Carlos’ translated articles will appear in the “” section of The Montclarion website. The first translated article is our story on the cultural impact of Bad Bunny’s Super Halftime show. We are also planning to publish original stories written in Spanish that will then be translated into English.

Thanks to , Chair of the Department of Spanish and Latin Studies; , Internship Coordinator at CHSS; and , Director of Career Services at CCOM for their work on creating this new internship.

Learn more:Ěý

This milestone event, the first IMLD celebration at this scale on campus, was led by and and brought together more than a dozen units across campus and beyond, reflecting an extraordinary level of collaboration and shared commitment to multilingualism.

Participating departments, centers, and offices included: CLaSE (Center for Latino Heritage and Spanish Language Excellence), Anthropology, Linguistics, Spanish & Latino Studies, World Languages & Cultures, NJCIJ (New Jersey Center for Indigenous Justice), Writing Studies, the Office of Global Engagement, the Office of Inclusive Excellence, the Office for Hispanic Initiatives, and Sprague Library.

The event also featured strong participation from international students and student organizations, including MASA, PASO, LASO, ESA, and NAIS, whose engagement contributed to the dynamic and inclusive atmosphere of the day.

With over 300 attendees, including students, staff, faculty, and members of Indigenous groups from Latin America and Native American communities, this event became a vibrant testament to the linguistic and cultural richness that defines our campus and surrounding areas.

The First Floor Reading Room of Sprague Library was transformed into an immersive, global experience where participants “traveled” across languages. Each attendee received a “language passport”, guiding them through a journey across more than twenty interactive tables, each representing a different language and cultural context or perspective. As they moved from table to table, they collected stamps or stickers while engaging in activities that celebrated language as a living, dynamic force.

Students explored language through creativity, play, and reflection. They became “Vocabulary Detectives,” shared regional expressions at the “Teach Us Your Dialect” table, and connected through challenges like “Language Mapping” and “Translation Challenges”. At other tables, they mapped their linguistic identities, contributed to a “Word Wall”, and responded to prompts such as “Tell Us in Your Language” and “Where in the World Is Your Language?”

Hands-on cultural experiences added depth and beauty to the event. Participants practiced Chinese calligraphy, learned to write their names in Korean, and explored basic expressions in French and Mazahua. They also engaged with global Indigenous cultures through interactive Kichwa language guessing activities and the Navajo String Game.

Other stations invited deeper reflection on language as identity and future. Through activities including “Language Futures Survey”, “Words of Wisdom”, and the “Latin American Slang Wall -ÂżCĂłmo se dice?”,Ěý we celebrated the emotional and cultural connections embedded in language.

A highlight of the event was the series of four lightning panels, which brought powerful voices and perspectives into the room. These included presentations by Dr. Jesse Ha (Teaching & Learning), Librarian Catherine Oliver, Verónica Muenala, Próspero Martinez and Elías Hilario Guzmán (members of the Concejo de Pueblos Originarios), Precious Benally (Director of NJCIJ), and three outstanding students, Alondra Molina, Sofia Andersen Garreffa and Kaung Hla Zan. Presenters provided deeply moving personal reflections and scholarly insights, reminding us of the individual, cultural, and political significance of language in people’s lives.

The event also created meaningful bridges across time and tradition. Participants read graffiti from the ancient world and engaged with Indigenous languages and knowledge systems, reminding us that language is not only communication, but memory, resistance, and continuity.

Throughout the room, there was laughter, curiosity, and a powerful sense of belonging. Languages were spoken and celebrated, not as barriers, but as bridges. The presence of President Koppell, who joined the celebration and expressed appreciation for the energy and vibrant participation of attendees further underscored the importance of this collective moment.

This celebration was more than an event. It was a living expression of what it means to be part of a multilingual, multicultural campus space where every language is recognized as a source of strength.

See you next year!

Dr. Maisa Taha and Dr. Antonella Calarota-Ninman

Hearing from Indigenous groups has “double meaning for students because maybe they’re not directly connected to the community but it’s like their neighbors in their country of origin or their parents or their grandparents,” says Calarota-Ninman, “that’s why I wanted to do it with this class specifically.”

