Modern and Classical Languages and Literature Research

Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literature

Alce su Voz (Rachel Showstack) is a community-based initiative whose mission is to improve health equity for Spanish speakers and speakers of Indigenous languages in the United States, with a focus on Kansas and the Midwest. A three-pronged approach to improving health equity for speakers of minoritized languages in Kansas includes 1) Community engagement and education, 2) Workforce development, and 3) Policy research.

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GRANTS:

2024-2025: National Endowment for the Humanities, $150,000 >Project: Stories of Language, Communication, and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Kansas Latinx Communities.

2024-2026: Kansas Health Foundation $300,000 >Project: Improving Health Equity for Latinx and Indigenous Kansans through Access to Mental Health Services, Civic Engagement, and Multilingual Education.

2023-2025: Office Assistant Secretary for Health/Office of Minority Health, $375,000 per year >Project: Improving Healthcare Language Access for Spanish Speakers in Kansas.

2022-2023: 麻豆传媒 Community Engagement Institute/Kansas Department of Health and the Environment, Increase the Reach, $250,000 >Project: COVID-19 Vaccine Equity for Guatemalan Indigenous Communities in Kansas.

2022-2023: Kansas Health Foundation $75,000 >Project: Building Capacity to Increase Civic Engagement Among Spanish-speaking Kansans to Improve Health Equity.

2021-2023: Kansas Health Foundation >Project: Empowering Spanish-speaking Kansans

Become More Inclusive & Become More Global

Our department embraces these ideas by the very nature of its programs and faculty.

In 1895, Fairmount College offered Classical Greek, Latin, French, & German.

MCLL was created in 1984 through a merger of Romance Languages, German, and Classics.

In 2023, American Sign Language (ASL) was added to the majors offered in MCLL.

MCLL offers 11 languages: Spanish, French, ASL (our majors), German, Japanese, Latin, Chinese, Italian, Arabic, and Russian.

Basic research in the humanities is necessarily interdisciplinary: scholarship through MCLL prepares learners for advanced degrees in areas of applied language, literature, linguistics, civilization, or pedagogy.

Articles

Navarro, Enrique. 鈥滿igrant Children and the Carceral State in the Comic Book Home鈥� Resistance and Abolition in the Borderlands. A. Aldama and J Ordaz. Tucson: U of Arizona P (2024): 286-305.
Roussel, Brigitte. 鈥淔emmes, bagues et anneaux dans l鈥橦eptam茅ron: le labyrinth rh茅torique du parcours amoreux鈥� Subject/Object and Beyond: Women in Early Modern France. N. Frelick and E. Benkov. Iter Press. Volume 1 of R茅flections sur la Premi猫re Modernit茅 (2024): 131-54.
Fonfria-Perera, Daniel. 鈥淚dentidad maldita: la construcci贸n de la masculinidad del roman铆 en Mar de pl谩stico (2015-2016) y La novia gitana (2018)鈥�. Estudios sobre g茅nero negro, Eds. 脌. Mart铆n Escrib脿 and J. S谩nchez Zapatero. Editorial Dykinson (2023): 477-483.
Veliz, Marivi. 鈥滷eeling Presences: Regina Galindo鈥檚 Acts of Becoming Someone Else, Something Else鈥� (2023) Diaphanes. U of Chicago P.
Veliz, Marivi. 鈥淲omen to Power. Art, Politics and Migration in Regina Jos茅 Galindo and Tania Bruguera鈥� Never-Ending Journey: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Central American Migration in 21st. Century. (2023) U of Arizona P.
Baldridge, Wilson. (2022) 鈥淭he Language of Difference in Derrida鈥檚鈥楬ow To Name鈥�: Effects of the Like/As Dyad.鈥� Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 53:1.
Showstack, Rachel. (2022). Audiovisual Assignments as Service-Learning for Social Justice in Latinx Communities. Spanish as a Heritage Language, 2:1.

Books

Showstack, R., Pascual y Cabo, D., and Wilson, D. (2024). Language Ideologies and Linguistic Identity in Heritage Language Learning. Routledge Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics.
Santos, M., Showstack, R., Mart铆nez, G., Colcher, D., and Maga帽a, D. (2023). Health Disparities and the Applied Linguist. Routledge Studies in Applied Linguistics.
Czerwionka, L., Showstack, R., and Liskin-Gasparro, J., eds. (2022). Contexts of Constructed Discourse: Interaction, Pragmatics, and Second Language Applications. Routledge Studies in Applied Linguistics.
Navarro, E., Mendoza, A. and Price, J., eds. (2022) Mexican Americans of Wichita鈥檚 North End. Arcadia Publishing.
Del Aguila, R., and Miseres, V., eds. (2021). Food Studies in Latin American Literatures. Perspectives on the Gastronarratives. of Arkansas Press.