Foreign Languages

Martine Guyot-Bender, Ph.D., Professor of French

mguyotb@hamilton.edu

Cecilia Hwangpo, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies

mhwangpo@hamilton.edu

Hwangpo joined the Hamilton faculty in 1998, after earning a Ph.D. from Yale University. Her main area of specialization is the discourses of national identity in Argentina and Cuba in early 20th century. Her research interests are Latin American literature and culture, 20th century theatre, el sainete criollo, and essay. Her published articles include "Indagación del choteo: un llamado para el cambio en el modo de ser cubano," "José Antonio Ramos y la identidad nacional cubana: sentido, lenguaje y espacio," and "Los inmigrantes: el otro en el teatro argentino de principios del siglo XX."

Hong Gang Jin, Ph.D., William R. Kenan Professor of Chinese and Director of Associated Colleges in China Program

hjin@hamilton.edu

Jin came to Hamilton in 1989 after receiving a master's and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She started the Chinese Program at Hamilton in 1989, and in 1996 helped establish the Associated Colleges in China program, a rigorous study abroad consortium in Beijing. Jin was named the 1998 CASE National Outstanding Baccalaureate College Professor of the Year and in 1996 received Hamilton’s 1963 Award of Teaching Excellence. Jin’s primary interest is language processing and language acquisition. In addition to her books on psychology of language development and studies of language acquisition, she has published numerous articles in professional journals. Her recent research focus has been on classroom process and its effect on language acquisition, resulting in six articles published in 2004-2007 in Journal of Chinese Language Teachers Association and other books. Jin is also interested in language pedagogy and is the lead author of three sets of textbooks. A two-volume series, Crossing Paths: Living and Learning in China and Shifting Tides: Culture in Contemporary China (both with DeBao Xu), was published in 2003. She was on the board of the Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA) and was president in 2004-2005. In 2006 she was elected vice president of National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) and she will assume presidency of NCOLCTL during 2008-2010.

More about Hong Gang Jin ...

Bonnie Krueger, Ph.D., Burgess Professor of French

rkrueger@hamilton.edu
Roberta L. Krueger, a specialist in medieval French literature and culture, joined the Hamilton faculty in 1980 after earning a master’s and Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She has published numerous articles on a diverse range of subjects including Old French courtly romance, medieval French women writers, and courtesy books and moral education from the 12th to the 15th centuries, as well as two books—Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Courtly Verse Romance (1993) and The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance (2000), an anthology of essays she edited on medieval romance in France, England, Germany, Italy and Spain. She participated in a team translation of the Lancelot-Grail romance published by Garland Press (1995) and, in abridged form, in the Lancelot-Grail Reader (2000). A recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Krueger is a founding co-editor of The Medieval Feminist Newsletter and co-founder of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship. She is currently beginning research on a book tentatively titled A History of Self-Help, on "how-to" books from antiquity to the present, and is completing a project on the literature of conduct in late medieval France. Krueger has served as a representative for New York State on Modern Language Association's Delegate Assembly and has chaired the Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee. She is a member of the editorial board of Speculum, the oldest journal in the United States devoted to medieval studies. More about Roberta Krueger ...

Jeremy Medina, Ph.D., Professor of Romance Languages and Literature

jmedina@hamilton.edu

Medina, who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, has been a Hamilton faculty member since 1968 and has served twice as chair of the department of Romance Languages and Literature. In addition to courses on Spanish language, literature and civilization, he is also responsible for Hamilton's offerings on Spanish art. Medina founded the Hamilton College Academic Year in Spain program and is co-founder of the Summer Institute of Hispanic Studies. Medina is the author of The "Psychological" Novels of Vicente Blasco Ibanez (1990); Introduction to Spanish Literature: an Analytical Approach (1982); Spanish Realism: The Theory and Practice of a Concept in the Nineteenth Century (1979); The Valencian Novels of Vicente Blasco Ibanez (1984); and From Sermon to Art: the Thesis Novels of Vicente Blasco Ibanez (1998). He has also published studies on Fernando de Herrera, Jose Antonio de Alarcon, Emilia Pardo Bazan. Benito Perez Galdos, Vicente Aleixandre and Miguel de Cervantes, as well as other articles on individual works of Blasco Ibanez. Besides serving as general director of the HCAYS since 1974 (except when not on campus), he has held the position of director-in-residence in Madrid eight times, having completed his final tour of duty in 2005-2006, prior to his official retirement on June 30, 2007.

Cheryl Morgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor of French

cmorgan@hamilton.edu
A member of the Hamilton faculty since 1990, Morgan earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University. She is a specialist in 19th-century literature with particular interest in French women writers, literary humor and urban literature. She has contributed articles about Delphine Gay de Girardin to Symposium, Romantisme and, Modernity and the Mass Press in Nineteenth-Century France.  Morgan also wrote an article on Stendahl's "Le Rouge et le noir" for the MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature, and has contributed entries to the Feminist Companion to French Literature. She is co-editor of Contre-courants: Les femmes s'ecrivent a travers les siecles, a classroom anthology of women's writers and pedagogical apparatus. Morgan is currently working on a cultural critical biography of Delphine Gay de Girardin and editing a collection of articles devoted to French women's humor post-1789.

