In the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, together we discover, engage, and learn. From understanding a river along the Camino de Santiago in Spain to teaching language skills to elementary students and exploring better ways to serve Spanish-speaking pet owners, students and faculty are applying their global perspectives and linguistic knowledge to understand and help others.
Our ideas about what health is and what sickness and disease mean are big questions about what kind of society we want to live in, what it means to have a good life, and what it means to be living as you believe is most appropriate or best. In early modern Spain notions of health and healthcare changed due to religious expulsion or conversion, colonialism, and more.
The Camino de Santiago is a popular, centuries-old route in Spain for religious pilgrims. For the past four years, CSU students have taken a four-week journey along the Camino, discovering the historic, linguistic, and cultural offerings that immerse them in a different place and time.
In an increasingly connected global society, fluency in a second language is an important skill in both the job market and for the cognitive benefits reaped by the language learner. Through technology and increased access to authentic language materials such as manuscripts, music, film, and video, students have greater opportunities to access many learning styles and engage with a language and culture more creatively and deeply.
A mutual friend, a beer, and a river — all in Spain, 5,000 miles from Colorado — have brought together two CSU faculty members from very different fields, as well as a couple of their students. Jonathan Carlyon, who teaches Spanish language, literature, and culture, and Steve Fassnacht, who teaches watershed science, have come together to provide a comprehensive look at the history and environment of the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
From electronic art to silver mining in Bolivia, the German Enlightenment to Congressional productivity, our faculty are able to extend their research based on donor support from Great Conversations.
Sometimes a Spanish speaker who knows a little bit of English — or an English speaker who knows some Spanish — will get designated as a farm’s translator, but if they’re not fluent in both languages, misunderstandings can happen.
