Faculty News

GMU Faculty Contributes to Howard–Georgetown Africa and Middle East Literature Workshop

The Department of Modern and Classical Languages closes Spring 2026 on a high note. The department has continued to grow in both scholarly ambition and collegial spirit. This year brought a remarkable number of well-deserved recognitions, reflecting the dedication and excellence of our faculty across teaching, research, and service.

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'"

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.

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).

Dr Peiyu Yang was awarded a Kluge Fellowship from the Library of Congress

A review of Dr Peiyu Yang’s monograph Triangular Translation: Gender and the Making of Post-colonial World between China- Europe, and the Middle East, 1880-1940 (2024) was recently published in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture

MCL and CS Forum # 10