Session 1

In-person and live streamed: Jean Price-Mars summed up 10 years of Indigéniste poetics when, in the preface to Thus Spake the Uncle (1928), a pivotal text of Caribbean post-colonial thought, he accused his fellow Haitian writers of “bovarysme,” of fantasizing that they were something that they were not. The passage is familiar—at least to Haitians—but the allusions it builds on are less so.

Many prominent environmental organizations have a dismal record on matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and have paid little attention, historically, to the problems of environmental racism. Philosophically, the analysis of these failures often zeroes in on the issue of “ecocentrism”—a term describing a range of positions seeking to go beyond a “human-centered” or “anthropocentric” perspective.

Due to the global pandemic, most teaching has been remote. This panel of Chinese language instructional professionals in East Asian Languages and Civilizations demonstrates how language teaching around current issues was carried out through technology in the remote learning mode. Four panelists will share their experience of teaching practices with innovative technology and demonstrate how the pandemic is reshaping teaching and education.

In-person and live streamed: Jean Price-Mars summed up 10 years of Indigéniste poetics when, in the preface to Thus Spake the Uncle (1928), a pivotal text of Caribbean post-colonial thought, he accused his fellow Haitian writers of “bovarysme,” of fantasizing that they were something that they were not. The passage is familiar—at least to Haitians—but the allusions it builds on are less so.

For good reason, castrati and some female sopranos attracted much scholarly attention in 18th-century opera studies. One famed female contralto, Vittoria Tesi Tramontini, had a stellar career in Italy and Austria but had an unusual background. She was born the child of a sub-Saharan African servant and a Florentine woman in the Medici Court.

This session concerns the Turkic language family, its relationship to other language families, and its historical development and spread on the Eurasian continent. Turkic languages contain more than 30 literary languages, plus numerous dialects that geographically range from Eastern Europe to Northeast China. These languages have been used to reflect the literary heritages of several dozen states, using numerous alphabets, during the past two millennia.