MAY 7th - MONDAY
Location: UFSC
9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. - Round Tables
English Language - Centro de Cultura e Eventos - Auditorium Garapuvu - 1st floor
"Language learning in the age of technology"
Coordinator - Celso Tumolo (UFSC)
Katia Cristina do Amaral Tavares (UFRJ) - Technology in university language courses: conflicts, contradictions and change in Project Letras 2.0/UFRJ
The use of technology in language learning and teaching has become increasingly popular worldwide and its implementation has been a concern for both administrators and teachers. In many Brazilian public universities, institutional misconceptions about distance education and technical constraints, among other factors, have discouraged language teachers to adhere to, or even just try out, technology-mediated language courses. At the College of Language and Literature (Faculdade de Letras) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), a project called Letras 2.0 (www.lingnet.pro.br/moodle) aims at providing teachers and students with the necessary technical and pedagogical conditions to take part in hybrid or online courses which make use not only of web 2.0 resources but also a web 2.0 pedagogy. Project Letras 2.0 also aims at promoting research and teacher education. In this talk, I will present project Letras 2.0 and discuss conflicts and contradictions that have been perceived as opportunities for change and enhancement. Describing and discussing such a project may enlighten theoretical and practical discussions about the use of new information and communication technologies in language courses for undergraduate students who are being prepared to be 21st century language teachers.
Rafael Vetromille-Castro (UFPel) - Language learning in the age of technology – moving forth and back and forth again
In recent years, CALL research has evolved from studies approaching the insertion of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools in language learning classrooms to case studies and analysis of language learning activities in digital contexts (REIS, 2009). Also, the number of researchers in CALL has risen, noticeably due to factors such as several governmental policies for distance education as well as the increasing amount of events and journals related to the area. However, little has been done when it comes down to language teaching methodology in digital or hybrid contexts. New digital tools and Internet services are released every day, the technical possibilities to develop learning objects (LO) are limitless, but little attention has been paid to language teaching and learning principles researchers have discussed for at least 20 years. Through search engines, one may easily find plenty of learning objects (LO) for his/her class, although there is strong criticism against LO due to the fact they may be “pedagogically neutral” (LEFFA, 2006). It is common to find teachers concerned and trying to insert ICT tools into their professional practice, regardless of the methodological approach they use. Under such circumstances, technology can be “fancy”, but not effective for education. Taking such ideas into consideration, I will address the need for research on CALL methodology, based on the assumption that language learning/teaching is a complex phenomenon. Also, I will approach the development and the use of language learning objects (LLO), having as a mainstay the notion that one learns languages for communicative purposes (VETROMILLE-CASTRO, 2011).
Denise Abreu e Lima (UFSCar) - Challenges and Outcomes of the Brazilian Open University (UAB) experience on English Language Programs
Since 2006, the Brazilian Open University (UAB) has taken place into public universities and institutes agenda around the country. This presentation aims to discuss the Distance Education (DE) model of the Brazilian Open University (UAB), specially related to English Language Programs. UAB context will be described as well as the roles and the required skills the different actors should have to accomplish their teaching goals. There are few researches about this new context which has shown the challenges faced by English Language Programs in DE modality. Other issues concerning presentiality, use of technology and professional development will be discussed. Challenges and outcomes from the experience these universities have accomplished or are still working on are also be addressed, mainly the opportunities DE experience has given to undergraduate students from the English Language Program at Federal University of Sao Carlos - UFSCar.
English Language Literatures - CFH - Centro de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas - Auditorium - Ground floor
"Literature: from nationalism to transmedia narratives"
Coordinator - Anelise Reich Corseuil (UFSC)
Renata Wasserman (Wayne State University) - The Other Age of Technology: Print, Identity, Social Mobility in novels of William Dean Howells and Lima Barreto
Technical advances at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century greatly improved the gathering and dissemination of news, and increased the circulation and the importance of newspapers. These developments made their way into novels of the time, in general peripherally to the plot, but centrally in William Dean Howells’ A Modern Instance, and Lima Barreto’s Recordações do escrivão Isaías Caminha. Though the locales, background history, and contexts differ, both examine newspapers as they offer avenues for upward social mobility, and strive to establish themselves as centers for social control. This examination yields telling examples of both similarities and differences between cultural developments in Brazil and in the United States at the period.
José Gatti (UFSC) - Language and the global politics of South African cinema
After the demise of apartheid, the landscape of South African cinema has greatly changed, allowing for the emergence of local cultures that had never reached the screens. One of the major changes was the recognition of the polyglotic features of the renewed nation, which features eleven official languages. Up to the early 1990s, however, only (the hegemonic) Afrikaans and English were spoken in South African cinema. At the same time, a new element has been confronting this cultural, ethnic and linguistic variety: that is the imposition of English as a mandatory language, since South African productions now search for an insertion in a segment of the market presently dominated by Australian and New Zealander productions.
Adalberto Müller (UFF) - Goebbels Experiment (2005) and the rise of intermedial politics
Between 1933 and 1939, the nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels transforms the media landscape (or "mediascape") of western Europe by connecting and melting traditional media such as press and theater with radio and "expanded" cinema, as well as by supporting the first experiences with television. Based on the contemporary (inter-)media theory of Friedrich Kittler - for whom mediatic developments are always somehow attached to military technology, I attempt to analyze the strong images of Lutz Hachmeister's documentary The Goebbles Experiment (2005) in order to criticize the naive assumptions of "media convergence" discourse, especially when it disregards the dark side of the influence of media in the rise of fascism and totalitarianism.
