At a conference on environmental change in Latin America, Homero Aridjis, writer, environmental activist, and founder of the Grupo de los Cien, quoted Yeats when answering my question about the connection between his prolific literary work and untiring activism: "In dreams begin responsibility." He later explained that through writing…

"I Love Lucy" is considered to have been one of the most humorous television programs in the United States as early as the 1950s. This paper explores the use of language by the protagonists, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, in order to understand the source of the program's humor. Linguistic analysis of the Ricardos' speech is applied,…

Ernesto "Che" Guevara's iconic photograph has taken on mythical proportions since his death. Though his image has ironically been exploited by the apparatus of capitalism against which he fought, his translation into a symbol has assured that his foothold within popular culture remains largely unassailable. While recent films and…

The principal aim of this project is to examine whether academic service-learning deserves a more intentional place in foreign language programs, given its success on the individual course level. The focus will be on Spanish language programs, since they teach the most commonly learned foreign language in the United States and have proven to be on…

We report on the service-learning component of a Spanish-language Saturday school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for elementary-aged Spanish-language heritage learners and also examine the newly forming Latino community served by this innovative program. The US Spanish-speaking population is growing throughout the country, resulting in greatly increased…

As scholarly work has recently turned its attention to the role of the community partner in Community Service-Learning (CSL) relationships, empirical frameworks for describing and executing community partnerships have emerged. This article applies those frameworks to one such partnership, which is presented from the perspective of both the…

This small-scale study analyzes the use of service-learning pedagogy via non-profit translation in the intermediate-level language classroom. Forty-three students at the intermediate-high level in three Spanish classes in Greensburg, Pennsylvania served as part of a translation team for the non-profit organization Kiva, which helps to fund…

Service-learning is a transformational pedagogy with timely application to the teaching and learning of foreign languages. In our current climate of assessment outcomes, language study and the humanities more generally tend to be devalued and rendered invisible by utilitarian models of evaluation. Incorporating service-learning courses and…

Theories of situated knowledge support that knowledge involves experience of practices rather than just accumulated information. While an important segment of foreign language teacher education programs focuses on the theoretical component of second/foreign language acquisition theories and relevant methodological concerns, it is mainly through…

This article analyzes efforts at Emory University to understand international presences, focusing especially on Spanish-speaking communities and neighborhoods in Atlanta and Georgia, and to integrate these into the life of the university through engaged learning courses. Using a fresh look at the concepts of global citizenship and cosmopolitanism…

Research on Spanish service-learning has focused mainly on the outcomes of service-learning for undergraduate students learning Spanish as a second language. This article examines the role of service-learning in a graduate online course for practicing Spanish teachers and the outcomes of the service-learning experience for three participants who…

Following observations and interviews with transnational children that have one or more years of school in the United States and are now in school in Mexico, it was determined that the Mexican public school system has no mechanism in place to offer them the support they need. Therefore, I collaborated with Mexican university students to seek…

Experiential learning has become an important part of the higher education curriculum in the United States. Due to the integration of a "Community Engagement" category in the Classification of Institutions of Higher Education in the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2006, many colleges and universities have recently…

This article presents research findings from a pilot study of the use of service-learning in an intermediate-high class ("Spanish Language and Culture for Heritage Speakers") in the fall semesters of 2010 and 2011. Students reported gains in the areas of communication skills, dispositional learning, language, identity formation, and…

The service-learning Spanish translation course (Spanish 315: "Spanish in the Business World") taught at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne in the fall of 2010 and spring of 2012 provided an ideal context for the students to connect with the Hispanic community in our geographical region. Once the connection through service…