For decades, Spanish, French, and German have dominated the landscape of foreign language instruction in most schools, colleges, and universities in the United States. However, as the need grows for proficiency in critical-need languages, Michigan State University is inviting teachers of two non-Western European languages to explore best practices through a synchronous online summer workshop. The Department of Linguistics and…
April Baker-Bell, Associate Professor of English and African American and African Studies, and Mimi Henderson-Hudson, Language Arts Teacher at Detroit Denby High School, have received two prestigious awards from Michigan State University honoring their inspired community-university partnership between MSU’s College of Arts & Letters English Education program and a network of high school English teachers and students in Detroit. The…
The MSU Latinx Film Festival (LxFF), founded in 2017 by Scott Boehm, Assistant Professor of Spanish, along with four graduate students in the Department of Romance and Classical Studies, has received the Excellence in Diversity Award in the Team Award Emerging Progress category. “My immediate reaction [to winning the Excellence in Diversity Award] was that while this award is important…
We stand in solidarity with our Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) and Asian communities in the wake of the racist and misogynistic killings in Atlanta this week. This most recent violence lies at the intersection of race and gender.
This year’s Global Digital Humanities Symposium (GDHS) will be an all-virtual event taking place synchronously over four days, with four hours each day of programming. Scheduled for April 12-15 and hosted by the Digital Humanities at MSU (DH@MSU) program, this sixth annual event will feature approximately 80 presenters over Zoom and YouTube livestream. All GDHS events are available to the public for free with…
The high school years can be one of the most crucial moments in a student’s education. For Robert Munro, Concord Academy’s Dean of Academic Program and Equity and an alumnus of the College of Arts & Letters’ African American and African Studies (AAAS) doctoral program, supporting students at this age has always been his vocation. And throughout the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the omnipresent inequality facing students of color and the sudden retirement of Concord's Head of School, Munro’s desire to uphold his students has never been more apparent.
Laura Scales, Academic Specialist in MSU’s Department of Theatre, was awarded the Excellence in Diversity Award (EIDA) presented by the Michigan State University Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives in recognition of her outstanding commitment to the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion and engagement in activities that demonstrate a sustained commitment to fostering an inclusive community. Scales was nominated…
A group of Michigan State University Department of Theatre students created a series of new audio plays, each connected to themes of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). All five “Audio Anthology” plays, along with a student-produced documentary short, are now available online at theatre.msu.edu/dei_audio.
While spending a lot of time looking to the past, Christina Boyles has her sights set on influencing the future as she creates archives that provide useful tools, resources, and protocols for disaster and emergency response in vulnerable, marginalized communities.
When the Michigan State University Department of Theatre’s productions for the Fall 2020 semester were canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a call went out to all faculty and students for ideas focused on themes of diversity, equity, and inclusion. First-year MFA Design Candidate Zech Saenz, who specializes in costume design, pitched a project addressing the pandemic through the lens of drag queens and comedy. The result is a three-episode web series, called Grads in Drag, which is now available for streaming on-demand.
