Professor Barbara Fuchs takes leadership role in Modern Language Association

Barbara Fuchs, professor of Spanish and Portuguese in the UCLA College, has been elected second vice president of the Modern Language Association. Founded in 1883, the Modern Language Association of America provides opportunities for its members to share findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends in the academy. Fuchs, who is also a professor of English, will serve in the office of second vice president from Jan. 7 through the close of the January 2020 convention and will automatically become first vice president in 2020, serving in that office through the close of the January 2021 convention….

Slavic Department’s Ph.D. student Lydia Roberts interviews Marianna Yarovskaya, director of “Women of the Gulag”

When a country experiences genocide, is talking about what happened the best way to heal from the past? Why is it important to preserve the memory of what happened and the lives that were lost for future generations? These complicated questions regarding the preservation of memory are discussed in Lydia Roberts’ interview with Marianna Yarovskaya, director of the documentary Women of the Gulag, for the Los Angeles Review of Books. Roberts, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Languages and Cultures at UCLA, recently sat down with Yarovskaya after a screening of her film, which…

Armando Guerrero Talks Spanish Accents and Latinx Representation in Film and TV

By: Megan Reusche Armando Guerrero, a Lecturer and Academic Coordinator in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, recently analyzed the accents of actors in famous movies and TV shows for the social media company Pero Like to see if the actors linguistically achieved the Latinx identity in the portrayal of their role. Buzzfeed’s Pero Like is a Facebook and Youtube channel that “makes content that resonates with English-speaking Latinxs.” Guerrero’s video, featured on a platform with over 1 million subscribers, explores the various linguistic representations of Latinx identities in film and TV, and addresses the lack of representation by an…

Laure Murat roils the #MeToo debate in France

UCLA International Institute, November 7, 2018 — Director of the UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies and Professor of French, Laure Murat has published a new book: “Une révolution sexuelle? Réflexions sur l’aprés-Weinstein [A Sexual Revolution? Reflections on the Weinstein Aftermath]” (Paris: Éditions Stock, 2018). Arguing that #MeToo is the first serious challenge to patriarchy in modern times, Murat dismisses the current discussion of #MeToo in France as a polemical misdirection. Instead, she calls for a genuine debate on the issues of sexual harassment and assault in that engages French young people, men and women, philosophers and intellectuals. Born and…

Linguistics professor Jessica Rett gets curious with Jonathan Van Ness

In a podcast interview, Rett explains how she uses logic to model what people know when they know the meaning of language.

Frankenstein: The enduring appeal of Mary Shelley’s 200-year-old creation

English professor Anne Mellor reflects on the lasting influence of and impetus behind the author’s iconic monster.