Publications

Prof. Carrie Bonilla is lead author on a book chapter published in April 2020 detailing a study of third language (L3) acquisition of Portuguese by second language (L2) Spanish speakers. She is also co-author of a study reporting on L3 Portuguese acquisition through an autonomous, online learning platform. Both chapters are in a volume dedicated to theoretical and practical accounts of the acquisition of Portuguese from a broad range of linguistic perspectives. This collection is particularly appealing in the broad academic sphere of language acquisition due to the fact that there has yet to be one entirely dedicated to Portuguese as an Additional Language (PAL).

In a new article published in the journal Latino Studies, Prof. Jennifer Leeman builds on her previous critical analyses of the ethnicity and race categories in the US census. In addition to demonstrating how sociolinguistic theory and methods can shed new light on census classification, her study of 117 Spanish-language interviews from the 2010 census shows that census-taking is not a simple recording of preexisting identities, nor is it a one-way dissemination of official discourses from interviewers to respondents. Instead, census ethnoracial classification involves the intersubjective construction and production of identities, as interviewers and respondents negotiate the meaning of the categories provided and their places within them.

The Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning at the University of Texas has published a Spanish curriculum developed by a team of Spanish profs in GMU and Eastern Mennonite University. Lisa Rabin and Colleen Sweet from MCL are main authors of the publication and the project was funded by a 4-VA grant.

Able to shape-shift and ride the clouds, wielding a magic cudgel and playing tricks, Sun Wukong (aka Monkey or the Monkey King) first attained superstar status as the protagonist of the sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West (Xiyou ji) and lives on in literature and popular culture internationally.

The Military Enlightenment brings to light a radically new narrative both on the Enlightenment and the French armed forces from Louis XIV to Napoleon. Christy Pichichero makes a striking discovery:

Aprender a aprender en la era digital provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art account that empowers readers to leverage learning technologies to promote second language learner autonomy. Written entirely in Spanish, the book covers a breadth of innovative topics in the teaching of Spanish via and with technology, such as emerging pedagogies, autonomous and participatory learning, learner agency and identity, teacher development, and post-communicative curriculum design.