Engagement and Outreach: Speaker list of FLL Faculty

 

THE DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

PURDUE UNIVERSITY

SPRING 2004

 

Speaker's Last Name 

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Please find below names of faculty members, contact information and topics of interest and expertise:

 

BEATE I. ALLERT

Associate Professor of German

Telephone:  765-494-3865

Website:  http://www.sla.purdue.edu/fll/germansection/pages/german.html

Email:  allert@purdue.edu

 

·        Visual art in German Romanticism (especially Runge and Friedrich).

·        Goethe and the Visual Arts.

·        Visual-Verbal Dynamics:  Lessing, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Klee.

·        Contemporary Debates on Visual Culture.

·        Ekphrasis:  Lessing and Beyond.

 

 

PAUL BENHAMOU

Emeritus Professor of French

Email:  benhamou@purdue.edu

 

·        Post-colonial France.

·        Antisemitism in France.

·        The American Dream:  a French Invention?

·        Franco-American relations.

·        French Enlightenment Literature.

 

 

DIMITRI N. BRESCHINSKY

Associate Professor of Russian

Email:  dnb@purdue.edu

 

·        American Nature Writing in Russian Translation.

·        Russian Writers of the Nineteenth Century.

·        Russian Modernist Literature at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century.

 

 

 

 

ZINAIDA A. BRESCHINSKY

Associate Professor of Russian

Telephone:  765-494-3864

Email:  zab@purdue.edu

 

·        Russia in Facts and Figures.

·        Putin’s Russia.

·        Wealth and Power in Today’s Russia.

·        Images of Russia’s Two Capitals:  Moscow & St. Petersburg.

·        Icon Painting:  Art and Meaning.

·        Russian Fairy Tales, Proverbs, and Superstitions.

 

 

THOMAS F. BRODEN

Associate Professor of French

Telephone:  765-497-0051

Email:  broden@purdue.edu

 

·        Modern French Literature.

·        Contemporary French Culture and Society.

·        The History of French Fashion (haute couture).

·        French Fashion in Modern Literature.

·        Approaches to Studying Signs in Society.

 

 

ROBERT CHANNON

Associate Professor of Russian

Email:  channon@purdue.edu

 

·        What is Language?

·        Natural human language and other kinds of “language”.

·        Attempts at reconstructing a single common ancestor language.

·        The relationships among European languages; the relationships among world languages.

·        How and why languages develop and change.

·        Language as a tool in discovering pre-history (before written records).

·        Haw shud Inglish bee speld?

 

 

 

 

 

 

FRITZ G. COHEN

Emeritus Professor of German

Telephone:  765-497-7610

Email:  cohenfg@purdue.edu

 

·        German Culture of the 16th and 17th Century.

·        Martin Luther:  Essays and Polemics.

·        Popular Theatre in 16th Century Germany.

·        Thomas Mann:  Novels and Novellas.

·        German Passion and Resurrection plays on the Late Middle Ages.

 

 

PAUL B. DIXON

Professor of Spanish

Email:  tudobem@purdue.edu

 

·        Latin American Literature and Culture (especially Brazilian).

·        Foreign Language Issues.

·        “Why Study a Foreign Language?”.

·        “Religion in Brazil:  A New World in the Tropics”.

·        “Five Centuries of Latin American Literature:  Milestones on a Marvelous Journey”.

 

 

ATSUSHI FUKADA

Associate Professor of Japanese

Email:  afukada@purdue.edu

 

·        Japanese Language and Culture.

·        Linguistics.

·        Computers and Language.

 

 

ANA M. GOMEZ-BRAVO

Associate Professor of Spanish

Email:  agomezbr@purdue.edu

 

·        Medieval Spanish Literature.

·        Medieval and Renaissance in Spain and Portugal.

·        Portuguese Literature.

·        Comparative Literature.

·        Rhetoric and Poetics.

·        Gender Studies.

·        Critical Theory.

 

HOWARD B. GRABOIS

Assistant Professor of Spanish

Email:  hgrabois@purdue.edu

 

·        Community Outreach and Service Learning.

·        Language and Culture.

 

 

PATRICIA HART

Professor of Spanish

Telephone:  765-496-1682

Email:  phart@purdue.edu

 

·        Film in Spain and Latin America.

 

 

KAZUMI HATASA

Professor of Japanese

Email:  khatasa@purdue.edu

 

·        Japanese language teaching.

·        Japanese culture.

·        Technology and Foreign Language Education.

 

 

DANIEL HSIEH

Associate Professor of Chinese

Telephone:  765-496-2255

Email:  dhsieh@purdue.edu

 

·        Chinese Literature.

·        Chinese Poetry and Early Fiction.

 

 

WEI HONG

Associate Professor of Chinese

Telephone:  765-494-3859

Website:  http://www.fll.purdue.edu/personal/hongwei.asp

Email:  hongwei@purdue.edu

 

·        Business Chinese.

·        Modern China.

·        Chinese Cultures.

·        Doing Business with Chinese/China.

