A word from the Chair…
Greetings to all as we begin the 2015-2016 academic year by welcoming two new
assistant professors and three new full-time instructors, introduced more fully
below. As I embark on my first year as an elected chair, rather than as an
appointed interim chair, I have asked my colleagues in the department to
undertake a comprehensive review of our curriculum top to bottom, and program by program,
to ask ourselves if what we are offering, and the way we are offering it, is still the best
option for our students in 2015 and, looking ahead, to prospective students in the next ten
years. This process started already last year with the major overhaul of the Spanish basic
language program to incorporate significantly more online opportunities where students get
immediate feedback as they work through language-building exercises. This approach is likely
to be taken up by the other language programs as well. The Department has been recognized
campus-wide as being a leader in the development of new pedagogical models. Stay tuned for
updates on how this process is going.
, Chair
Jesse Chapman Alcorn Memorial Professor of Foreign Languages
Professor of German & Comparative Literature
New Giving Opportunity
Investing in a college education can be expensive, but it's well worth it. Researchers at the Moore School
of Business found that South Carolina residents with a bachelor’s degree earn an average of $15,000 a
year more than residents with a high school diploma. Still, students want to make sure they are getting
their money’s worth. Carolina has been recognized by the Princeton Review and Kiplinger’s Personal
Finance as one of the best values in public education.
The costs of attending college starts with tuition and fees and includes housing, meals, books and other
supplies. The Bursar’s office lists the cost of in-state tuition for 2015-16 at over $14,000 and out of state
students will pay over $29,000 for tuition alone. In an effort to defray some of that expense and to
attract top-notch undergraduate majors to our language programs, LLC is asking for your support in
contributing to a general departmental scholarship to be awarded to deserving students. For an out of
state student this has the potential of generating savings of $59,000 over four years if they become
eligible for in-state tuition! The scholarships would be awarded based on essays and other criteria, and
would be made after the initial goal of $2,000 for one scholarship is reached (this funds one student,
$500 per year, for four years). As the fund grows, additional students will be supported.
Please visit our website to explore options available for giving to this scholarship (Department of
Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Fund, # A31720) or to other LLC scholarship funds.
http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/dllc/sites/sc.edu.dllc/files/Click%20Here%20to%20Give.pdf
Congratulations to the following faculty who were promoted this fall!
Promoted to Senior Instructor effective August 2015: Beatriz Kellogg, Spanish
Faculty in the News…
 Prof. Tan Ye recently took part in the welcoming ceremonies at the White House for the state
visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
 Prof. Jeffrey Persels received a FACE grant from French Cultural Services to continue the fall
Tournées / CinéCola festivals http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/dllc/FREN/CineCola
 Prof. Nicholas Vazsonyi was recognized as the 2015 Wagner Book of the Year for the Cambridge
Wagner Encyclopedia.
The Italian Program at USC has recently experienced tremendous growth. This Fall, we are
offering 17 sections of Italian that include classes in language, cinema, poetry, and
conversation. In addition to Dr. Pia Bertucci and Dr. Kristina Stefanic Brown, Italian now has a
total of four full-time faculty members. We are happy to welcome Dr. Aria Dal Molin, Assistant
Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, and Megan Biondi, Instructor in Italian, for the
Evening School. To better serve our existing 40 minors and new students in Italian, all five
Italian faculty, including Dr. Joel Salvatore Pastor,
Adjunct Instructor in Italian, are currently revising and
expanding the Italian offerings listed in the catalog. The
Who we are… Focus on Italian!
updated course listings and new courses will be available
In a continuing effort to reflect on
by Spring 2016. We are very excited about the future of
individual language programs each
Italian and have many reasons to be optimistic:
newsletter, this issue takes a look at the
increasing enrollments, enhanced course offerings, the
Italian Program.
expanded faculty, the continued success of the Italian
Club moderated by Megan Biondi, and the upcoming
Maymester 2016 Study Abroad experience, USC in Italy
(Monte Castello). http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/dllc/ital
New Overlay Course Launched
CPLT 150 is an exciting new foundational overlay course, created by Judith Kalb and Lara
Ducate to satisfy University core requirements in Values, Ethics, and Social Responsibility
(VSR) and Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding (AIU).
Offered entirely via computer, this distributed learning course teaches
students to analyze and interpret literary texts that address questions of
personal and societal values, i.e., moral principles that guide human
behavior; decision-making; and defining and leading “a good life.” Values
we encounter and analyze include compassion, justice, community,
love, self-discipline, integrity, loyalty, commitment, selfdiscovery, happiness, and responsibility. Authors and literary traditions under discussion include
Leo Tolstoy (Russian, nineteenth century), Martin Luther King, Jr. (American, twentieth
century), Aldo Leopold (American, twentieth century), Marguerite de Navarre (French,
sixteenth century), Vergil (Roman, first century BCE), Plato (Greek, fourth century BCE),
Carlos Fuentes (Mexican, twentieth century), Eileen Chang (Chinese, twentieth century),
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German, eighteenth/nineteenth century), Mary Lavin (Irish,
twentieth century), and Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Russian, twentieth century). As we focus on
these diverse writers’ values-based discourse, we explore the effects of literature on our own responses
to ethical challenges.
University of South Carolina Students Meet Costa Rican President
This summer, as part of the University of South
Carolina’s study abroad program in Costa Rica, a group
of 10 students and program director Ana Lorena Cueto
met with Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis.
The meeting, in the Guanacaste Province, coincided
with the festivities celebrating the annexation of the
Partido de Nicoya from Nicaragua in 1824. Today, this
vast province is famous for its hospitality, its cowboy
culture, and its laid-back Pacific beaches.
