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Feb. 9, 2026, 5:30 p.m. Location: Taylor 203, Vassar College

"The Heroine with a Thousand Faces: Rethinking the Interpretations of 'The Arabian Nights'"

"Advancing Pragmatic Competence in Chinese through Theatrical Texts: A Practitioner Inquiry on 'The Thunderstorm'"

Associate Professor of Italian Kristina Olson has published a new volume: A World of Possibilities: The Legacy of the Undivine Comedy, as part of the Cultural Inquiry series of ICI Berlin Press (November 2025).

Spend one semester-4 months- to get the ready-to-go Japanese Grammar and 4 fundamental skills.

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Copilot, and Grok are increasingly used by university students, yet they face fundamental limitations. In second-language learning, chatbots struggle to match the nuance and communicative intent of human language. While prompt engineering, RAG, and local LLMs allow some customization, true personalization—grounded in students’ voices, needs, and goals—remains out of reach. AI support is largely limited to remedial practice and explanations, and even these can be unreliable or dull.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has rapidly entered the field of language teaching and learning, promoted by various educational promises, particularly the assertion that it can improve and customize opportunities for interaction in the target language. Nevertheless, its clear shortcomings in capturing the emotional, social, and identity dimensions that are fundamental to language use require us to go beyond technosolutionism and examine the difficulties its adoption creates in language learning environments. This paper presents a set of approaches based on critical digital pedagogy principles for integrating GenAI into instruction of additional languages broadly, with specific attention to Spanish, while recognizing that classrooms should not be isolated from the social contexts that surround both learners and educators. The study argues that establishing guidelines and recommending approaches to this emerging technology is essential to avoid creating further social divides and to foster the development of critical and engaged citizens who are equipped to face the challenges of 21st-century society. Román Mendoza, E. (2025). La inteligencia artificial generativa en la enseñanza de español. Una aproximación desde la pedagogía crítica. Culture Crossroads, 28, 211-229.

Professor Luo’s 2014 research monograph, The Avan-Garde and the Popular in Modern China (University of Michigan Press), has recently been published in Chinese by the prestigious People’s Literature Press (October 2025).