School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 1-37 of 37 Results
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Khalil Barhoum
Senior Lecturer in the Language Center
BioKhalil Barhoum is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics. He holds a B.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Jordan. He came to the U.S. on a Rotary International scholarship, which helped him earn a Masters' degree in English Literature from Georgia Southern in 1977; he received a second Masters and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Georgetown University in 1985. His teaching experience includes the US State Department's Foreign Service Institute (FSI), Georgetown University, and the Johns Hopkins' School of International Studies (SAIS). Upon obtaining his Ph.D from Georgetown University, he joined Stanford University where he taught Arabic in the Department of Linguistics. Currently, he is coordinator of Stanford's Program of African and Middle Eastern Languages in the Language Center. He is an ACTFL-certified OPI and WPT Tester/Rater in Arabic and has served on the board of the Association of Arabic Teachers in America (AATA). He is a former national president of the Association of Arab American University Graduates(AAUG) and has served twice as the president of its California Chapter. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, edited by Cheryl Rubenberg and published by Lynne Rienner Publishers in 2010. In addition to teaching Arabic courses at all various levels, Dr. Barhoum has designed and taught several language and culture courses, including Arabic Calligraphy; Media Arabic; Colloquial Arabic; Arab Women Writers and Issues; The West through Arab Eyes; The Arab World through Travel Literature; and The Arab World and Culture through Literature. Dr. Barhoum has lectured on Arabic and Arabic literature, Arabic calligraphy, and the Arab world at several college campuses, including Princeton, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UMASS Amherst, among others.
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Vivian Brates
Lecturer
BioVivian Brates is originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she attended the University of Buenos Aires. She received an M. A. degree from Georgetown University in Latin American Studies, with a focus on Economic Development, and previously an M. A. degree from UC Santa Barbara in Spanish and Latin American Literature. She worked for several years as a Human Rights Observer and Election Monitor with the United Nations and the OAS in Haiti, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Guatemala, as well as an advocate and lobbyist in Washington DC.
She has worked at Stanford since 2005 and has focused on developing meaningful partnerships with Spanish-speaking communities to offer students real-life experiences, raise awareness about other cultures (and their own), grow their global competencies, and develop identities as engaged citizens.
Her students have been working with the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area preparing immigrants for the US citizenship exam, the Dilley Pro Bono Project in Texas and Al Otro Lado in Tijuana, Mexico, helping asylum seekers articulate their fear of return claims, and more recently with Freedom for Immigrants and Detention Resistance, staffing hotlines for immigrants in ICE detention. She has also volunteered for the Prison University Project (currently Mount Tamalpais College) teaching Spanish at San Quentin Prison. -
Maria Diez Ortega
Lecturer
BioDr. María (Mery) Díez Ortega is a language teacher, teacher educator, and researcher with over 11 years of experience. Her teaching follows a communicative task-based and project-based learning approach. She has taught a variety of Spanish courses at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, at South Puget Sound Community College, and at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. She has also taught English for academic purposes, second language pedagogy, and second language acquisition courses at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.
Dr. Díez Ortega received her PhD in Applied Linguistics from the department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, with a focus on technology-enhanced language learning, second language acquisition, and corpus research. She also earned an MA and an Advanced Graduate Certificate in Spanish Applied Linguistics and Hispanic Cultures and Literatures from the University of Hawai‘i. -
Saadet Ebru Ergul
Lecturer
BioSaadet Ebru Ergul serves as the Special Language Program Coordinator at the Stanford University Language Center, where she teaches both graduate and undergraduate Turkish courses. She earned a B.A. from Bilkent University, an M.B.A. from Başkent University, and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics (with an additional focus on French) from Texas Tech University. Ebru is a writing proficiency rater (WPT) and oral proficiency tester (OPI) for the Turkish Language and takes part in various academic, non-academic projects as a Turkish language expert. Her research interests include oral proficiency assessment, teaching Turkish through interculturality and social justice, curriculum development, and national language standards for Turkish. She is also the co-author of a Turkish language textbook 'Konuşan Paragraflar'. Currently, she is serving as the president of the American Association of Teachers of Turkic Languages (AATT). She loves figure skating and psychedelic Anatolian rock music.
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Momoe Saito Fu
Lecturer
BioMomoe Saito Fu is a lecturer of the Japanese Language Program at Stanford since 2004. She is a certified ACTFL OPI tester.
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Rima Greenhill
Senior Lecturer in the Language Center
BioRima Greenhill has taught all levels of Russian at Stanford, and prior to that at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, England.
Rima's research interests are Shakespeare and the Age of Discovery. Her book 'Shakespeare, Elizabeth and Ivan: The Role of English-Russian Relations in Love's Labours Lost' came out in April 2023.
Ph.D. Russian Language and Literature. School of Slavonic and East European
Studies, University College London, England. Dissertation: “Lexical and Stylistic
Devices in the Novels of I. Il’f and E. Petrov’s 'Twelve Chairs' and 'The Golden Calf'.
M.A. History of the Russian Language and the 19th c. Russian Novel.
School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, England.
M.A. Foreign Language Teaching Methodology. Garnet College of Education, London University, England.
