As part of Hispanic Heritage Month, the Humanities Forum presents a lecture by Ilan Stavans, the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture (Spanish) at Amherst College, who will speak on “Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language,” Wednesday, October 5, 4 p.m., on the seventh floor of the Albin O. Kuhn Library.
Stavans will explore the cultural and linguistic significance of this distinctly American language, comparing it to other languages of minority groups in America such as Yiddish and Black English. He will explain who speaks Spanglish, why it has so many varieties and what its existence says about the United States. He will also speculate on whether it will ever become a standard language.
Stavans has taught courses on a wide array of topics such as Spanglish, Jorge Luis Borges, modern American poetry, Latin music, Don Quixote, Gabriel García Márquez, Modernismo, popular culture in Hispanic America, world Jewish writers, the cultural history of the Spanish language, Pablo Neruda, the history of the Spanish language, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Yiddish literature, Jewish-Hispanic relations, cinema, Latin American art, and U.S.-Latino culture. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University.
This event is sponsored in part by the Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics & Intercultural Communication and the Language, Literacy & Culture Ph.D. Program.
