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University of Maryland School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Home

Fearless Fulbrights: Dr. Valerie Orlando

Dr. Valerie Orlando is a decorated three-time Fulbright scholar. Her travels haven't just taken her around the world, they've also led to the publication of her six books as a distinguished literary scholar!

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Access2Alumni Virtual Career Mentoring Event

ARHU students can virtually explore career options and network with alumni on April 10.

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UMD screens restored surrealist film during international festival tour

University of Maryland students, staff and faculty explored and celebrated Spanish and Mexican filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s work at the Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour film festival Thursday.

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2024 Maya Brin Artist-in-Residence Mikhail Durnenkov

The Maya Brin Residency Program is proud to announce Artist-in-Residence, Mikhail Durnenkov, who will be a visiting faculty member in the SLLC and the TDPS for the Spring 2024 semester.

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Access2Alumni

English alumni and US Attorney for Maryland Erek Barron will be the keynote speaker on April 12.

Read More about Access2Alumni: Night 1 • IN-PERSON

Welcome to the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland, College Park.

The School is a transdisciplinary teaching and research unit. Our students, faculty, and staff investigate and engage with the linguistic, cultural, cinematic, and literary worlds of speakers of ArabicChinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, JapaneseKorean, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish, as well as questions surrounding Second Language Acquisition and Cinema and Media Studies.

We invite you to learn more about our undergraduate and graduate degrees, our fields of study, and special programs like the Language House Living and Learning Program, the Language Partner Program, the Persian Flagship and Arabic Flagship Programs, Project GO, and the Summer Language Institutes.

Explore Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at UMD

Degrees

Undergraduate and Graduate Degrees

The School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures offers numerous undergraduate and graduate degrees in 12 languages and 16 different fields.


Fields

Fields of Study

Faculty, students and staff investigate and engage with numerous languages and fields, often through interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and study.


Special Programs

Special Programs

SLLC offers several special language-learning programs, including the Arabic and Persian Language Flagships, the Summer Institute and the Language House Living and Learning Program.


Centers

Centers

The school is home to two centers, Roshan Center for Persian Studies, a landmark institution for the promotion of Persian language and culture, and the Center for East Asian Studies, which promotes the study and appreciation of East Asian cultures by offering a wide range of scholarly, artistic and community programs.


People

Faculty, Staff and Graduate Students

Search our directory to learn about our faculty, staff, and graduate students.

FACULTY, STAFF AND GRAD STUDENTS

Babylon Berlin, German Visual Spectacle, and Global Media Culture

The essays in this collection address the German television series Babylon Berlin and explore its unique contribution to contemporary visual culture.

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Cinema and Media Studies, German Studies

Author/Lead: Hester Baer
Non-ARHU Contributor(s):  Jill Suzanne Smith
Dates:

Since its inception in 2017 the series, a neo-noir thriller set in Berlin in the final years of the Weimar republic, has reached audiences throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas and has been met with both critical and popular acclaim. As a visual work rife with historical and contemporary citations Babylon Berlin offers its audience a panoramic view of politics, crime, culture, gender, and sexual relations in the German capital.

Focusing especially on the intermedial and transhistorical dimensions of the series, across four parts-Babylon Berlin, Global Media and Fan Culture; The Look and Sound of Babylon Berlin; Representing Weimar History; and Weimar Intertexts-the volume brings together an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars to critically examine various facets of the show, including its aesthetic form and citation style, its representation of the history and politics of the late Weimar Republic, and its exemplary status as a blockbuster production of neoliberal media culture.

Considering the series from the perspective of a variety of disciplines, Babylon Berlin, German Visual Spectacle, and Global Media Culture is essential reading for students of film, TV, media studies, and visual culture on German Studies, History, and European Studies programmes.

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Form as Critique: On Fire at Sea

Explore the deeper ethical dimensions of Fire at Sea through this thought-provoking analysis.

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Cinema and Media Studies

Author/Lead: Mauro Resmini
Dates:

In Gianfranco Rosi’s 2016 film Fire at Sea, the haunting duality of Lampedusa—an idyllic island off the coast of Sicily—unfolds. By day, a slingshot-wielding local kid named Samuele explores woodlands, blissfully unaware of the migrant crisis that engulfs his home. By night, navy warships patrol dark waters, their radios echoing the desperate pleas of migrants lost at sea. Lampedusa, once serene, has become a primary transit hub for those fleeing Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Their perilous journey across the Mediterranean, often on overcrowded makeshift boats, is the deadliest migration route globally.

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Constructions critiques d’un « Balzac 1830 »

Critical constructions of an "1830s Balzac"

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, French

Author/Lead: Maria Beliaeva Solomon
Dates:

La présence fantomatique, chez Paul Bénichou, d’un Balzac théoricien du désenchantement invite à étudier la place qu’occupe la crise historique et politique de 1830 dans la critique balzacienne. C’est ce que cet article entreprend en proposant une rétrospective de quelques avatars mémorables de ce Balzac marqué de la « griffe de 1830 »: de l’idéologue déçu décelé par Pierre Barbéris entre les lignes d’un Balzac commentateur social, au prolifique homme de presse analysé par Roland Chollet, en passant par le conteur fantastique étudié par Pierre-Georges Castex, et enfin au Balzac, génial inventeur de lui-même, que révèlent les travaux de José-Luis Diaz. Au vu de ce panorama, c’est autant de perspectives distinctes mais complémentaires sur Balzac 1830 que la critique balzacienne invite à découvrir.

The ghostly presence of a Balzac, theoretician of disenchantment, in the work of Paul Bénichou invites us to examine the legacies of the historical and political crisis of 1830 in Balzac criticism. This article undertakes such an examination through a review of a number of Balzacs marked by the “stamp of 1830”: from the disillusioned ideologue lurking between the lines of his social commentaries, recognized by Pierre Barbéris, to the hyperproductive journalist analysed by Roland Chollet, to the narrator of the fantastic studied by Pierre-Georges Castex, and finally to Balzac, self-mythologizer, as revealed by the works of José-Luis Diaz. This overview invites wider critical consideration of the distinct yet complementary perspectives through which we can understand Balzac as a figure of 1830. 

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Choose the SLLC

Land Acknowledgement

Every community owes its existence and strength to the generations before them, around the world, who contributed their hopes, dreams, and energy into making the history that led to this moment.

Truth and acknowledgement are critical in building mutual respect and connections across all barriers of heritage and difference.

So, we acknowledge the truth that is often buried: We are on the ancestral lands of the Piscataway People, who are the ancestral stewards of this sacred land. It is their historical responsibility to advocate for the four-legged, the winged, those that crawl and those that swim. They remind us that clean air and pristine waterways are essential to all life.

This Land Acknowledgement is a vocal reminder for each of us as two-leggeds to ensure our physical environment is in better condition than what we inherited, for the health and prosperity of future generations.

Office of Diversity and Inclusion