B.A. (double major) Russian Language and Linguistics. University of Essex, England. -
Robyn Lockwood
Lecturer
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsFlipped Learning, Blended Learning, Critical Thinking
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Momoyo Lowdermilk
Lecturer
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsActive Learning, CBI, Proficiency-Based Instruction & Learners Autonomy
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Alice Miano
Lecturer
BioDr. Alice (Ali) Miano teaches Spanish at all levels from an antiracist, social justice standpoint. She likewise incorporates and studies the effects of community-engaged language learning (CELL), both in her classes and in the Spanish-speaking communities in which she and her students interact. Dr. Miano's work examines reciprocal gains as well as challenges in CELL, and likewise interrogates traditional notions of "service" and “help” while underscoring the community cultural wealth, resistance, and resilience (Yosso, 2005) found in under-resourced communities and communities of color. Dr. Miano and her second-year students of Spanish have teamed up regularly on joint art projects with a local chapter of the Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula and currently collaborate with the Mountain View Dayworker Center. Many of her third-year students embark upon a digital storytelling project with Stanford workers.
Additionally, Dr. Miano's ethnographic research has examined the literate practices and parental school efforts of Mexican immigrant mothers in the Silicon Valley, finding that regardless of the mothers' (in)access to formal education, they supported their children's schooling in a variety of ways, many of which go unrecognized by educators and the society at large.
Dr. Miano has also volunteered to assist asylum seekers through the CARA Probono Project at the South Texas Family Detention Center in Dilley, TX; Al Otro Lado in Tijuana, Mexico; the Services, Immigration Rights, and Education Network (SIREN) in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Freedom for Immigrants.
In addition, as a workshop facilitator certified by ACTFL in the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and Writing Proficiency Test (WPT), Dr. Miano has been privileged to engage with language instructors at various points around the globe--including Madagascar and Timor Leste, as well as a variety of Latin American countries from Paraguay to Mexico--on behalf of both ACTFL and the U.S. Peace Corps. -
Paul Nissler
Lecturer
BioPaul grew up in a German-heritage family outside of Madison,Wisconsin. He attended UW-Madison for his undergraduate studies and did his doctoral work at the Pennsylvania State University. He has spent extensive time, studying, researching, working, and engaging professionally, across the span of the German-speaking world.
In the Fall of 2005, Paul came to Stanford as a Lecturer, teaching both Spanish and German for numerous years. Since 2009 he has additionally served as the German Language Coordinator.
Dr. Nissler completed ACTFL OPI training in both Spanish and German and has been certified as an oral and written proficiency tester in German since 2010.
He is also active in the local Bay area German community. He has engaged with local German-schools and previously served as the AATG Testing Chair and President of the Northern California Chapter of the AATG.
Paul publishes and presents at academic conferences, both nationally and internationally. He is very enthusiastic about teaching and language learning. -
Khalid Obeid
Lecturer
BioKhalid Obeid holds an Ed.D degree in Organization and Leadership from the School of Education at the University of San Francisco and a MPA from Notre Dame de Namur University. He received his B.A. in Arabic Language and Literature from Bir Zeit University in Palestine. Dr. Obeid is an ACTFL Certified OPI and WPT Tester/Rater in Arabic. He enjoys literature and loves teaching the Arabic language. His favorite activity is watching, playing and coaching soccer.
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Gallia Porat
Lecturer
BioTwenty years of experience teaching Hebrew to all levels of students. Developed unique teaching techniques that enable students to grasp the fundamentals of Hebrew grammar, enabling them to develop strong comprehension skills and work creatively with the language. Have been teaching beginning and intermediate Hebrew grammar and Biblical Hebrew at the Stanford Language Center since 2004.
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Toloo Riazi
Lecturer
BioToloo Riazi joined Stanford University as Lecturer in September 2023. She completed her doctoral degree in Latin American Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. She is specializing in contemporary Hispanic literature and culture. Her scholarly interests include revolutions, gender, migration, cultural and film studies.
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Ramzi Salti
Lecturer
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsLecturer in Arabic at Stanford since 1999 with high proficiency in use of technology to enhance language learning. Active ACTFL Rater. Creator/Host of Arabology radio/podcast, blog and YouTube Channel. Doctorate in Comparative Literature with extensive list of publications. Radio Broadcaster with FCC clearance. Francophone Literature. Arab American Literature. Public Speaker.
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Bac Tran
Lecturer
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsVietnamese linguistics, poetry, and folk sayings/verses/tales.
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Juan Rafael Valdez
Lecturer
BioJuan R. Valdez teaches all levels of Spanish. He loves teaching as a way of helping all students to optimally develop their communicative skills while they also develop a critical sense of community and coexistence in a diverse world. Juan is also a scholar and a writer. Until recently his research focused on the politics of language, paying special attention to the interplay of language and race in the construction of identity and struggles for power in the Hispanic Caribbean and the US. He has published two books: Tracing Dominican identity: the writings of Pedro Henríquez Ureña (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and En busca de la identidad: la obra de Pedro Henríquez Ureña (Ediciones Katatay, 2015). His forthcoming book is a series of essays that explore how our notions of politics, race, and nature impact our sense of place and belonging in the world. He has taught seminars as a Visiting Scholar in Germany and Cuba.
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Lyris Wiedemann
Senior Lecturer in the Language Center
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research interests include sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, acquisition of cognate languages, development of cultural competence, and translation. I am one of the creators of the international symposium on Portuguese for Spanish Speakers: Acquisition and Teaching, which had its fifth edition in 2014, and an author and editor of several scholarly articles and books. My current focus is on the acquisition of Portuguese by speakers of Spanish and other Romance languages.