Joseph Mwantuali, Ph.D., Professor of French

jmwantua@hamilton.edu

Mwantuali joined the Hamilton faculty in 1995 after completing his Ph.D. in French at The Pennsylvania State University. He also received a master's in community economic development from Southern New Hampshire University and both a master's and bachelor's in French literature and African linguistics from the University of Zaire. Throughout much of the 1980s, prior to coming to the United States, Mwantuali served as a teacher, trainer and language coordinator at the U.S. Peace Corps Training Centers in Zaire and Burundi. He has written three books in French: Michel Leiris et le Négro-Africain, Paris: Nouvelles du Sud, 1999; and Septuagénaire, University Press of the South, New Orleans, 2000, L’impair de la nation, Yaoundé, Clé, 2007, as well as several articles on French and African literatures. He is working on two books in African literature and one novel (his first in English).  Mwantuali's areas of specialty include 20th century French literature, literary criticism, Francophone cultures and literatures, and Bantu philosophy.

More about Joseph Mwantuali ...

John O'Neal, Ph.D., Professor of French

joneal@hamilton.edu

John O'Neal, a faculty member since 1984, earned a master's in French from Middlebury College, and a Ph.D. from U.C.L.A. He was named a knight in the Order of the Palmes Académiques by the French Ministry of Education in 1998, and promoted to officer in 2008. O'Neal directed the Hamilton College Junior Year in France program six times between 1986 and 2004 and has lectured at the Sorbonne and the Ecole Normale Supérieure.  He has written extensively in both French and English about 18th-century French literature and thought. O'Neal has authored numerous books and articles, including Changing Minds: The Shifting Perception of Culture in Eighteenth-Century France (2002) and  The Authority of Experience: Sensationist Theory in the French Enlightenment (1996). His latest authored book, The Progressive Poetics of Confusion in the French Enlightenment, was published by University of Delaware Press in 2011.  O'Neal's most recent edited books are Approaches to Teaching Rousseau's Confessions and Reveries (Modern Language Association, 2003 with Ourida Mostefai) and The Nature of Rousseau's Rêveries:  Physical, Human, Aesthetic (from the Voltaire Foundation in Oxford in 2008).

More about John C. O'Neal ...

De Bao Xu, Ph.D., Leonard C. Ferguson Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures

dxu@hamilton.edu

Xu earned a master’s in history of the Chinese language at Beijing Normal University in 1985, and master’s and Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 1988 and 1991 respectively. He has taught modern Chinese, classical Chinese and Chinese culture courses since 1991. Xu is the editor-in-chief  of Journal of Technology and Chinese Language Teaching, Series of U.S. Technology and Chinese Language Teaching, and Contemporary Linguistic Theory Series.  He is editor and co-author of the linguistic monograph Chinese Phonology in Generative Grammar and Generative Phonology-Theory and Usage and the co-author with Hong Gang Jin of Chinese textbooks with multimedia software Chinese Breakthrough, China Scene: An Advanced Chinese Multimedia Course , Crossing Paths: Living and Learning in China, and Shifting Tides: Culture in Contemporary China. In 2009, Xu initiated Hamilton-BOCES coordination with a grant from the U.S. Education Department (FLAP) and created an opportunity for Hamilton Chinese students to teach Chinese language and culture at local BOCES district schools. He is the chair of the Standing Committee of Technology and Chinese Language Teaching in the 21 Century (TCLT), an international conference sponsored by Hamilton College since 2000. The Hamilton-sponsored TCLT has more than 200 supporting institutions from 18 countries and regions, which together have sent more than 700 professionals to the biennial conferences and workshops.

More about De Bao Xu ...

Fidaa Abuassi, Fulbright FLTA Fellow

fabuassi@hamilton.edu

Fidaa Abuassi, a Teaching Fellow in Arabic, received a B.A. in English literature from the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) in Palestine. She worked as an English language teaching assistant at IUG for a year, then moved to work as an ESL teacher at the American International School. During her degree course, she also worked as an English trainer and translator for various employers. Abuassi has published stories and articles in widely-read websites, and recently has been a well-know blogger.

Mireille Koukjian, Visiting Instructor in Arabic

mkoukjia@hamilton.edu
Mireille Koukjian is a visiting instructor in Arabic in the Critical Languages Program. She earned a master's degree in education from Université Saint Joseph, in Beirut, Lebanon. Her research interests include second language acquisition and ising technology to improve students' learning in the foreign language classroom. Koukjian was recently  invited to the "Arabic TALK conference" at West Point to present work on using technology-assisted Arabic Language teaching and learning, along with methods of assessment for the Arabic classroom.