December 2024 

Dear Alumni of the School of Modern Languages,

I hope that you are doing well and enjoying the holiday season. As we wrap up the semester at Tech, I wanted to reach out to you and inform you about some of the interesting things happening in our School this year. I hope that you will take the time to read this newsletter to see that we have active and engaged faculty, students, and alumni who are doing exciting things at Georgia Tech and beyond.

Please let us know about the exciting things that you are doing, as well; we would love to inspire our current students with your accomplishments and your diverse career and life paths.

I wish you all a holiday season full of joy and peace.

Sincerely,

John Lyon

Charles Smithgall Jr. Institute Chair, Professor,
Chair of the School of Modern Languages

Alumnus Tucker von Holten, who mastered Spanish in high school and minored in German at Georgia Tech, was surprised when his mother struggled with basic Spanish after more than a year of playing Duolingo. So, he partnered with faculty in the School of Modern Languages to pilot a better language teaching and learning technology.

Georgia Tech students learned about language and ecology this fall — with a little help from the birds on campus! A prestigious grant from the French embassy supports faculty members Stéphanie Boulard and Andrea Jonsson's project, French Environmental Humanities and the Arts. Boulard and Jonsson received an award from the French Consulate for the project this fall.

For more than three decades, David Shook taught courses ranging from elementary Spanish to Hispanic literature and developed seven new classes during his tenure. In his research, Shook explored language program development, teaching methodology, grammar acquisition through reading, and the use of literature for language acquisition. His teaching, research, and service work broadly impacted our community, and he will be missed.

Jin Liu, an associate professor of Chinese in the School of Modern Languages, created an algorithm to analyze tone use in Chinese rap songs. In her study, she found that while Chinese rappers used standard tones in the earlier rap styles, artists following more recent trends — such as trap music and mumble rap — are more likely to change or ignore Chinese tones to better fit the hip hop style in their work. 

Digital Satire in Latin America: Online Video Humor as Hybrid Alternative Media, a book by Paul Alonso, was published by the University Press of Florida.

"What Is the Extreme South Korean Feminist Movement Sweeping America?," an article featuring Keung Yoon Bae, ran in the news outlet SinarDaily.

Lelia Glass gave a research talk titled "Social Meanings of the Low-Back Merger Shift Among Young Asian Americans in Georgia" at the sociolinguistics conference, "New Ways of Analyzing Variation." Glass discussed the accents of Asian Americans in her dataset of audio recordings of over 250 Georgia Tech students who grew up in Georgia.

Britta Kallin and Kelly Comfort were featured in an episode of the Global Goals, Atlanta Action podcast titled "Art as Activism: Inspiring Sustainable Action Through Global Humanities."

Britta Kallin was invited to present her research, titled "Elfriede Jelineks Texte über Gewalt, Sprache und Gender im globalen Kontext [Elfriede Jelinek's Texts About Violence, Language, and Gender in a Global Context]," at an international conference on the works of Austrian Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek, held in Tokyo on Dec. 1.

Dina Khapaeva gave an invited book talk titled "Putin’s Neomedievalism: How Memory Politics Replaced Ideology in Russia," from her book Putin's Dark Ages: Political Neomedievalism and Re-Stalinization in Russia, at Uppsala University in Sweden. The event provided an in-depth exploration of her analysis on the resurgence of medieval political practices and the re-emergence of Stalinist ideologies in contemporary Russia.

John Lyon presented a paper titled “Entangled Worlds in Novalis” at the Atkins Conference of the Goethe Society of North America, held in San Antonio, Texas. The paper traced the potential influence of imaginary constellations in the Romantic poetry of Novalis on quantum theorists from the early 20th century, exploring the intersections between language, literature, and early quantum theory.

Hongchen Wu presented her research on "Multimodal Large Language Models for Children: Bilingual Mandarin-English Language Assessment via Telehealth” at the American Medical Informatics Association's 2024 Workshop on Empowering Healthcare with Knowledge-Augmented Large Language Models, which took place on Nov. 9 in San Francisco.

Kaylin Nolan, a third-year undergraduate student majoring in International Affairs and Modern Languages, was selected to represent Georgia Tech at the 2024 Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Meeting of the Minds Research Conference. The annual event celebrates undergraduate excellence in research at the 15 ACC universities. Read about her experience at the conference and her research journey at Georgia Tech!

Three modern languages alumni were named to the 40 Under 40 Class of 2024 by the Georgia Tech Alumni Association: 

Meg Carver, who completed her M.S. in Global Media and Cultures in 2022, is an educational outreach coordinator for Georgia Tech-Europe.

"I support Georgia Tech's outreach and recruitment efforts for undergraduate students interested in studying abroad at Georgia Tech-Europe," says Carver. 

"The coolest part of my job is creating a welcoming atmosphere and space for students to feel confident and ready for their first adventures abroad."

The School of Modern Languages hosted its annual Holiday Festival on Nov. 20. The festival celebrated cultural holiday traditions from all over the world, representing each program offered in the School. Students, faculty, and staff got to enjoy hot chocolate and cider, prize raffles, traditional foods and games, and cultural talks. This year we had over 250 guests join us in the Scholars Network Event Theater, with a majority of guests being Georgia Tech students looking to enjoy the festivities.

The School of Modern Languages held the inaugural Regional Seminar in French in Higher Education for Growth and Sustainability at Georgia Tech in October, organized by Professor Stéphanie Boulard. About 40 French teachers and the heads of department from around the Southeast participated in the event, which featured six panels led by distinguished experts, each session bringing fresh perspectives and practical strategies for fostering the growth of French programs in the country.

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