Senior Bryce Starner spent his summer in the Dominican Republic as an intern for the Kansas City Royals. The triple major — comparative literature, Spanish and corporate innovation and entrepreneurship — utilized his language skills to communicate with the players and locals in Santo Domingo.
A graduate research roundtable discussion will be held at 12:30 p.m. Sept. 26 in 102 Kern Building. Comparative literature graduate students Irenae Agbedion, Victoria Lupascu and Lea Pao will lead the discussion.
The Penn State Center for Global Studies will be hosting Vijay Prashad from Trinity College with a lecture on western military strength and the influence and implications the west can have on eastern societies, which will take place from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Oct. 5 at the Penn State Lewis Katz Auditorium.
At 12:30 p.m. Dec. 8, Margherita Long, associate professor of Japanese and comparative literature at the University of California, Riverside, will present “On Affect and Articulation: Reading Ōe Kenzaburō’s Anti-Nuclear Speeches,” in Room 102 of the Kern Building.
At 12:30 p.m. Dec. 1, John Ochoa, associate professor of Spanish at Penn State, will present “The Missing Event and Other Traumas in Tomás Rivera's Chicano Classic And The Earth Did Not Devour Him (or Why So Many Latino Stories Are Bildungsromanen),” in Room 102 of the Kern Building.
At 12:30 p.m. Nov. 17, James O’Sullivan, digital humanities research designer at Penn State, will present “Exploring Ireland’s Literary Communities,” in Room 102 of the Kern Building.
At 12:30 p.m. Nov. 10, Pedro Meira Monteiro, professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University, will present “Blister You All: The Calibanic Genealogy in Brazil,” in Room 102 of the Kern Building.
At 12:30 p.m. Nov. 3, Surya Parekh, postdoctoral fellow in the Africana Research Center at Penn State, will present “Affirmations of Blackness: Reading the Black Enlightenment,” in Room 102 of the Kern Building.
At 12:30 p.m. Oct. 20, Gayle Rogers, associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, will present “Calcutta-London-Madrid: The Politics of Translation in Global Modernisms,” in Room 102 of the Kern Building.
At 12:30 p.m. Oct. 6, Brian Baer, professor of Russian and translation studies at Kent State University, will present “Solidarity and Sacrifice: Poetry Translation and the Russian Radical Left” in Room 102 of the Kern Building.
At 12:30 p.m. Sept. 22, Djelal Kadir, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of comparative literature at Penn State, will present “Dissent and Digital Transumption in an Age of Insecurity,” in Room 102 of the Kern Building.
Scholarships are now available for area high school students and Pennsylvania college students who plan to study the Arabic language this summer at The Language Institute of Penn State. In the intensive, four-week STARTALK Arabic Academy program, which meets Monday through Friday from June 12 to July 9, students can complete the equivalent of a full semester's study of Arabic and receive four academic credits for Penn State's Arabic 001 course. Interested students should submit their applications soon in order to be considered for 15 to 20 scholarships.
Organizers of this year's Marathon Reading are inviting members of the Penn State community to choose the book for the 24-hour event, starting at 1 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 5, on the Pattee-Paterno Library lawn. To vote, go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/D72CVDV and make a selection by May 6.
Penn State faculty, friends and corporate supporters have made commitments totaling $334,000 to establish an Early Career Professorship in Comparative Literature in honor of Caroline Eckhardt, the longtime head of the department and professor of comparative literature and English. Faculty colleagues, administrators and alumni also contributed an additional $30,000 to create a fund to support various programs and initiatives for the study of comparative literature, also in honor of Eckhardt. "Over the last quarter century, Carey Eckhardt has been at the center of comparative literature at Penn State," said Susan Welch, dean of the College of the Liberal Arts. "As the only head in the history of the department, she has worked tirelessly to create, lead and inspire the faculty and students. Along the way, she has nurtured important teaching and scholarship, and elevated the humanities at Penn State."
A dedicated teacher and scholar, Gerhard Friedrich Strasser, professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at Penn State, has made a $1 million commitment in his estate to support graduate students in comparative literature and Germanic and Slavic languages and literatures. The gift is one of the largest ever made by a current or emeritus faculty member in the College of the Liberal Arts and designates the proceeds from the future sale of real estate for support of graduate education in the departments of Comparative Literatures, and Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures.
