2025 RGSS Newsletter
Message from the Chair
Faculty Spotlights
Faculty Updates
Alumni Class Notes
Message From the Chair
Greetings to all of our alumni from the George Washington University Department of Romance, German and Slavic Studies!
In this newsletter, you’ll read about a few of the exciting things happening in the department, including the achievements of our community of alumni, faculty and students. Thank you so much for your continuing interest in our activities.
I also wanted to take the opportunity to remember our dear colleague Galina Shatalina, who taught in the Russian program from 1997 until 2025. She was tireless in her dedication to helping her students achieve excellence in Russian and was also a co-author of the leading Russian textbook, Golosa. Most important, she was a wonderfully kind and generous person who we will all miss terribly.
Thank you so much for your support and involvement. We’d love to hear any of your news!
Lynn Westwater
Department Chair
Faculty Spotlights
Cooking Up Culture in the Seva Test Kitchen
From the classroom to the kitchen, students explored Italy’s rich culinary traditions in Italian Professor Lynn Westwater’s hearty history and literature course. Her class was featured in the CCAS Spotlight newsmagazine.
Margaret Gonglewski to Lead Academic Programs at GW Alliance for a Sustainable Future
Margaret Gonglewski, associate professor of German and director of the RGSS German Language Program, was named the new faculty director of academic programs at the GW Alliance for a Sustainable Future. In that role, she leads efforts to expand sustainability education across the university, building connections among disciplines and preparing students for careers in a world where sustainability is central.
Faculty Updates
Hadia Anaye has coordinated and organized numerous excursions outside the GW campus, where students were able to practice their French language skills outside the classroom and interact with professionals. They went to the French Embassy, the Delegation of the European Union and the US Peace Institute.
Masha Belenky has several recent publications including an article on “le gamin de Paris” in Nineteenth-Century Contexts, and a forthcoming co-edited special issue of the journal Dix-Neuf titled “To The Passersby: Before and After Baudelaire.” Last semester, students in her course The Cultural Politics of Food in France spent an afternoon cooking the French dishes in the Seva Teaching Kitchen and connecting the dishes and their history to the topics we studied in class.
Christopher Britt published the essay “Violencia vanguardista en un paraíso post-humano” in the book Imaginarios políticos de las violencias desde la literatura, el cine y otros medios de comunicación (Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico, 2025).
Emma Campbell was shortlisted for the R.H. Gapper Book Prize awarded by the U.K. Society for French Studies for her latest book, Reinventing Babel in Medieval French: Translation and Untranslatability (c. 1120–c. 1250) (Oxford UP, 2023). She also won the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies awarded by the Modern Language Association of America. Over the past year, Dr. Campbell has given several invited talks connected to this work at UVA, Berkeley and Notre Dame.
Yvonne Captain received two small grants related to her focus on the nexus between genealogy and academia: from Le Comité des Archives de la Louisiane and the American Genealogical Society, for her research on the Congo family and their religious connections in Delaware. Her co-edited volume Contemporary African Migrations: Social Challenges for the Diaspora, ed. by Yvonne Captain, Papa Sow, and Elina Marmer is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing (publication 2026). She has also authored African Toponyms and “African” Surnames in Diaspora Agency under consideration with University of Virginia Press.
Manuel R. Cuellar co-organized the June 2025 Dance Studies Association Conference, “Indeterminate States: Bodies, Fields, Praxis,” at the Corcoran School of Arts and Design. He also premiered his choreography “Bailando con él” in collaboration with Gabriel Mata at the Dance Loft on 14. This choreographic work is part of his academic project on brownness, queer migrancy and LatinMex masculinities. At the Mexican Cultural Institute, he organized the panel, “Mexican Dance across Borders,” exploring the complex transnational histories of Mexican dance, its contributions to the field and its vital role as a means of cultural diplomacy and cultural exchange. The panel featured presentations by K. Mitchell Snow, José Luis Reynoso, Manuel R. Cuellar and Margarita Tortajada Quiroz. It was moderated by Alonso Alarcón Múgica, Mexico’s National Coordinator of Dance (INBAL).
Jean Freedman served as dramaturg and historical advisor for a production of Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day, a play about the decline of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis. The performance was a joint production of Nu Sass and Pinky Swear Productions at the DC Arts Center.
Carola Goldenberg is working on curriculum development based on the implementation of difficult knowledge and critical thinking in foreign language education. She graduated from the Washington and Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis in May 2025 and uses these new perspectives to inform her practices and relations with her students.
Margaret Gonglewski and Sarah-Kay Hurst, along with Mohssen Esseesy from the CCAS Arabic program, co-edited the special volume of the Global Business Languages journal, LSP Making Connections Within and Beyond the Classroom, published in May 2025. They also presented their work on Business Language Cases in intermediate and upper-level language classes at the Northeast Conference for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (NECTFL) conference in New York City in March 2025 in a session titled “Getting Down to Business (Cases): Tools Empowering Language and Culture Learning,” which showcased case studies and extensive pedagogical materials on Amazon in France and eco-fashion in Germany.
Sarah-Kay Hurst and her Fr3010W students were invited to contribute to the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art’s “Teaching Africa Day” Festival in September 2025, where, at an educational booth amidst the festivities, students guided visitors through interactive activities about art from Francophone Africa, in French. Professor Hurst was invited to present at GW’s university-wide Teaching Day in February 2025, leading a faculty workshop session on “Beyond the Classroom: Deliverable-Driven Experiential Learning for Campus-Community Impact.”
Sarah-Kay Hurst and Hadia Anaye won a grant from the French Embassy and the Albertine Foundation for 2024-2026 to implement their innovative and dynamic initiative titled “French in Context: Engagement Beyond the Classroom.” This multi-pronged collaborative project will bolster interest in French through concrete experiences in which students can personally use the language in context and see how relevant French is in a modern, evolving professional landscape.
Kathryn Kleppinger has made regular appearances on the Bloomberg television show Balance of Power to discuss current French politics.
Douglas Lopez and his Spanish students visited Telemundo 44, Washington, D.C., where they were interviewed in Spanish as part of a class project. They also visited the Embassy of Spain, engaging in a meaningful discussion on Spain’s perspectives of the colonization of the Americas.
Brad Marshall was awarded the Robert W. Kenny Prize for Innovation in Teaching of Introductory Courses for having shown “creativity and originality in teaching" and for encouraging students “to think differently and enhance their academic experience at GW."
Maja Milicevic became a certified examiner for the Diplôme de Français Professionnel (DFP), accredited by the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Paris (CCI Paris Île-de-France). Pending the opening of the GW testing center, she will be authorized to conduct DFP exams. He also organized a D.C. visit for GW students—in French—with a professional French-speaking tour guide. This visit focused on three notable Frenchmen who participated in the creation of the United States: Lafayette, Rochambeau and L'Enfant.
Alessia J Mingrone presented “Italian Women and Culinary Pleasures” on the Italian Food as (R)evolution Panel at the 2025 Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) in Philadelphia. She is also the author of the chapter “Identity and Alterity in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels" in the book Alterity and Identity in Italian Literature: Encountering the Other from Dante to the Present (Lexington Books, 2024).
Lynn Westwater published (with two collaborators) an edition of a forbidden 17th century manuscript titled Inferno monacale (Convent Hell) by the unwilling nun Arcangela Tarabotti. The book was presented at the historic Casa Internazionale delle Donne in Rome in March 2025.
Alumni Class Notes
- Frank Mikus, BA ’07, was named director of academic affairs at CEA CAPA Education Abroad at its campus in Paris, France.