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Faculty and Staff
Full-time Faculty
French: Susanna Bellocq, Kaaren Courtney, Margaret Fête, Lauren Wiebe
German: Helmut Kremling, Thomas Wolber
Spanish: David Alexander, Julián Arribas, Margaret Fête, Sandra Harper, Conrad Kent, Juan Armando Rojas, Lauren Wiebe
Part-time Faculty
German: Dagmar Grothe
Italian: Susan Mancini
Japanese: Jun Kawabe
Russian: Karina Ross
Spanish: Donna Donnelly, Alejandra Gonzalez-Perez , Dagmar Grothe , Debra Vedder
Staff
Department Secretary: Rita Boham
David Alexander, Ph.D., The Ohio State University
Send an e-mail to Dr. Alexander
Julián Arribas, Ph.D., the University of Michigan
Born in Valladolid, Spain, Dr. Arribas came to the US in 1986. He is a graduate of the Universidad Pontíficia de Salamanca and the Universidad de Salamanca where he earned an MA degree in Social Psychology. Later Dr. Arribas completed his Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. He teaches introductory courses in Spanish and upper level culture and literature courses. A specialist in 16th century Spanish literature, he is the author of two pastoral romances: Los siete libros de la Diana, published by Tamesis (London, 1996), and El pastor de Fílida published by Albatros-Hispanófila (Valencia, 2006), and co-author of another on the history of Rhetoric, Temas de retórica hispana del siglo XVI, published by UNAM (México, 2000). He has also published articles on Spanish poetry in several scholarly journals. Currently he is the Chair Person of the Department of Modern Foreign Languages.
Visit Dr. Arribas' home page.
Susanna Bellocq, Ph.D., University of Illinois
Dr. Bellocq also holds degrees from Michigan State and the University of Paris-Sorbonne. In addition to broad experience in teaching and lecturing in French language, literature and civilization, she has taught American literature and civilization at the University of Caen, France. Her continuing interests include French film, the classical mode in French literature, language learning theories with their concomitant theories of language teaching, and the relationship among literature, language and politics.
Rita Boham, B.A., Ohio Wesleyan University
Rita Boham has been the department secretary since 1997. You can contact her at x3667.
Kaaren Courtney, Ph.D., The Ohio State University
Dr. Courtney teaches French language and literature. Her specialty is the literature of the Medieval and Renaissance periods. Her current research growing out of her ongoing involvement in the Women's Studies Program which she founded, focuses on literature by women in cross-cultural perspective. She has lived and traveled extensively in France and also has traveled throughout Italy and other European countries. She holds the Robert Hayward Chair in Modern Foreign Languages.
Send an e-mail to Dr. Courtney
Donna Donnelly, M.A., The Pennsylvania State University
Donna Donnelly received her B.S. in Spanish Education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and her M.A. in Spanish with a concentration in Spanish linguistics from the Pennsylvania State University. As part of her undergraduate degree she completed a semester of study at the Universidad de Valladolid in Valladolid, Spain. Donna comes to Ohio Wesleyan with extensive foreign language teaching experience in both Spanish and French. She has taught Spanish at all levels from elementary through university in New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
In 2004 Donna founded LEAD, the Language Exchange Alliance of Delaware to serve our Spanish majors and minors. Through LEAD Ohio Wesleyan students are paired with Hispanics from the Delaware community in mutually beneficial one-on-one language exchanges. In 2007 Donna received a Lilly grant to study the religion and culture of the Maya at the Yucatan Summer Institute in Merida, Mexico. Donna joined Ohio Wesleyan University in 2002 and teaches introductory Spanish courses.
Send an email to Prof. Donnelly
Margaret Fête, Ph.D., The Ohio State University
Dr. Fete also received advanced degrees from Middlebury College and Wesleyan University (Connecticut). Besides teaching introductory courses in French and Spanish, she teaches upper level French language, civilization and literature courses and has extensive professional travel experience in Europe, the Americas and Africa. She has lived in France, Spain and Venezuela. In 1978 and 1981 the National Endowment for the Humanities granted her Summer Awards to pursue research on narrative fiction and film, l'ecriture feminine, criticism, theories of writing, language, and culture. Dr. Fête does research in colonial and postcolonial literatures in francophone cultures before and since independence, and contemporary criticism. She has published in French Review and Notre Librairie.
Alejandra González-Pérez, M.A.,The Ohio State University
Her areas of specialization are Semantics-Syntax interface (both applied to Spanish and at the theoretical level), Historical Romance Linguistics, and Pragmatics. She also has strong interest in the areas of Applied Linguistics and Second/Foreign Language Learning & Acquisition.
She received her M.A. in Spanish Linguistics in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at The Ohio State University where she has taken courses in Formal Semantics, Formal Foundations of Linguistics, Historical Romance Linguistics, Formal Pragmatics, Morphology, Phonology, and Phonetics. Her doctoral dissertation, which is in progress, entitled The Semantics and Syntax of Spanish Demonstratives, develops a comparative study of the semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic properties of the Spanish and Romance demonstrative determiners within the framework of Generalized Quantifiers Theory. Her study tries to take both a diachronic and a synchronic perspective of the different varieties of Spanish language.
