Graduate Academic Excellence

John Baron - Spanish
PhD Dissertation Defense and Graduate, August 2016

• Dissertation title: "Restoring Memory: Analyzing the Revivial of Cultural Memory in Argentia through Recent Novels and Films
• Dissertation Chair: John Beusterien
• Dissertation Committee: Jorge Zamora, Natalia Matta

Rolando Diaz - Spanish
PhD Dissertation Defense and Graduate, August 2017

• Dissertation title: "Transnational noir": Chicano and Catalan elements in the detective fiction of Lucha Corpi and Alicia Gimenez Bartlett
• Dissertation Chair: Jorge Zamora
• Dissertation Committee: Antonio Ladeira, Genaro Perez

Kristine Anne Mallinson - Languages & Cultures-Classics
Master Thesis Defense and Graduate, May 2017

• Thesis title: "Stories of the Dead? A Reexamination of Helladic Burials at Asine and Prosymna"
• Thesis Chair: Christopher Witmore
• Thesis Committee: Hannah Friedman

Kristine will pursue a doctorate at the University of Missouri in Classical Archaeology through the Art History and Archaeology Department. She received the Charles D. Folse Memorial Fellowship.

Marine Audrey M. Roussat - Romance Languages-French
Master Thesis Defense and Graduate, May 2017

• Thesis title: Identité troublées, identités troublantes
• Thesis Chair: Carole Edwards
• Thesis Committee: Christopher Bains,  Andrea Jonsson

Master of Arts Language & Cultures

• Rachel Justine Berlingeri – Applied Linguistics
• Larissa Costa Campos – Applied Linguistics
• Elizabeth Jane Burow Carroll – Applied Linguistics
• Camille Goncalves Vilela dos Santos – Applied Linguistics
• Abdullah Mohammad S Hidan – Applied Linguistics
• Hali McClain Johnson – Classics
• Lo-An Liu – Applied Linguistics
• Astrid Mariel Sierra Mejia – Applied Linguistics
• Hidetoshi Tanihara – Applied Linguistics
• Rachael Nichole Winfrey – Applied Linguistics
• Junyao Wu – Applied Linguistics

Master of Arts Romance Languages

• Aleksandra Aleksic – Romance Languages – French
• Andrew Joseph Cosper – Romance Languages–Spanish
• Gerardo Cuellar – Romance Languages - French
• Joana Paola Guerrero Rodriguez – Romance Languages – Spanish; Will pursue Ph.D.

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Undergraduate Academic Excellence

Bachelor of Arts Languages & Cultures

• Carder, Dylan C., RLAS
• Fincher, Alexander O., RLAS
• Hawkins, Harrison R., German
• Horn, Matthew, RLAS
• Jeffrey, Joseph T., RLAS
• McGee, Geer P., RLAS
• Pedretti-Allen, Miles, Classics
• Kowalczyk, Allison M., German
• Pasat, Katerina E, French
• Raden, Megan J., Classics

Bachelor of Arts Spanish

2017 Texas Tech Faculty Honors Convocation

CMLL Awardees

• Charles Grair – President's Excellence in Teaching Awards
• Diego Pascual y Cabo – Texas Tech Alumni Association New Faculty Awards
• John Beusterien – Texas Tech Parents Association Barnie E. Rushing, Jr. Faculty Outstanding Researcher Award
• Lorum Stratton – Emeritus Faculty Certificate
• David Larmour – Recognition of Paul Whitfield Horn Professors

CMLL Faculty Recipients of the 2017-2018 Texas Tech Scholarship Catalyst Award

CMLL faculty who propose research, scholarship, and creative endeavors in the Arts, Humanities, or Social Sciences are eligible for the Texas Tech Scholarship Catalyst Award. Ten CMLL faculty submitted proposals and were selected with more than thirty winning proposals in the Texas Tech Scholarship Catalyst Program. The program promotes excellence in research, scholarship, and creative endeavors and to propel researchers in to the next stage of their careers, and to increase external funding.
The Offices of the President, Provost, and vice President for Research have made available $126, 000 to promote research, scholarship, and creative output in areas traditionally not funded by major federal agencies. Funds awarded under the SCP are used for research, scholarly-related and arts practice-related expenses which may include graduate and undergraduate student salaries.

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Barta Receives 2017 International Research and Development Seed Grant

Dr. Peter I. Barta and Dr. Michael Phy (Department of Internal Medicine, TTUHSC) submitted a joint proposal entitled, Revisiting Hippocrates and Galan: Interpretation of Narratives in the Training of Residents" which is housed in the Department of Classical & Modern Languages and Literatures. Their proposal was selected for funding from the 2017 International Seed Grant Competition from numerous proposals from five colleges that included nearly all major fields of scholarship at Texas Tech describing work to be conducted around the globe and included projects from a wide diversity of colleges, departments, and study topics.

Elola Awarded the Donald Haragan Study Abroad Award

Idoia Elola, Associate Professor of Spanish, received the Donald R. Haragan Study Abroad award at The Global Vision Award ceremony on May 1, 2017. The ceremony is hosted by the Office of International Affairs and given to faculty, staff and students whose work helps Texas Tech become a globally connected, higher education institution. This award recognizes an individual for development and implementation of study abroad programs that support Texas Tech's commitment to providing high quality international educational opportunities.

