Hearing Ourselves
Butterfly: A Choreographic Translation of Beauty Among Horror
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Robin Gerchman
Fifteen thousand children under the age of fifteen entered the gates of this ‘model camp’, Hitler’s “gift to the Jews”. Terezin was created to fool outsiders into thinking Jews were being treated humanely. Most adults who entered this camp were artists and scholars, hence culture flourished in this ghetto amidst starvation, disease, and death. After dark, the adults encouraged the children to draw and write to moderate the chaos that surrounded them. These innocent and honest depictions allow us to see through the eyes of a child what life was like in Terezin. Through these artistic expressions their voices reach us across the chasm of a great crime in human history, leaving a remarkable legacy. After coming across this book of poems and drawings created by children of the Holocaust concentration camp, Terezin, I felt compelled, as an artist-scholar, to share their words through movement. This non-verbal format offers a deep understanding and kinetic response to how art transported the victims to a world beyond the horrific crime in which they were living. This paper explores the choreographic research process for Butterfly and analyzes the oral histories and scholarship from those who recall their time spent at Terezin.
The Use of Gothic Short Stories in the Language Classroom as a Didactic Tool to Increase Oral Participation : Boosting ESOL Engagement
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jacqueline Araya Ríos, Karla María Fonseca Sánchez
Learning English as a second or foreign language has become a chief goal for almost anyone in the world because it helps us to communicate in different contexts and for different purposes. In response to this increasing demand for English for communication, greater emphasis has been placed on the speaking skill in several educational institutions and language programs. Oral classroom tasks are a major component of English language instruction, and participation in these tasks is crucial. However, encouraging learners to actively participate in speaking activities is not always an easy task due mainly to a lack of confidence and low levels of motivation. This unwillingness may become a stumbling block on the pupils’ learning path and hinder their linguistic competence. The opposite is true since it has been observed that language learning is enhanced when the level of interaction rises. This study looks at the role of Gothic short stories discussions in the improvement of oral participation in the ESOL classroom. In detail, this research identifies literary elements of Gothic short stories that may encourage language learners to participate during class discussions. It also considers the effectiveness of literary discussion tasks as a technique to increase students’ oral participation in class. In communicative learning contexts, the driving forces that encourage students to learn a foreign language certainly play a central role, and through this analysis light is shed on the use of Gothic short stories as a didactic resource to boost classroom engagement through oral activities.
The Sound of Becoming American - the Aural Dimension in Henry James’s Work: Lyrical Language and Collective Identity
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ivana Cikes
Moments of collective experiences throughout Henry James’s autobiographies revolve around the physical experiences, the sights, sounds, smells, and touch of the theatres, dance halls, and family gatherings, and it is these physical senses that create a unified sense of identity – the sense of being a Jamesian American. Through language, James creates these spaces and envelopes our own senses in order to invite readers into his world and the world of his sense of American collective identity. Yet, at the onset of WWI, writing fiction became difficult for James, and he once again turned to writing non-fiction in the form of essays concerning the war effort. Here, language was intended to create a sense of unity against the enemy in order to increase support and persuade his native Americans to join the fight. My study compares the linguistic register utilized in each set of non-fiction works to demonstrate James’s understanding of how language creates a sense of self as both an individual and a collective construct that is in a constant state of becoming. By examining the tension between the communal and the individual, belonging and isolation, this study shows James’s attempt to create communal experiences in crisis that transgress borders and form a collective identity along a linguistic register.