She says the class goes beyond grammar and speech. “It’s building a bridge between who they are here in the United States and their heritage,” she says. “Many of them are born here and may lose contact with their past. So, in the class what I do is try to empower them, helping them understand that their bilingualism and their biculturalism is a gift and it’s precious.”

Rising sophomore Psychology major Andrea Cerna says she enrolled in the class to improve her communication skills. “I wanted to learn how to communicate better in Spanish with my family members,” she says.

Cerna, who is of Peruvian descent, says she learned from Indigenous speakers from Ecuador that the Indigenous languages of the two countries – quechua and Quichua or Kichwa – are quite similar.

She also says she was sad to hear from the group that because they are among the first to live in the U.S., their “whole tradition is not expressed here in the United States and even within the Hispanic community.”

“I found it very impactful,” she says.

Visitors from different Indigenous groups address Antonella Calarota-Ninman’s class.

Danny Tarifa-Ramirez, a rising junior Film and Television major of Venezuelan descent, says he, too, appreciated the discussion about keeping traditions and culture alive even as Indigenous groups also adapt to societal and technological changes. “They talked about how they have astrological apps for understanding harvests; I think that’s a good way they use technology for the benefit of their communities.”

As a Spanish speaker, Tarifa-Ramirez says he was able to focus on learning linguistics and different Latin American cultures and cultural contexts. “The cultural references and how they vary from country to country, that was definitely important to me.”

As part of the class final, the students produced oral history projects. Cerna interviewed a Peruvian nurse about her career in various countries before her arrival in the U.S. Tarifa-Ramirez interviewed a Guatemalan and Venezuelan musician about “how his culture influenced his artistry and how his music is influenced by his culture.”

The projects are likely to become a part of (Historia Oral de los Latinos y Archivo digital), which was launched last year by an interdisciplinary group with faculty from the Spanish and Latino Studies, Sociology, and Teaching and Learning departments. HOLA is “essential to preserve Indigenous cultures, languages and traditions, as well as stories of the Latino communities on campus and in New Jersey,” Calarota-Ninman says.

This collaborative effort began in 2023, when Calarota-Ninman invited a group of 12 Indigenous leaders from the various groups, including Kichwa, Tlapanec, Mije and Mam, to be interviewed by her Spanish 135 students and be part of the oral history project. Calarota-Ninman says the day was very meaningful for her and the students, who learned about the group’s stories, cultures, traditions and struggles.

“I decided to continue the collaboration with these leaders who have a lot to share and to teach,” Calarota-Ninman says. “Informing our community about this collaboration with leaders of different Hispanic Indigenous communities is very important. It will not only awaken interest in those students who are descendants of these groups but also will enrich our community with their knowledge and wonderful culture.”

Spanish Language Coordinator Antonella Calarota-Ninman, second from left, poses with Indigenous members who shared their experiences and language with her students.

Story by University Communications Staff Writer Sylvia A. Martinez. Photos courtesy of Antonella Calarota-Ninman.

Senior Jurisprudence, Law and Society major Nayelis Fernandez credits the Spanish for Law Enforcement class with helping her during her summer internship with a law firm. “It gave me a lot of confidence,” she says.

“When I started school, I really wasn’t speaking Spanish outside of my home, so I thought the class would challenge me, especially since I want to become an immigration attorney,” says Fernandez, who has since been hired as a legal assistant at the firm where she interned. “Even though the class was specifically for law enforcement, more on the criminal side, I really learned a lot. It challenged me, and it helped me with writing and speaking better.”

Fernandez says the class, taught by adjunct professor Mayra Badillo, not only helped her learn legal terms in Spanish but also maintain a certain level of professionalism. “Professor Badillo challenged us to speak as though we were working for a police department, so we would have to practice giving speeches to the community,” she says, adding that she expects the class to continue to assist her as she moves toward her goal of becoming an immigration lawyer.Ěý “I want to be the voice for and help those people because they have no idea what the law is, and with immigration law, it’s constantly changing.”

Antonella Calarota-Ninman, Spanish language coordinator for the Spanish and Latino Studies department, says career-specific courses help students in their chosen professions.

