News and Announcements

Mustapha Kamal, Clinical Assistant Professor of Classics and Mediterranean Studies, is the recipient of a Silver Circle Award for 2012. Recipients of this award are chosen each year by the graduating seniors, and represent some of UIC's best teachers.

Laura Bartlett, PhD Student in the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies, is the recipient of a 2012 Dean's Scholar Award.

Lindsay Weedman, Spanish major in the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies, was awarded first prize in the Humanities and Arts category at the UIC Student Research Forum for her project "An Exchange of Words". The project is a Spanish-to-English translation of "Comehoras," a collection of short stories by Professor Margarita Saona (also of Hispanic and Italian Studies). (Click here to view a photo of Lindsay with her project.)

The Global Baltics: The Next Twenty Years
The 23rd bi-annual conference of the AABS (Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies), will be held April 26-28, 2012 on the UIC campus. The conference will feature a plenary roundtable with the U.S. Ambassadors from Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, as well as a speech by U.S. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois titled "The Unbreakable U.S. Baltic Partnership".

The Hejna Chair in Polish Language and Literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago is sponsoring Contemporary Polish Art week from April 22-April 26. This extensive presentation will feature world-renowned artists and curators Maria Anna Potocka, Krzysztof Wodiczko and Piotr Krajewski.

The Language and Culture Learning Center (LCLC) will host this year's Language Symposium at UIC. The event, held annually at a different Chicago-area university campus, is titled "Tasks and Projects in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning," and is co-presented by DePaul University, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago.

The Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies will host a Graduate Student Conference of Hispanic Literary and Cultural Studies, "Trasits, Trasition, Revolution" Friday and Saturday, April 13-14, 2012, in the Institute for the Humanities (lower level of SH). Horacio Castellanos Moya (U of Iowa) and Brad Epps (Harvard U) will be the keynote speakers.

A recent UIC-hosted conference organized by Stacy Fifer in the Department of French and Francophone Studies, "The Congo: Reclaiming Its Destiny," was the subject of a segment on WBEZ's "Worldview." Click here to listen to the story.

Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. Click here to find out why in an article from the New York Times.

Professor Luis López, Head of the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies, was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. He will spend six months with the Bilingualism Research Lab of the Bergische Universität Wuppertal in Germany.

TESOL/Linguistics MA Student Laura Hawbaker has been awarded a Fulbright to teach English at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland.

The Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures is proud to announce the reactivation of its newly-revised MA and PhD programs in Slavic Studies, with concentrations in Polish Literature and Culture and Russian Literature and Culture.

Professors Chiara Fabbian, Kim Potowski and Margarita Saona of the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies were honored by the Council for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) with the 2011-2012 Teaching Recognition Award.

Russell A. Berman, 2011 President of the MLA and professor of Comparative Literature and German Studies at Stanford, explains why college students should make foreign language part of their studies.

Marsha Cassidy, Instructor and mentor for the MOVI minor, received the 2012 award for Outstanding Pedagogical Achievement, conferred by the Society of Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS).

Professor Michal Pawel Markowski, Hejna Chair in Polish Language and Literature and Head of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures at UIC, gave three lectures on Czeslaw Milosz in India as an invited speaker of the Polish Embassy in November 2011.

Sara Hall, Associate Professor of Germanic Studies, was featured in a recent article on unique college courses in Chicago (link to article in the Tribune's Red Eye Newspaper). The "Golden Twenties in Berlin" is part of Hall's GER 318 (PDF), which is being taught this semester.

Kim Potowski, Associate Professor of Spanish Linguistics, received a Fulbright Scholar grant to research native language arts in Oaxaca, Mexico. Read on...

Jennifer Tobin, Associate Professor of Classics and Mediterranean Studies, was honored with the 2011 Silver Circle Award. Recipients of this award have been chosen by UIC's graduating seniors since 1966.