Research Interests

Arabic Faculty

  • George Berg: Empirical research in applied linguistics with a focus on the development of communicative-based teaching materials for students of Arabic.
  • Erez Naaman: Classical Arabic literature and culture, and the intellectual history of the premodern Islamic world.

Chinese Faculty

  • Jie Cai: Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (TCSOL), Teaching Chinese as a Heritage Language, Second Language Acquisition, Modern Chinese Literature and Classical Chinese language. 
  • Svetlana Xu: Philosophy, literature, Chinese culture, and communication.
  • Xiaoquan Raphael Zhang: Literature and culture of late imperial China.

French Faculty

  • Naima Hachad: North African literature and cultural productions.
  • Elizabeth Lang: Political, economic, social and cultural issues in Francophone Africa and international development.

German Faculty

  • William Quirk: German, English, and French literature from the Romanticism to the present.

Italian Faculty

  • Ranieri Moore Cavaceppi: 16th century Italian Hospitaller Knights and 20th century literature and modern cinema.

Russian Faculty

Spanish Faculty

  • Lilian Baeza-Mendoza: The use of media as a language learning tool and learning disabilities in the language classroom.
  • Luis Cerezo: Empirical research methods with audiovisual technology for second language learning.
  • Ester Holtermann: Immigration and the Latino community.
  • Juliana Martinez: Intersection of violence and body politics in Latin America, mainly representation of historical violence in recent cultural production; and gender and sexuality - particularly transgender studies.
  • Gemma Sune Minguella: Relationship between poetry and philosophy, as well as cinema and visual arts. Restoring the integrity of Spanish classic movies seriously censored under the Franco regime (50's and 60's).
  • Amy Oliver: Marginality, feminism, nepantlismo, and transfronterismo in Latin America.
  • Amelia Tseng: Sociolinguistics of migration and diaspora: Bilingualism, heritage languages, dialects, identity, discourse, ideology, race/ethnicity; Washington, D.C. Latinx Language and Identity Project (DCLLIP). Linguistics Coordinator.
  • Nuria Vilanova: Impact of migration on cultural production and narratives of violence and poverty.
  • Brenda Werth: Professor Werth specializes in contemporary Latin American theater. Her areas of interest include performance, memory studies, documentary theater, and film. She teaches courses on diverse aspects of the Southern Cone, including Postdictatorial literature, performance, and human rights.
  • TESOL Faculty

  • Naomi Baron: The effects of technology on reading and writing. One branch of her research is on differences between reading in print versus onscreen. A second branch is on the impact of artificial intelligence on how we write.
  • Robin Barr: Indo-European and psycholinguistics, morphology, relationship between language learning and language change.
  • Henry Chip Gerfen: Phonology and linguistic studies.
  • Tabitha Kidwell: Language teacher education, culture in language teaching and learning, student-centered and interactive language teaching methods, equitable learning opportunities for ELLs.
  • Sarah Knowles: Second language acquisition, language teaching methods, applied linguistics, metalinguistic awareness, and working with low-literate adult learners.
  • Polina Vinogradova: Advocacy and student empowerment; multiliteracies and multimodality; pedagogical uses of digital storytelling; postmethod pedagogy in teacher education.

Recent Publications