The students who participated in the study abroad
program include: Edel Barrett, Matthew Bowman, Justin Brown, Mary Fouse, Katelyn Hersberger, Abigail
Loszlo, Rachel Lunsford, Ellen Morton, Elizabeth Parker and Emily Sires, and were led by Sr. Instructor
Ana Lorena Cueto.
Meet our new faculty!
Dr. Aria Dal Molin, Assistant Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, has
joined the Department in the area of Renaissance Literary and Cultural Studies. Dr.
Dal Molin holds a PhD in French and Italian Literature from the University of
California, Santa Barbara (2015) and an MA in Romance Languages and Literatures
from the University of Oregon (2008).
Her research focus stems from a long interest in the intersection of French and Italian literary and
philosophical thought; her dissertation entitled, “A Transalpine Theatrical Conversation: French Farce
and Italian Renaissance Comedy” looks at comedy and the relationship between French and Italian lateMedieval and Renaissance theater. Her current book project examines cultural mobilities in early
modern Europe and vernacular comic theater as the preferred medium of transnational exchange
between France and Italy. She is also working on several articles, including one on politics and rivaling
academies in sixteenth-century Siena (the Accademia degli Intronati and the Congrega dei Rozzi), and
two articles on representations of disabilities in medieval and early modern French and Italian theater
examined through the lens of disability studies.
Dr. Dal Molin’s areas of specialization include Renaissance studies, medieval studies, performance
studies, comedy, humanist theory, Tuscan literary academies, French medieval theater, and disability
studies. Teaching interests include Renaissance Italy, early modern theater, early modern humor, Italian
cultural legacies, Italian lyric poetry, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, French farces, Rabelais, and
Molière.
Mrs. Patricia Davis, Instructor of Spanish and Portuguese, earned her Bachelor's
degree in Recife, Brazil in 2006, and then completed her Master of Arts in Teaching
at the University of South Carolina in 2011. She has taught Spanish and Portuguese
at Lexington High School in South Carolina for the past four years at the novice and
advanced level. In 2011 she started the Portuguese program at the High School,
and also led a Portuguese Club to promote appreciation for Brazilian culture.
Throughout her career at the secondary level she worked on translations, staff development and led the
Outreach committee. She has previously taught a Portuguese immersion program in the summer and a
Portuguese class for business students at the University of South Carolina. In the summer of 2015 she
began her formal career at the University of South Carolina by teaching Portuguese to students in the
IMBA program.
Dr. Djamilia (Mila) Nazyrova, Instructor of Russian, graduated from Moscow State University’s Classical
Department and earned a doctoral degree in Russian from the University of Southern California (the
other USC).
Since 2001 she has been teaching a broad variety of Russian language courses at all levels from
elementary to advanced, including Russian intensives and courses for heritage speakers. She has taught
theme courses in the language, for example, “The Wonders of Advertising,” based on Victor Pelevin’s
cyberpunk prose and “Moscow and St.Petersburg in Russian Civilization.” She has also taught courses on
Russian culture and film in English.
Dr. Nazyrova’s research interests focus on Russian art and culture at the turn of the twentieth century
and the early Soviet era. She is interested in an array of topics including symbolist and avant-garde art,
modernist architecture and the reception of Greek and Roman pastoral themes in the Russian fin-desiècle. The subject of her current research is the visionary designs of Soviet resort spas by modernist
architect Ivan Leonidov.
Dr. Ashley Williard, Assistant Professor of French, joined the Department of
Languages, Literatures, and Cultures after completing her PhD in French at the City
University of New York Graduate Center (CUNY 2015).
Her interdisciplinary research examines representations of difference in the earlymodern French Atlantic world. Her current book project, entitled Engendering Islands,
analyzes the ways missionaries, officials, adventurers, and travelers deployed and
transformed metropolitan tropes of femininity and masculinity in the seventeenth-century Caribbean. In
close textual readings of archival and narrative sources, Dr. Williard shows the ways in which gender
played a central role in defining colonial others, male and female, and contributed to emerging notions
of racial difference that justified slavery and colonial domination, thus setting the stage for centuries of
French imperialism. Based on archival research in the Caribbean, France, and the United States, she has
essays published or forthcoming in English and French.
Dr. Williard teaches courses on French language as well as French-speaking cultures, history, and
literature. Before coming to South Carolina, she taught French and contributed to writing pedagogy and
digital learning initiatives on several campuses of the CUNY system. She is particularly enthusiastic about
incorporating new media into her courses and expanding her interest in digital humanities through her
teaching and research at USC.
Dr. Latifa Zoulagh, Instructor of Arabic and French, is originally from Morocco, where she studied
French and Linguistics. Dr. Zoulagh holds a PhD in French and Francophone Literature from the
University of Oklahoma. Her research focuses on Maghrebi Literature, especially Moroccan women
writers.
Prof. Camacho has published a new book: Cuentos de La
Habana Elegante
Ramon Meza (Author),
Cirilo Villaverde (Author),
Jorge Camacho (Editor)
Our CinéCola / Tournées film festival, Oct. 20-Nov. 8
http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/dllc/FREN/CineCola
Comparative Literature Conference; Worlding the Disciplines: An Interdisciplinary
Conference; University of South Carolina, February 25-28, 2016
French Literature Conference 2016: Hybrid Genres/L’Hybridité des genres
April 21-22, 2016
http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/dllc/FREN/LitConference
LLC Annual Distinguished Lecture:
Anthony J. Cascardi, Dean of Arts & Humanities, University of California, Berkeley
April 8, 2016, location TBA
Send us your ideas! If you have idea for a story, news about alumni’s recent
accomplishments, or just something to add to the spring 2016 issue, please e-mail
pilotc@mailbox.sc.edu.
CONTACT US: Dept. of LLC, 1620 College St., Columbia, SC 29208 803-777-4881
http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/dllc/