Spanish for Law Enforcement is the most recent career-focused class added to the Spanish department’s roster, says Antonella Calarota-Ninman, Spanish language coordinator for the Spanish and Latino Studies department. There is also Spanish for Health Practitioners. Other classes, such as Spanish for Heritage Speakers, Spanish for Teachers and Spanish and International Business have been offered for some time; the latter by the Feliciano School of Business for many years.

While the department offers a robust roster of Spanish courses, including Negotiation Skills in Spanish, certificates in translation and interpreting and many classes for heritage speakers, Calarota-Ninman says she routinely tells students about the career-specific classes. “Imagine how useful it would be for you to satisfy a language requirement with a class that prepares you for your profession,” she says.

The Spanish for Law Enforcement class consists primarily of Justice Studies majors, says Badillo, a former lawyer in France and the Dominican Republic, who created the curriculum. She says her classes, numbering 30, consist of students interested in becoming police officers, lawyers and social workers. She presents them with real-life scenarios where they role-play and give people instructions in Spanish.

Badillo, who is married to a retired police officer, says speaking or understanding Spanish can mean the difference between life and death. “It’s important to speak Spanish when you are in the field of law enforcement.”

Adjunct Professor Abigail Fana ’22 MA, teaches students in her Spanish I class.

Adjunct professor Abigail Fana has Montclair Spanish courses to thank for her career at the University. Fana graduated with a BA in English, minors in Linguistics and Spanish and a certificate in Translation in 2020 and a master’s in Spanish and a certificate in Interpreting in 2022. While a teaching assistant working on her master’s, Fana started workshops where she led around 300 students per week in Spanish oral communication. Those workshops continue biweekly to this day with both professors and teaching assistants splitting duties.

When a Spanish professor left the University, Fana was asked to teach and has now taught Spanish I for three semesters. She’s also currently teaching Translation I while a professor is on sabbatical. While other opportunities have arisen, she is happy teaching Spanish I. “I feel like I can make a bigger difference teaching Spanish I and encouraging students, emphasizing how important it is, teaching them culture and things like that,” Fana says.

Fana also co-led the Spanish interpretation for Montclair’s first Spanish simulcast of Commencement this year with her friend Richard Solis ’23 MA, whose master’s is also in Spanish.

“There were good, positive reviews,” she says, noting that the three ceremonies racked up almost 6,000 views despite not being advertised. “This is really great because it was the first time that they had ever done this, and it really helped people because there are so many Hispanics,” she says. Fana is hoping for even more listeners during the 2024 Commencement, for which she will be interpreting.

Meanwhile, she and Solis are currently working on another first – translating the University’s website, beginning with the FAQ pages – “also a pretty big, important step,” she says.

In addition to the many course offerings by the Spanish and Latino Studies department, Montclair also has a Spanish journalism class, Reportando las Noticias. The class is unusual in that it is available to all majors.

“It’s open to the campus community, so anybody can take the class,” says Thomas Franklin, an associate professor in the School of Communication and Media. “No matter what your major is, what your area of interest is, and no matter what your language proficiency is, we welcome everybody.”

The class, which started in 2019 after two students pitched the idea, is offered in the spring semester. “The idea is that most people speak or understand some Spanish, and the competency in Spanish varies quite a bit,” says Franklin, who co-leads the class with a Spanish-language media professional. While much of the class is in English, “there was a good amount of Spanish spoken and instruction in both languages.”

Translation News Service

Also employing both English and Spanish is the , a project of Montclair’s Center for Cooperative Media made possible through a $75,000 grant from New Jersey Civic Information Consortium (NJCIC). Now in its second year, the service provides translation of English-language news articles into Spanish for publication in Spanish-language publications.

The service was piloted with funding from the Democracy Fund and the NJCIC in 2020 prior to the presidential election with election-related content translated in Spanish to help increase “voter participation in the Latino community,” says Anthony Advincula, the ethnic and community media coordinator at the Center for Cooperative Media. It started with seven English- and Spanish-language media partners.