Guengerich National and International Research

Guengerich receives Research Award

Sara Guengerich, Associate Professor of Spanish, has been awarded a TTU Catalyst research award to study the effects of natural disasters in the textual production of colonial Peru. Her project, "Moving Histories: The Earthquakes in Colonial Peru and their importance for Interdisciplinary Research" will take her back to the colonial archives of Lima and Cuzco this summer 2017. This research promises to spark future interdisciplinary dialogues between the Humanities and the Sciences.

Guengerich awarded Long-Term Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library

Sara Guengerich, Associate Professor of Spanish, has been awarded a Long-Term Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library. Sponsorship of research at the JCBL is highly competitive (only 12% of the applicants are selected) and reserved exclusively for scholars whose work is centered on the colonial history of the Americas, North and South, including all aspects of the European, African, and Native American engagement. This in-residence fellowship will afford Guengerich the opportunity to work on her book, Daughters of the Inca Conquest: Indigenous Noblewomen in Colonial Peru, in the fall 2017 semester.

Guengerich Presents at National and International Conferences

Sara Guengerich, Associate Professor of Spanish, presented a paper entitled "Elites and Hegemony in the Andes" at the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies Annual Conference, April 5-8, 2017 in Salt Lake City, Utah

Guengerich also presented her work, "Las redes de comunicación social de las élites coloniales del siglo XVI", on a panel of colonial Andean experts at the 50th International LASA Congress in Lima, Peru, April 29-May 1, 2017.

Guengerich was invited to speak at the Instituto Cervantes in Prague, Czech Republic in May 2016. The roundtable discussion was centered on the importance of the Latino/Hispanic population in Higher Education in the United States.

President's Excellence in Diversity and Equity Awardees & Nominees

Left to Right: Brandner, Al-Hmoud, Drigalenko

• Rula Maabra Al-Hmoud, Junior Faculty Awardee
• Irina Drigalenko, Junior Faculty Nominee
• Zachary G. Brandner, Graduate Student, Spanish

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Mallory Recipient of the 2017 Professing Excellence Award

Lori Mallory (American Sign Language) was one of 10 recipients of the 2017 Professing Excellence Award. Over 70 nominations were written by on –campus residents, and Professor Mallory's nomination was chosen as a top finalist. Texas Tech students are given the opportunity to nominate faculty and present awards to those who have demonstrated exceptional educational skills, go above and beyond, both inside and outside the classroom, to impact their students' learning and academic success.

The recipients were honored at the 2017 Professing Excellence Awards Celebration on March 29, 2017 in the Matador Room, Student Union Building.

Pascual Recipient of the 2017 A&S Excellence in Teaching Award

Diego Pascual, Ph.D. Spanish, received the 2017 Arts and Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award. He was honored at a reception on May 4 as one of this year's award recipients.

Nakatsukasa Awarded Seed Grant for Interdisciplinary Research

"Teaching Foreign Language Pronunciation through Educational Avatars" was selected as one of the seven projects to be funded in Round 2 of the Seed Grants for Interdisciplinary Research at Texas Tech by the Offices of the President, Provost, and Vice President for Research. The team, consisting of Kimi Nakatsukasa (CMLL Applied Linguistics), Aaron Braver (English), Miranda Scolari (English), and Tommy Dang (English), was awarded $100,000 to achieve the next step in their research leading to a large competitive grant proposal submission. This provides the team the distinct opportunity to forge ahead and lead TTU into the future of large scale interdisciplinary collaboration and teamwork. After a multi-level review process, the team was determined as a frontrunner in potential for attracting interdisciplinary research, identifying an external agency program for their research, integrating the team, developing team sustainability beyond SGIR, and being capable and forward thinking researchers.

Witmore Awarded Fellowship from the American-Scandinavian Foundation

The Board of Trustees of The American-Scandinavian Foundation awarded Christopher Witmore (Ph.D. Classics) a fellowship for post-doctoral research, Archaeology, Department of Archaeology and Social Anthropology at the Arctic University of Norway (UiT). The fellowship source is from the Carol and Hans Christian Sonne Fund ($3000) and the James L. Howard Grant ($2000).

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Surliuga's Work Highlighted in Texas Tech Discoveries

Victoria Surliuga, Ph.D. (Italian Program Coordinator) mingled artistic innovation and scholastic invention in her book, "Ezio Gribaudo: The Man in the Middle of Modernism." Texas Tech Discoveries highlighted her exceptional work in the Spring 2017 issue. Read the article here.

Aranda, Covarrubias, De La Rosa Prada Awarded 2017 Helen DeVitt Jones Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award

The Department of Classical & Modern Languages & Literatures continues to reach the bar of excellence in teaching. Dora Aranda, Janie Covarrubias, and Josh de la Rosa Prada, CMLL graduate part-time instructors for the Spanish program, received the 2017 Helen DeVitt Jones Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award. The Texas Tech Graduate School recognized outstanding scholarly activity and excellence in teaching. Each of this year's awardees have made outstanding contributions to Texas Tech undergraduate students and to improve the curriculum in the Spanish program. Kudos to these outstanding students!

Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellowship

Josh De La Rosa Prada and Ruben Varona were awarded the 2017 Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellowships.

De La Rosa Prada Awarded External Grant Recipient

Josh De La Rosa Prada is the recipient of a $4, 000 external grant from the Institute for Cultures (Spain) to investigate the effects of language contact on local identity articulation in Melilla, North African Spain.

Ojeda Awarded the Bertie Acker Scholarship

Isabel Ojeda, candidate Spanish Ph.D., was awarded the Bertie Acker Scholarship for 2017-2018 from the Southwest Council of Latin American Studies (SCOLAS).

Graduate Student Presentations and Publications

Josh De La Rosa Prada, Ph.D. Candidate Spanish

Josh was very involved not only with his graduate studies and teaching load but he found time in February to lead a workshop titled, "Strategizing translanguaging for the heritage language classroom" at the University of California, Irvine, as part of the IV Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language. He also gave two presentations at the symposium: one with Idoia Elola, Ph.D. (TTU Spanish), "The translingual linguistic landscapes of Texas", and one with Diego Pascual, Ph.D. (TTU Spanish), "The unseen benefits of heritage language programs".

He presented a talk in Tempe, Arizona entitled, "Emerging bilingualism and the onset of translanguaging identities in a study abroad context" in late March, followed by a presentation in May at the Tenth Heritage Language Research Institute, a summer school for specialists in heritage speaker bilingualism, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Andrew Simmons, M.A. Candidate, Languages & Cultures-Classics

Andrew presented a paper titled, "Singing Soldiers, Then and Now: On Cadences as Performed by Greek Martial Poets and Modern Soldiers" at the Classics Research Forum on April 13th in the CMLL, Qualia Room.

Max Stocker, M.A. Candidate, Languages & Cultures-Classics

Book Chapters

Stocker, M. (2017), "Identity and the Protagonist in Greek and Egyptian Narrative Poetry: The Construction of Cultural Identity in Homer's Odyssey and the Tale of Sinuhe", in J. Chyla, J. Dębowska-Ludwin, and K. Rosińska-Balik (eds.), Current Research in Egyptology 2016: Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Symposium, Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Academic Awards and Fellowships

• AT&T Chancellor's Fellowship 2016-2018
• Cash Family Endowed Graduate Fellowship 2017-2018
• Arts & Humanities Graduate Student Research Conference Best of Paper Award 2016

Conference Papers

"Cultural Movement and Transition in Eastern Mediterranean Literature: Depictions of Home and the Other in Homer's Odyssey and the Tale of Sinuhe", BRISMES Annual Conference, Edinburgh, July 2017.

"Gender and Cultural Identity in Aristophanic Comedy: A Study of the Paratragedy of Euripides' Helen in the Thesmophoriazusae", 33rd Annual Conference on the Advancement of Women in Academia, Texas Tech University, April 2017.

"Portrayals of Personal and Cultural Identity in Archaic Greek Lyric: A Thematic Study of the Characterization of Helen of Troy", Texas Tech University Anthropology Honors Society Annual Symposium, April 2017.

"Language Contact and Intercultural Communication in the Ancient Mediterranean: Depictions of Home and the Other in Homeric and Egyptian Epic Poetry", 6th Annual Conference on Applied Linguistics and Intercultural Communication in Higher Education, Texas Tech University, April 2017.

Panels Chaired

"Culture Navigating Between East and West", BRISMES Annual Conference, July 2017. Speakers: Kaitlin Staudt, Tiran Manucharyan, Feras Alkabani, Maxwell Stocker, Hanan Natour.

Megan Grimes, President Texas Tech Russian Club

Early last fall, I attended an informational meeting about the Texas Tech President's Congressional Internship Program in Washington D.C. I decided to apply for the full summer of 2017. To be selected, I had to submit an application and two short essays, a cover letter and resume, letters of recommendation, and my TTU transcript. I was also interviewed for the position. After being accepted, I attended an orientation to learn about the logistics of the program, what I would be doing as an intern, and even travel destinations! My internship officially starts shortly after the spring semester and ends just before the fall semester begins. Fortunately, I will be staying in the "Tech House" which is located only two blocks away from the Capitol. This is an awesome privilege we Tech students have, because other universities' interns don't have such convenient living options. I recently had a phone interview for Congressman Jeb Hensarling's office and accepted a position to intern with them for the full summer. I am very excited because Congressman Hensarling is the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, so this is a significant opportunity for me to see how legislation and the financial world come together. As an intern, I will handle day-to-day tasks such as greeting guests, answering phones, and giving tours of the Capitol. However, this internship doesn't end when I leave the office every day. I'll have the opportunity to attend receptions and tour our nation's capital with the other interns. In fact, something that makes this program so special is that we are encouraged to travel to places like New York, Baltimore, Virginia Beach, and Hershey, Pennsylvania! I'm hopeful to see what I will learn this summer and for the memories I will make!

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