World Languages and Cultures Faculty
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Lilian Baeza-Mendoza Senior Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Professor Lilian Baeza-Mendoza is a native of Chile, but she has spent most of her life in the US. She holds a BA from George Mason University and a MS from Georgetown University. During her years as …
Naomi S. Baron Professor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Professor Baron is interested in language and technology, reading, the relationship between speech and writing, the history of English, and higher education. A former Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Fell…
Julia Belopolsky Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
George Berg Senior Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Professor Berg has served as a faculty advisor for the Arabic Club and faculty supervisor for visiting Fulbright student teaching assistants for the past two years. His teaching and research interests…
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Carmen Cacho Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Dr. Carmen Cacho has a PhD in Contemporary European Studies. She has taught language courses at the universities of Denver, Washington and Georgetown. She is interested in Spanish culture and contempo…
Jie Cai Instructor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Jie Cai received his BA in Chinese from Shanghai Normal University in China and his MA and MLS from the University of Iowa. Prior to AU, he had been teaching all levels of Chinese for over 16 years at…
Ryan Cassidy Program Advisor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Ranieri Moore Cavaceppi Senior Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Professor Cavaceppi teaches various levels of Italian at American University, including beginner, intermediate, and advanced conversation and composition courses. As the primary instructor at AU, Prof…
Gorky Cruz Adjunct Instructor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
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Solange Garnier-Fox French Program Coordinator and Instructor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Chip Gerfen Professor and Department Chair, World Languages & Cultures CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Ethan Goss-Alexander Senior Administrative Assistant CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Ethan is the Senior Administrative Assistant in the Dept. of World Languages and Cultures in CAS. Ethan is also pursuing their MA in Game Design through American University's Game Lab. A game/audio d…
Claudia Gotea Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Ludy Grandas Senior Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Ludy Grandas’ research interests include issues of national identity in Latin America and in the Hispanic communities in the U.S. Her teaching interests include the Studies of Culture in Latin America…
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Naima Hachad Assistant Professor CAS-World Lang and Cultures
Research: Hachad’s research interests include questions of language, diasporic identities, and representations of the body in Francophone literature and visual arts of the Maghreb and the Caribbean; …
Consuelo Hernandez Associate Professor CAS-World Lang and Cultures
Professor Consuelo Hernández teaches courses on Creative Writing in Spanish, 20th century Latin American Literature, Central America Cultural Studies, Colombia and Afro-Latin America Culture and Music…
Cristina Hernandez Gil de Lamadrid Instructor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Esther Holtermann Senior Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Professor Holtermann is interested in immigration, day labor and the Latino community. She teaches language and topic courses in Spanish at American University, and is currently the assistant director…
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Julia Isaac Instructor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Alina Israeli Associate Professor CAS-World Lang and Cultures
Professor Israeli received her PhD in Slavic Linguistics from Yale University. Prior to coming to the United States she received a BA equivalent in Russian Language and Literature from Leningrad State…
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Karina Jeronimides Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Professor Karina Jeronimides Krilla was born in South America but was raised in Italy and France. She speaks five languages fluently and has lived and studied in Europe, South America and the United S…
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Rana Kateeb Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Professor Kateeb, Arabic Language Instructor, has a BA in English for Specific Purposes and an MA in Applied Linguistic from Jordan University of Science and Technology. She has previously taught vari…
Kenneth Knight Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Interests: L2 Japanese phonology; minority languages of Japan; diaspora and language attrition; minority languages and national language policy
Sarah Knowles Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Sarah Young Knowles specializes in second language acquisition, language teaching methods and teacher education, and instructional design. She earned her doctorate in applied linguistics at Georgetown…
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Elizabeth Lang Senior Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Elizabeth Lang has taught French language courses at AU since 1991. Her primary interest is in political, economic, social and cultural issues in Francophone Africa, and international development. She…
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Susana Marin Instructor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Juliana Martinez Assistant Professor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Professor Martínez focuses on the intersection of violence and body politics in the Latin-American and US Latino context. Her two main areas of research are: representation of historical violence rece…
Rita Morandi Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Monica Morin Administrative Assistant CAS - World Languages and Cultures
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Erez Naaman Associate Professor CAS-World Lang and Cultures
Naaman’s research interests include Arabic language, literature, and culture in the medieval and Pre-Modern Islamic world and the intellectual history of this period.
Jacques Nalabandian Instructor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Place of birth: Aleppo, Syria. Studied in Cyprus, France, Italy, Germany and Syria. Teaching: United States Air Force Academy (1986-91); The Catholic University of America(1999-2000); American Univers…
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Amy Oliver Department Chair, Philosophy and Religion CAS - Philosophy and Religion
Professor Oliver's teaching and research on Latin America explore philosophical topics such as marginality, feminism, nepantlismo, and transfronterismo. She works on the Hispanic essay of ideas and La…
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William Quirk Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Dr. Quirk has research interests in German, English and French from Romanticism to the present. Within German he focuses on both the Age of Goethe and Modernism, with special emphasis given to Kleist,…
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Daniele Rodamar Associate Professor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
A native speaker of French, Professor Rodamar's research interests include 16th- and 17th-century French literature, the history of ideas, international studies, and language teaching and methodology.…
Olga Rojer Associate Professor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Olga Rojer is Director of the German Studies program. Her teaching interests include modern German literature and film, literary translation, and Dutch Caribbean studies. Her recent research has empha…
Carmen Ruzza Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Professor Carmen Helena Ruzza received her undergraduate degree at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, and a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Conservatorio Lino Gallardo. She obtained a M.A in Latin A…
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Ana Serra Associate Professor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Author of The New Man in Cuba: Culture and Identity in the Revolution (2007), on representations of model revolutionary identities in Cuban literature, during the formative decade of the Cuban revolut…
Gemma Sune Minguella Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
This dissertation (published as a book by the Centro cultural de la Generacion del 27, Malaga, Spain) is a deep and meticulous reconstruction of the philosophy of one of the poets of the Spanish Gener…
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Christine Van Berten Senior Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Christine van Berten teaches French and Francophone cultures, Literature and French language at university level in Europe and the United States for over 15 years. After a ten-year career as a Profess…
Nuria Vilanova Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Núria Vilanova teaches Latin American Culture, Literature and Cinema. Her research is devoted to the impact of social change and migration on cultural production. She works on textual and cinematic na…
Polina Vinogradova Director of TESOL Program CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Dr. Vinogradova is interested in the use of digital technology, specifically digital stories, in language education and in postmethod pedagogy and advocacy in language teacher development. Her recent …
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Brenda Werth Associate Professor CAS-World Lang and Cultures
Brenda Werth’s research interests include Latin American theater, performance, documentary film, memory studies, human rights, gender, social movements, and translation. She teaches courses on Latin A…
Tonia Wind Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Dr. Wind joined the faculty of the Department of World Languages and Cultures in 2015 as the Portuguese Language Program Coordinator and Professorial Lecturer of Portuguese and Spanish. Prior to comin…
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Svetlana Xu Senior Professorial Lecturer CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Dr. Xu has an extensive background as a linguist in both Chinese and Russian, with an emphasis in the areas of philosophy, literature, culture and communication.Possessing an impressive academic backg…
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Xiaoli Zhang Instructor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Xiaoquan Zhang Assistant Professor CAS - World Languages and Cultures
Xiaoquan Raphael Zhang received his PhD in Chinese and Comparative Literature from Washington University in St. Louis. His primary research field is literature and culture of late imperial China, in p…