The Department of Romance Languages & Literatures seeks to emulate and build on the thinking of previous generations of scholars and political actors who have recognized that the global presence of the languages we teach, as well as the related concomitant erasure of indigenous languages, are bound up with the histories of colonial and imperial domination, slavery, and genocide operative in this foundational act. These histories are ongoing and continue to shape the world in which we live and work. We are committed to studying, questioning, and challenging these histories and their afterlives in our teaching and research; creating an environment that promotes multilingualism as a means to disrupt the hegemony of English in academia; encouraging a multiplicity of experiences and identities in the classroom; addressing the evolving needs of our gender-diverse community; and, in small ways, contributing to the dismantling of white supremacy, racial capitalism, and heteropatriarchy.
Aligning with these principles, our department is committed to inviting a distinguished scholar to an annual MLK, Jr. scholarly lecture.
Some past MLK, Jr. speakers have included:
- 2025: Uju Anya, Carnegie Mellon University
- 2024: N. Michelle Murray, Vanderbilt University
- 2023: Susana Draper, Princeton University
- 2022: Ida Danewid, University of Sussex; Camilla Hawthorne, University of California, Santa Cruz; Angelica Pesarini, University of Toronto
- 2021: Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Puerto Rican novelist