What the participating news organizations discovered, he says, is that there was value in translating other stories as well. “The Spanish-language news outlets don’t have the same resources that the mainstream media have to cover these stories,” Advincula says, “So, it became all types of stories – from breaking news to investigative news, rather than just election-related content.”

Today, the translation service boasts 12 English- and Spanish-language media partners. They include: NorthJersey.com, NJ Advance Media/NJ.com, Asbury Park Press, Press of Atlantic City, NJ Spotlight News/NJ PBS, Front Runner New Jersey, The Latino Spirit, New Jersey Hispano, Americano Newspaper, CATA Radio and Reporte Hispano.

“The main goal of this is really to narrow that information gap because we realize that there’s still language barriers in the Latino communities and a lack of nuanced and informed reporting from their language and perspective,” Advincula says.

New Jersey Hispano Editor Maricarmen Amado says the service has been helpful to her digital and print newspaper. “The stories have been prepared for larger newspapers with larger teams, resulting in stories with more depth,” she says, adding that the feedback from Spanish readers has been positive.

Given her journalistic background, Amado translates the stories. “It’s easy for me to understand and translate,” she says. “It’s not just translated but written in the way that Hispanics speak.”

The largest beneficiary of the translation services “is our community,” Amado says.

Story by Staff Writer Sylvia A. Martinez. Photos by University Photographer Mike Peters.

Edited by RaĂşl A. Galoppe
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SUMMARY
A tribute to Henry W. Sullivan in celebration of his 80th birthday, this volume encompasses a wide spectrum of Hispanic literary scholarship to honor a prolific scholar whose contributions have been extensive, not only as a Golden Age Hispanist but also as a devoted Lacanian scholar, literary critic, translator, poet, novelist, playwright, and composer. The title of the collection comes directly from Sullivan’s recent study on tragic drama in the Golden Age of Spain. Even though the “ghost” he attempts to lay there is the critical controversy around defining and classifying tragedy among Spanish classic comedias, the label extends and applies to Sullivan’s lifelong commitment to the relevance of Spanish drama of the Golden Age within the universal canon, especially from an English-language perspective. Moreover, his arguments are easily applicable in defense of the Humanities and the significance of Literature amid the unwelcome structural changes in Academia.

Live Audio Description is the process in which audience members listen through an earphone and special receiver to a narration that describes the relevant visual elements of a performance without intruding on the dialogue of the performers. This narrator is usually somewhere in the theater watching the play through a live feed. It is a process that makes live performance accessible to those with visual impairments.

What separates this project from other live audio descriptions is that it is specifically designed for the visually impaired Spanish speaking community within New Jersey and New York.

This is the fourth year that the Department has partnered with Repertorio Español and Resident Director Leyma López. The relationship has been led by Dr. María José García Vizcaíno, the current Chair and Associate Professor of the Department. García-Vizcaíno is a trailblazer, being the first professor to offer a course in Spanish Audio Description (SPAN429), not only here at Montclair State but across all universities within the United States.

The process of audio-describing La dama boba took the students three and a half months to complete. They began by dividing the script and each writing their own audio descriptions, then meeting weekly as a group to provide feedback and rehearse their script. For this play, this year the team benefited from the expertiseĚý of Dr. Galoppe, MSU professor whose area of research is precisely Spanish Golden Age theater. Thanks to his collaboration and involvement on this project, students were more conversant with 17th century terminology and contextual information necessary for the audio description.

There is also a unique feature that these students provide – a pre-show tactile experience. While hearing the described performance is important, it is also crucial to feel key elements of the production itself.

This year, the students created a miniature version of the stage, including a teaching map that one of the characters uses. This map had letters, and the students provided two versions, one with foam letters and the other in braille. They also provided a 17th-century-styled costume dress that included a ruffled collar, corset, hoop skirt, and intricate fabric, helping audience members envision the costumes of the play.

It is a very unique experience that we hope to continue. We hope to be able to provide audio description for more theaters across New Jersey and further advance accessibility.
– García-Vizcaíno

Through audio description, the audience members listen through an earphone and special receiver to a narration that describes the relevant visual elements of the performance without intruding on the dialogue of the performers.

