News
Spring 2012- Zirger Award
The Zirger Scholarship is a $1,500 scholarship established in memory of Mrs. Alice M. Zirger. The scholarship was established with a gift from the Zirger family to encourage study in the area of East Asia. The scholarship is awarded to a female student in Asian Studies (East Asian Languages and Literatures majors or minors) each year. Applications are invited from female students (preferably non-traditional) who have above-average academic records. The student must also be completing or have completed second-year Chinese or Japanese, or have tested out of the language requirement.
The following items constitute the application:
- Candidate's current transcript.
- Two (2) letters of recommendation, one from a faculty member outside Asian Studies.
- A 2-3 page typed, double-spaced essay, stating the candidate's reasons for pursuing a major/minor in East Asian Studies and how the student intends to use the scholarship.
The deadline for the application is 4:00 p.m. on Monday, March 26, 2012. The successful applicant will be expected to attend a reception in her honor in April 26, 2012.
Please submit all application materials to Delores Tillman, Senior Secretary, in the Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department (LLC), 301 Pugh Hall, PO Box 115565, Gainesville, FL 32601.
October 2011 News
- " Mary Watt, Chair of LLC, has been invited to give a talk on Christopher Columbus at the Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C. on October 12 in honor of Columbus Day. In her talk Dr. Watt examines Columbus’s absorption and adaptation of the prevailing cosmology of the fifteenth century in creating a world model that bears a striking resemblance to that proposed in Dante’s Divina Commedia. Professor Watt considers why Columbus preferred a literary model to that of the “hard scientists” of his time, and suggests that Columbus, like Dante, saw the world as having both literal and allegorical significance. In support of this argument she examines Columbus’s own writings, most notably his Book of Prophecies, (El Libro de las Profecias) together with Columbus’s extant letters and diaries and concludes that Columbus not only saw his journey as the fulfillment of medieval apocalyptic prophecy but also that he believed that what he had “discovered” was indeed Earthly Paradise perched, like Dante’s Earthly Paradise, atop the western antipodal landmass."
Click here for more information on Symposium and Seminars at Italian Cultural Institute in Washington -
Sylvie Blum-Reid (LLC-French) was invited to participate at Visions of the East: Asia through French Eyes, a program of the National Museum Cinémathèque of Singapore, co-organized with the French embassy. This cultural/academic engagement took place from October 4 through October 16, 2011. It explored ways in which Asia has been portrayed and imagined through the history of French cinema. She wrote an essay that was commissioned for the program, and that was featured in the program booklet: “Looking back: Cinematic Impressions of Asia in French Cinema” (87-99). She also took part in a round-table discussion as guest-speaker on the topic of Asia in French Cinema along with Pierre Rissient, Farish Ahmad-Noor, and moderator Paul Slater.
January 2011 News
- "Fiona Mc Laughlin presented a paper entitled "Loanword behavior as a window on consonant mutation" at the Eighth Old World Conference in Phonology (OCP8) which was held in Marrakech, Morocco from January 19-22."
