gifted student facilitators at Manhattan High School to discuss opportunities for their students to start Japanese language study before college. Kumiko explained the proficiency development of language learning and how critical to start learning difficult languages earlier.  She also shared the information provided by Japan Foundation on Japanese language education advocacy program, summer study abroad program in Japan for high school students, online materials available for self-study as well as the Japanese language courses offered at K-State.

2014

• Kumiko Nakamura 
  • organized and hosted the information table of Japanese language programs in the state of Kansas to promote Japanese language study at college level during the Greater Kansas City Japan Festival, held at Johnson County Community College on October 11, 2014. At the festival, she also supervised the public performance, by students of the Japanese Language Program, of the "kamishibai" (traditional Japanese paper story-telling theater).
  • participated in the Japanese language Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) Tester Workshop conducted by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) from June 17 to 20, 2014 in Provo, Utah. She has started a full certification training in Japanese with an ACTFL OPI trainee. The travel was funded by Academic Excellence Fund from Office of the Provost.
• Pablo Martínez-Diente has been confirmed as a Peer Review of Teaching Program (PRTP) fellow for the 2014-2015 academic year. Dr. Martínez has also joined the Editorial Board of the journal, Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, produced by the Modern Languages Department.
• Angélique Courbou and Melinda Cro served as the Kansas Board of Regents Core Outcomes Group Chair for Spanish and French respectively. On September 12, they met with representatives from other institutions across the state of Kansas to discuss the core learning outcomes for Spanish III and French II. They were charged with creating 4-6 shared outcomes in order to facilitate transfer by the Transfer and Articulation Committee of the Board of Regents.
• Li Yang (in collaboration with Janice McGregor) co-taught an intensive seminar on Intercultural Communication for English Language Program instructors in May, 2014.
• Li Yang participated in the ACTFL Chinese language Oral Proficiency Interview Tester Workshop June 17-20, 2014, in Provo, Utah.
• Laura Kanost evaluated four books nominated for the Lewis Galantière Award, which the American Translators Association gives biennially for a distinguished book-length literary translation into English.

2013

• On September 27, 2013, Melinda Cro served as the Kansas Board of Regents Core Outcomes Group Chair for French; she met with representatives from nine other institutions across the state of Kansas to discuss core learning outcomes for French I. Angélique Courbou served as the Kansas Board of Regents Core Outcomes Group Chair for Spanish, and met with representatives from eleven other institutions across the state of Kansas to discuss the core learning outcomes for Spanish II. Each of these groups was charged to create 4-6 shared outcomes in order to facilitate transfer by the Transfer and Articulation Committee of the Board of Regents.
• Sara Luly participated in the Fulbright Seminar for American Faculty in German/German Studies. Fifteen applicants were chosen to take part in a 14 day seminar on current developments in German secondary- and post-secondary education. Session topics included the changing demographic of German schools and universities, new approaches to teaching German as a second language, and the role of the European Union in post-secondary education. All expenses were paid for by Fulbright and the University of Tuebingen.
• Laura Kanost was elected to serve as the editor of the journal Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Literature.