One of the unique moments of this event was the pre-show experience or tactile experience that took place before the play. In this pre-show experience, those with visual impairments were able to touch a miniature stage and key objects of the performance to give them a holistic experience of the artistic and literary component of the play.

“This was a truly rewarding experience for the students and audience alike on so many different levels: academic, professional and personal. This is the third time we’ve audio described a play and we are looking forward to organizing more,”Ěýnoted Dr. GarcĂ­a VizcaĂ­no.

Enjoy some of the highlights of the event here: AD Repertorio Esp. April 30 – 2022

The course, developed in connection with the University’s designation as a Hispanic Serving Institution, leverages the similarities between Italian and Spanish in vocabulary and grammar in order to accelerate the Italian language acquisition of Hispanic students. Italian 111 fast-tracks the student’s path across ITAL101-102 and takes them directly to ITAL 140 (Intermediate). It counts for both 101 and 102 and provides 3 credits towards the language graduation requirement at Montclair State.

Italian and Spanish as languages, along with Italian and Spanish/Latin American cultures, are presented as close relatives and friends throughout the course, so that students can quickly recognize themselves in the content and medium of learning, and thus thrive in a short period of time, thanks to the valuable Hispanic heritage they bring to the class.

Learn more about this course

This spring, nine ĚÇĐÄvlog students provided the first live Spanish audio description offered by an off -Broadway theater. The American Council of the Blind (ACB) has recognized their outstanding contribution to the development of audio description in the performing arts with a 2019 Audio Description Achievement Award.

The students, who were taking Spanish and Latino Studies Professor Mariá José García Vizcaíno’s Special Topics on Spanish Language: Audio Description class, had provided live Spanish language audio description during a New York City Repertorio Espãnol production of Nobel Prize laureate Gabriel García Márquez’s play, El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (No One Writes to the Colonel.)

This unique opportunity was the result of a partnership with the Repertorio Español. García Vizcaíno remembers introducing herself to Repertorio Español Artistic Director Rafael Sánchez and expressing her interest in involving her students in a theater project for the visually impaired New York and New Jersey Latino community. “He loved the idea and suggested the Márquez play because it is very visual and so would be ideal for audio description,” she says.

The student team scripted the audio descriptions of onstage action so it could be read live during the performances from backstage for a dozen visually impaired audience members who wore special headsets.Ěý A pre-show “tactile experience” had familiarized them with onstage objects.

“Graduate student Vanessa Carillo – who had two assistants in the booth to help her – was the voice talent who read the script during the entire run of the play,” says García Vizcaíno.

Colleen O’Rourke-Heredia took the course towards her MA in Spanish, Interpreting and Translation. “The greatest challenge for us as writers was to succinctly describe the visual action on the stage in a brief, creative manner in Spanish,” she says. “This required careful vocabulary choices and the need to work with the time challenge of only being able to use the silences during the breaks between the dialogues on stage. We only had mini sound bites of time to give clear, creative audio descriptions.”

For O’Rourke-Heredia, it was a memorable experience to be part of the groundbreaking team. “This was the first time a Spanish-spoken play was delivered live with live audio description in Spanish for a Spanish-speaking audience with visually impaired patrons,” she says. “It was an amazing experience and a challenging project to complete within one semester. Dr. García Vizcaíno’s leadership, training and commitment led to the project’s success.”

García Vizcaíno, who will be traveling to Rochester (New York) in July to receive the ACB award, was inspired by her legally blind sister to teach her course. “I was determined to teach Spanish-language audio description when I started listening to it with her on TV and in movie theaters in Spain,” she explains. Students in her class also produced a Spanish language audio description track for the short film, 17 años juntos, by Spanish filmmaker Javier Fesser.

While she will teach audio description again in the fall as part of a class she is offering in audiovisual translation, she also hopes to be able to repeat the live theater experience with another Repertorio Español play. “The most gratifying aspect for me was to see just how much the visually impaired people enjoyed the play, and the pre-show tactile experience,” says García Vizcaino.

O’Rourke-Heredia would also like to see a repeat performance. “We were nine deeply committed Montclair State students and we all worked hard together to make this project a success,” she says.