CLA Advising Event

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Our CLA Advising Event is next Thursday, October, 19, 12-3pm, in the Campus Center University Dining Club (2nd floor, on the water side). This is a college-wide event for CLA majors, where students can meet with faculty, discuss the major and enrichment opportunities in their department, and have their advising hold removed. There will be pizza and Insomnia cookies for students and faculty. Below, are the departments and faculty who have already replied. The Dean will be present to meet with students from 1-2pm as well.

Professor Nayelli Castro Ramírez shared her research in Poland

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“From June 12-16, 2023, Professor Nayelli Castro-Ramírez participated in the Erasmus+ Faculty Exchange Program between the Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Paw?a II, in Lublin Poland, and the University of Massachusetts Boston. Professor Castro-Ramírez shared her research about Latin American history and translation with faculty and students of the Department of Hispanic Studies.”

LAIS Students present at Undergraduate Research Fair

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Darla Castaño presented her Honors Thesis research “Neoliberalism, Mexican Cinema and the Representation of Identity: Güeros (2014)” at the Undergraduate Research Fair on May 9. Darla completed this insightful work under the supervision of LAIS professor Susana Domingo Amestoy. 
Rebeca Guevara presented the findings of her research on Brazilian immigration to the U.S. at the Undergraduate Research Fair on May 9.  This important research work was supervised by LAIS professor Simone Harmath-de Lemos.

New faculty translation: Mark Schafer

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Professor Mark Schafer’s translation of the Spanish author Belén Gopegui’s novel Quédate este día y esta noche conmigo came out on March 21. Under the title Stay this Day and Night With Me, the novel invites us to think about timely topics such as AI, robots, free will, merit, and the beauty and pain of being human.

Here’s the blurb for the book from the publisher, City Lights Books:

This is the story of Olga, a retired mathematician, and Mateo, a college student passionate about robotics, and their plot to influence Google.

After a chance encounter at the public library, two new friends begin to meet up regularly. Together they decide to submit an application for Google sponsorship to an elite technology-training program. Hoping to stand out, they frame their submission as a direct appeal to the “conscience” of the seemingly all-powerful corporation.

Olga, a retired entrepreneur, and Mateo, a college student, find unexpected connection and solace in their conversations. Ideas and arguments open into personal stories as they debate the possibility of free will, the existence of merit, and the role of artificial intelligence. They ask the most basic and important of questions: What does it mean to be human in a reality shaped by data and surveillance? Is there still space for empathy and care? What could we be, what could we build, if we used our resources in different ways?

Link to the online book launch, a bilingual reading with the author and a conversation about the book, moderated by translator Katherine Silver:

 Finally, a few great quotes about the translation:

 “This book has excited me more than any that I have read this year.”–Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

“This is a beautifully written, endlessly provocative meditation on humanity’s relationship to technology, monopoly, memory and fate.”– Dave Eggers, author of The Circle and The Every