English Language and English Language Literatures - Reitoria Building - Auditorium - Ground floor
"Gender and technologies of representation in literature and the media"
Coordinator - Susana Funck
Rita T. Schmidt (UFRGS) - Unspeakable acts, persistent pain: gender violence in women’s fiction
Human suffering as a consequence of acts of cruelty cannot be dissociated from the violence that runs throughout the history of the human race on the planet. The rise of civilizations and the building of empires, the struggle for territory and economic power and the very uses of knowledge as power have produced situations of extreme human misery. The paradox with which we live, a self-satisfied ineffective discourse of human rights that proclaims the sacredness of life on the one hand, and a hard selfish will of mastery that debases human life on the other, signals the dark side of the modern world and women constitute the largest social segment caught in the circle of this paradox. On considering the developments of women´s literature in different geographical locations, particularly from the XVIII century onwards, it is possible to affirm that a significant portion of women´s fictional narratives is haunted by traumas of gender violence as female characters suffer the effects of their being embodied as women which means they are socially situated in a zone of physical and symbolic vulnerability that qualifies them as less than human. I propose to examine how representations of gender violence in contemporary fictions by women writers participate in a transnational intertextual cultural system in which the violence of gender has become a narrative trope that spells the presence of a recalcitrant gothicism, clue and symptom of a melancholic attitude repressed by culture because it feeds on the perceptions of the world as an unhomely place.
Ana Cecilia Acioli Lima (UFAL) - Queering Gender in Literature: Winterson, Smith and Kay
Western literature, along the centuries, has collected a long line of characters who defy conventional gender representations and also the “natural” connection between gender and sexual desire. According to Emma Donoghue, they can be travesties, when cross-dressing causes “accidental” same-sex desire; passionate same-sex friends; rivals, when a man and a woman fall in love with the same woman; monsters, usually represented by a wicked woman who seduces an innocent one. More recently, some fictional work by women has been highlighting gender ambiguous characters, whose bodies and sexualities can be more identified as queer, in the sense that they do not conform to normative representations of gender. My purpose in this paper is to discuss briefly how contemporary British authors like Jeanette Winterson, Ali Smith and Jackie Kay queer gender in some of their novels, by rendering it as something more fluid, protean and whose boundaries are ever more blurred.
Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard (University of Birmingham) - ‘Never ask a woman her age’: Representation of Ageing in Discourse
This paper reports on a multi-stranded investigation into representations of age and ageing from a gender perspective. It combines CDA, multimodal, and corpus methodologies, looking at language and visuals on the one hand, consumerist culture on the other, to examine the conflicted position of women as they age. One strand of this investigation concerns media representation of older women, and the ambivalence shown even in supposedly pro-feminist or post-feminist fora. Running alongside is a second strand, concerned with ways in which older women represent themselves. A third strand concerns stereotypes of women at different life stages. Using information from a large reference computational corpus, clusters of words associated with young, older, and elderly women are discussed. A fourth strand concerns women in relation to the beauty industries: in particular how older women are addressed in marketing and advertising. Analyzing both text and images, I explore ways in which women’s fears, regrets, vanities, and pleasures are manipulated by this highly profitable business. Key findings from these strands are presented, showing how the different approaches complement one another and illuminate the phenomena observed. I conclude by discussing broader implications – particularly relevant for the present time, as baby-boomer women pass from career years into retirement, confronting the physical realities of ageing and losing social visibility, yet retaining economic significance through the grey pound. How far can new stereotypes emerge?
10:30 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. - Break
10:45 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. - Conferences
English Language - Reitoria Building - Auditorium - Ground floor
"English Language Teaching and Learning in the age of technology"- Vera Menezes (UFMG)
The interconnectedness of digital technologies has created new contexts for language learning and new labels have emerged for teaching and learning in the digital context: Computer Assisted Learning; Web-based Learning; Online Learning; Distance Learning; E-Learning; Tandem Learning; MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses); M-learning (Mobile Learning), etc. In this talk, I will present some experiences in the use of technology for the teaching of English in varied learning environments, such as MOOC and Mobile Learning. I will also discuss some of the challenges encountered when working in digital environments, one of which is ‘collaboration’. Although we would expect students to engage in collaborative practices, when using wikis, for example, some data show that old practices in the form of patch work still prevail. Another challenge has to do with the attempt to use fewer teacher centered course designs and to mitigate students’ resistance in engaging themselves in student-centered activities. In spite of these problems, it seems that technology, by means of different digital tools, has been gradually incorporated into different kinds of learning contexts: from face-to-face to blended or online learning. Students themselves are also taking advantage of a range of free tools to develop their language skills. It is my intention to close this presentation by showing some of those tools.
English Language Literatures - Centro de Cultura e Eventos - Auditorium Garapuvu - 1st floor
"The global trafficker of life writing: gender, media, and transnational circuits" -Sidonie Smith (University of Michigan)
This talk will explore several modes of life writing traveling the globe in formal, technological, and geopolitical circuits today. It engages the following questions: How do people from diverse locations around the globe narrate lives now? Where, in what kind of archives, do they find the fragments of experiential history through which to compose lives? How do genres of life writing project individual and collective pasts, forge identities, recover occluded histories, and make claims on the world? How do different media constitute, enable, constrain, adapt, and project these life stories? What are the routes of production, circulation, and reception of life writing, the routes of claims and emotions and injunctions to read and act? And what kinds of gendered subjects does this life writing put in play?
12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. - Lunch
2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. - Individual papers (English Language and English Language Literatures)
4:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. - Coffee break / Book Exhibit / Release of books - Centro de Cultura e Eventos - Hall - 1st floor
4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. - Poster Session I - Centro de Cultura e Eventos - Hall - 1st floor
4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. - Panels (English Language and English Language Literatures)
6:30 p.m to 7:40 p.m – Release of books / Book Exhibit - Centro de Cultura e Eventos - Hall - 1st floor