 

 

JOHN T. KIRBY

Professor of Classics

Telephone:  765-494-3845

Website:  http://www.corax.us

Email:  corax@purdue.edu

 

·        Classical Studies.

·        Ancient Greek and Latin Literatures and Cultures.

·        Rhetorical Theory.

·        What makes a “Great Book” and Why Should We Care?

·        What is “Human” about the Humanities?

·        The Ancient World on Screen:  Classical Themes in Movies and Television Shows.

·        “The Name of the Rose” and Aristotle.

·        How to “Write” an Ancient Epic.

·        Honey-Tongued Peitho:  Classical Rhetoric and Modern Persuasion.

·        The Internet and Classical Studies.

·        Oedipus and His Grandchildren:  The Oedipus Motif in Fiction and Film.

·        Make the Most of Your Trip to England.

·        Make the Most of Your Trip to Rome.

·        Make the Most of Your Trip to Paris.

·        Make the Most of Your Trip to Florence.

·        Make the Most of Your Trip to Greece.

·        Tracing Family Roots in English Cities, Towns, and Villages.

 

 

BEN R. LAWTON

Associate Professor of Italian

Website:  http://india.fll.purdue.edu/lawton/lawton_lore.html

Email:  lawton@purdue.edu

 

· The Mafia: Origins, Evolution and Demise

· The Mafia in the Movies from Scarface to The Sopranos.

· From Oriental Martial Arts to Cage Rage: History, Theory, and Contemporary Realities

· Italian and Italian-American Film

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOWARD MANCING

Professor of Spanish

Telephone:  765-496-1683

Email:  mancing@purdue.edu

 

·        Cervantes and Don Quijote.

·        The Paperback Revolution:  (The role of mass market paperbacks in US popular culture in the 1940s and 1950s).

·        Cognitive Science and Literary Theory.

·        M.M. Bakhtin.

 

 

FLOYD F. MERRELL

Professor of Spanish

Email:  fmerrell@purdue.edu

 

·        Mexican Culture.

·        Mexican Immigrants.

·        Brazilian Culture.

·        Capoeira:  a Brazilian Art Form, including songs, instruments, dance, play, and fight.

·        Experiencing Candomblé:  an Afro-Brazilian Religion.

·        “Signs are Us”:  Communication when we don’t really know it.

·        Changes in an economically depressed Mexico City Barrio, 1967-2002.

·        Mexico:  That Other NAFTA Partner.

 

 

SIDNEY L. PELLISSIER

Associate Professor of French

Email:  pellsier@purdue.edu

 

·        French Theater, Contemporary.

·        French Theater, Historical.

·        Experimental Theater.

·        The French Avant-Garde.

·        The Mind-Body Connection.

·        Yoga for Senior Citizens.

 

 

PATRICE D. RANKINE

Assistant Professor of Classics

Email:  rankine@purdue.edu

 

·        Ancient Greek and Roman Literature.

·        The relationship between classical myth and modern American culture.

 

 

STUART D. ROBERTSON

Hebrew and Jewish Studies Lecturer

Email:  jhansistu@yahoo.com

 

·        Flavius Josephus, his life and works.

 

 

J. HERBERT ROWLAND

Professor of German

Telephone:  765-496-1685

Email:  hrowland@purdue.edu

 

·        The Reception of G.E. Lessing in 19th Century American Magazines. 

·        The Reception of Hans Christian Andersen in the 19th Century American Periodical Press.

·        Heinrich Boell and His Germany.

 

 

MARCIA C. STEPHENSON

Associate Professor of Spanish and Women’s Studies

Email:  mstephenson@sla.purdue.edu

 

·        Latin America’s Indigenous Peoples.

·        Andean Camelids (llamas, alpacas, vicunas and guanacos).

·        Latin American Feminisms.

 

 

ERDMUTE W. WHITE

Associate Professor of French

Email:  ewhite1@purdue.edu

 

·        Utopian communities in the US.

·        Taos (New Mexico) artists and early psychiatry.

·        Borders and Crossings:  South American Travels.

·        The Nature of Music:  Felix Mendelssohn.

·        Travels in Scotland and the “Hebrides Overture”.

·        The “meaning” of sound poetry.

·        Poetry and Dance:  Connections.

·        Reasons and origins of abstraction in art:  How did it happen?

·        Concrete Poetry:  Ian Hamilton Finlay and others.

·        Seminal Artists:  Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Marcel Duchamp, Sigmar Polke.

·        Painting of German/Austrian and American Expressionism (Schiele, Diebenkorn and other artists).

·        Modern Portuguese Poetry.

·        Recent British art.

·        German and French film:  silent to modern.

·        A new Dante for television:  Peter Greenaway and Tom Phillip.

 

 

JENNIFER M. WILLIAM

Assistant Professor of German

Email:  jwillia@purdue.edu

 

·        Twentieth Century German Literature and Film.

·        German-Jewish Studies.

·        Theories of Narrative and the Novel.

 

 

ALLEN G. WOOD                                       

Professor of French

Email:  wooda@purdue.edu

 

·        Versailles and Louis XIV.

·        General de Lafayette.

·        17th Century French Culture and Literature.