The Department of Foreign Languages is committed to helping students develop an in-depth understanding of foreign languages, literatures, linguistics, cultures and civilizations.
Our students learn to express their ideas and views in a new language while discovering how another culture has contributed to societal development. They become engaged international citizens who enlist language skills and cultural knowledge to succeed in a variety of careers and intellectual disciplines in an increasingly globalized world.
Dr. Ferreira's research interests encompass language contact situations, Ibero-Romance linguistics, Creole language studies, Phonetics and Phonology. She is especially interested in the differences and similarities between Latin American varieties of Spanish and Portuguese. Her doctoral dissertation was a comparative study of the plural /s/ morpheme in Brazilian Portuguese and varieties of Caribbean Spanish. Dr. Ferreira tries to incorporate her research into her teaching by fostering respect for social and regional dialects in all of her language classes. While teaching Portuguese at Bridgewater State University, she came into contact with several heritage learners of Portuguese and has since conducted research into the particular issues that concern heritage language pedagogy.
BA, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife
MA, University of Illinios at Urbana-Champaign
PhD, University of New Mexico
BA, University of Massachusetts at Boston
MA, Queens College, CUNY
PhD, Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York
Professor LaBrozzi 's research examines ways to facilitate classroom second language acquisition for adult learners. This research specifically investigates the effect of study abroad and individual cognitive differences on processing redundant lexical and morphological cues in a second language. He teaches all levels of Spanish classes, as well as courses in Linguistics.
BA, MA, PhD, Pennsylvania State University
Dr. Leora Lev contributed several essays and an interview with filmmaker John Waters to Enter At Your Own Risk: The Dangerous Art of Dennis Cooper (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006), an anthology she also edited, and which was reviewed as "a knockout book" by internationally-acclaimed writer Scott Heim and won the Bridgewater Distinguished Faculty Research Award. She has also published, internationally, essays, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries on Hispanic cinema, European art and fiction, and transgressive aesthetics; an exhibit catalogue (Kavi Kupta Gallery); and New York Times editorials. She has been interviewed by the New York Times and the Village Voice, and was an invited speaker at symposia in Abu Dhabi, Ireland, France, and at NYU and the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lev teaches art history in Paris in the summers.
BA, Brandeis University
MA, PhD, Harvard University, Romance Languages
BA, MA, Jadavpur University
BA, Jawaharlal Nehru University
MA, Indiana State University
PhD, Pennsylvania State University
Minae Savas is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies in the Department of Foreign Languages at Bridgewater State University. Prior to joining Bridgewater State University, she taught at Colgate University and Hamilton College in New York, where she offered courses on Japanese literature and culture as well as all levels of Japanese language. She also taught Japanese in the Summer Immersion Program at Middlebury College in Vermont. She has been an Associate in Research at Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University since 2008. Dr. Savas' primary research interest is the dynamic nature of Noh plays, which come together as negotiations between political, cultural, feminine, masculine, and aesthetic forces and perspectives. Her current interest is the historical construction of gender in the performance of feminine madness as depicted in Noh theatre. Most recently she has received a research grant to pursue her project, "Feminine Madness in the Japanese Noh Theatre." She has interviewed professional performers in order to explore how contemporary Noh performers negotiate medieval Noh texts on the theme of feminine madness. She sought such performers' opinions about what they bring to their interpretation of these texts of medieval provenance and how they situate these texts in the larger ecology of their performances. She is particularly interested in the question of how Noh and Kyogen performers negotiate female roles in Noh and Kyogen, which are traditionally the exclusive purview of male performers
BA, Kyoto University of Foreign Studies
MEd, Temple University
MA, The Ohio State University
PhD, The Ohio State University, 2008, East Asian Languages and Literatures
The department offers a BA in Spanish with the option of concentrating in Secondary Education, a minor in Spanish or Portuguese, and opportunities to gain practical working knowledge in one or more of 12 foreign languages, including Arabic, Chinese, French and Russian.
Proficiency in one or more foreign languages expands career options considerably. Many corporations and other private and public organizations operate on a global basis and actively seek consultants and employees who are bilingual. Careers that are more specific to language include teaching or working as a foreign service officer, a translator or interpreter, an immigration officer or in international business.