At The Ohio State University she has been a Teaching Assistant and Associate for the following courses: Spanish Phonetics, Phonology, and Pronunciation; Introduction to Spanish Linguistics, Advanced Spanish Grammar; Intermediate Spanish, and Elementary Spanish. She has been teaching Beginning Spanish II and Spanish-225 Intensive Review at the Ohio Wesleyan University since fall semester 2007.
She has published Génesis del leísmo. Una aproximación estadística and La a personal y el cambio en el régimen verbal como origen del leísmo.
Send an e-mail to Prof. González-PérezDagmar Grothe, M.A., The University of Michigan
Send an e-mail to Prof. Grothe
After completing my secondary schooling in my native Germany, I earned my B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1983 (Magna cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and my M.A. in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of Michigan in 1991. I began teaching at Ohio Wesleyan in 1992. My specialties include introductory Spanish courses as well as introductory and intermediate level German courses. In addition, I was co-director for the university's Spring Break Mission Trip to the Texas-Mexican Border. My passion for poetry was enhanced during a yearlong study program in Santa Fé de Bogotá, Colombia in 1982. Since then, I have studied and traveled extensively in Spanish and German speaking countries.
Sandra Harper, Ph.D., The Ohio State University
Dr. Harper teaches introductory courses in Spanish and upper level culture and literature courses; and has lived and traveled extensively in Spain and Latin America. A specialist in 20th century Spanish literature, she is the author of a book on modern prose, Puntos de vista: narrativa moderna española, published by D. C. Heath in 1993, and has contributed to two books on Spanish drama: Alfonso Sastre, published by the University of Murcia, Spain in 1993 and Alfonso Sastre o la ilusión trágica, published by Editorial Hiru, Spain, in 1997. She has also published articles on contemporary Spanish theatre and film and methods for teaching language and literature in several scholarly journals. As recipient of Mellon and TEW grants, Dr. Harper has also conducted research on Spanish literature of the Golden Age and Latin American literature and culture. Dr. Harper received the University's special leave for scholarship in 1991. She has served in an editorial capacity for the Modern Language Journal, and is the Editor of Estreno, an international, scholarly journal devoted to contemporary Spanish theater. In 2000, Dr. Harper received the Bishop Herbert Welch Meritorious Teaching Award and was named Ella Fullton Dunham University Professor. Dr. Harper chaired the Romance Languages Department from 1981-83 and the Modern Languages Department from 1983-84 and 1986-1994.
Send an e-mail to Prof. Kawabe
Conrad Kent, Ph.D., Harvard University
Conrad Kent is Professor of Modern Foreign Languages and Humanities/Classics. After pursuing his undergraduate education in Mexico City, Conrad Kent received his M.A. and Ph.D from Harvard University in Romance Languages and Literature. While at Harvard he served as a Teaching Fellow for four years and as an Instructor in Spanish for one year. During seven years at Amherst College, he taught Golden Age and Twentieth-Century Spanish literature as well as courses in European Studies. At Ohio Wesleyan he has taught Golden Age and Twentieth-Century Spanish literature as well as interdisciplinary courses on European Modernism. In 1988 Professor Kent founded the Ohio Wesleyan Spanish study program at the University of Salamanca, and has been its director during the decade since the inception of the program. In 1993 he received the President Herbert Welch Meritorious Teaching Award.
As a scholar, Conrad Kent has engaged in many interdisciplinary studies of Spanish literature, culture and architecture. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, and has held year-long research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation. His publications include essays on the prose of Francisco de Quevedo and contemporary Spanish poetry. He has also written studies and given lectures at the Smithsonian and other institutions on the architecture of Antoni Gaudí. With Dennis Prindle he published a book on Park Güell, one of Gaudí’s masterpieces in Barcelona. The book was published in Spanish by Hermann Blume of Madrid as Hacia la arquitectura de un paraíso: Park Güell, and in English as Park Güell by the Princeton Architectural Press. The English version was an Oculus Best Seller of Architectural Institute of America in New York. Professor Kent has also edited a collection of essays for the Department of Education of the Generalitat, the regional government of Catalonia.
Salamanca is an important part of Professor Kent’s professional and personal life because he directed Ohio Wesleyan's Salamanca Program for a number of years. During his extensive travels to Salamanca, he has edited a collection of essays on Salamanca in the Golden Age. He is currently preparing a parallel volume on Salamanca in the twentieth century and another volume on the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca for the Junta de Castilla y León. Salamanca also serves as the center for his research and travels along the pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela.
Helmut Kremling, Ph.D., The Ohio State University
Romanian-born, Dr. Kremling spent much of his childhood in Austria before emigrating to the United States. He teaches a wide variety of German language and literature courses (especially German civilization, composition/ conversation, and contemporary literature) in addition to Spanish language courses. He also teaches an Introduction of Film course in the English Department. His research interests include pedagogy, cinema, contemporary German literature, and German-American studies. He has traveled and studied in Europe and Latin America.
Send an e-mail to Dr. Kremling
Susan J. Mancini, M.A., The Ohio State University
Susan Mancini has a BA degree in Modern Foreign Languages, including French, German and Italian from Sweet Briar College with study abroad in France; and an MA from the Ohio State University in French, with graduate level courses in Italian and Provencal. She had additional training in Italian language and culture at the Italian School at Middlebury College and at the Università per Stranieri of Siena. She also holds a BS in Foreign Language education (Italian and French) from OSU. She has vast experience in teaching Italian and French at the high school level, as well as at The Ohio State University. She served as chair of the language department at St. Francis de Sales High School, as supervisor of TA's of Italian and of testing of first and second year Italian at OSU, and taught Italian to adults. She has been a member of the OFLA and served as Treasurer for three years. As a member of the AATI she has organized sessions and presented papers and was also appointed for three years to the committee of the Educational Testing Services for the Italian achievement tests, part of the SAT's.
Ms. Mancini has studied in both France and Italy. She has had extensive traveling and residence in Italy and various other European countries. She joined Ohio Wesleyan University in 2000 and teaches first and second year Italian courses.
Send an e-mail to Prof. Mancini
Juan Armando Rojas, Ph.D., University of Arizona
Born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México. During 2002 – 2004 he was the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor at Amherst College, Massachusetts. He has taught seminars at the Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca, México and during the Summer of 2002 Dr. Rojas completed his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona. He has a primary area of specialization in Latin American Literature and secondary areas in Literary theory, Colonial Literature and Peninsular Literature of the XIXth and XXth Centuries. Presently his main research and personal interests are Contemporary Mexican Poetry and Creative Writing. He co-edited the anthology Canto a una ciudad en el desierto (Editorial Cuadrilla de la Langosta, México, 2004) and as a poet he has published Río vertebral (Chihuahua UP, 2002) and Lluvia de lunas (Fondo Editorial Tierra Adentro, 1999). Juan Armando’s essays, articles, poems and short stories appear in many literary magazines, reviews and anthologies in Mexico, the United States and Spain.
Currently Dr. Rojas is the Director of OWU's Study Abroad Program in Salamanca, Spain.
Karina Ross, Ph.D., The Ohio State University
Dr. Ross graduated from Moscow Linguistic University and received her M.A. and Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. She is interested in semiotics, semantics, morphology, and the poetics of literary text. Dr. Ross is currently doing research in iconicity in literature.
Debra S. Vedder, M.A., Ashland University
Debra Vedder has been with the department part time since the fall of 2003. She taught at Westerville South High School before coming to Ohio Wesleyan. Debra received her B.A. in Spanish Education from Otterbein College, and her M.A. from Ashland University. While at Ashland, she researched the link between musical ability and foreign language ability. She has traveled extensively throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Debra teaches introductory Spanish courses at Ohio Wesleyan.
Send an e-mail to Prof. Vedder
Lauren Wiebe, Ph.D., The Ohio State University
With broad expertise in Romance Languages, Dr. Wiebe teaches French and Spanish language courses, as well as courses in French literature and civilization. She has taught Computer Literacy in the Mathematics/Computing Science Department, and has served as Ohio Wesleyan's Director of Academic Computing. She has also served as Chair of the Department of Modern Foreign Languages. Among her scholarly interests are the baroque, French classicism, Spanish literature of the Golden Age, and the interrelationships among the arts, especially poetry and painting. She has traveled in France, Spain, Mexico, Germany, and Bolivia. In 1993 she received a Mellon grant for the development of computer programs to supplement foreign language study. In 1992 she received a TEW grant for foreign language software development using Toolbook© software. She has attended workshops at Middlebury College on Computer Technology and Foreign Language Teaching, and served as the Modern Foreign Language Department's Mellon Computer Mentor for 1996-1998. During Spring Break 1997 she and Dr. McGinniss took a group of students to the Texas/Mexico border to study border issues in conjunction with the Rio Grande Border Witness Program. Dr. Wiebe took another group to the border during Spring Break 1998, returned for a third and fourth time during Spring Break 1999 and 2000. In November 1998 she spent a week in Paris visiting six Ohio Wesleyan students who were studying abroad during that semester. She recently spent two weeks in Paris and the Loire Valley in June 2000. She accompanied students on a 10-day spring break mission trip to Santa Cruz, Bolivia in March 2002. She will once again accompany a spring break mission group when she goes to El Salvador in March 2008. Dr. Wiebe is currently the Department's Coordinator for study abroad in French.
Thomas Wolber, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin
Born in Germany, Dr. Wolber came to the United States in 1977. In addition to teaching all levels of German language, literature, and civilization, he is involved in research on comparative literature and inter-disciplinary studies. Recent scholarly presentations and publications have focused on the psychological disposition of 20th century men and women as evidenced in literature. Dr. Wolber is also seriously pursuing a career as a writer and has published many poems both in German and in German-American periodicals. He has traveled extensively throughout Eastern and Western Europe.
