The Graduate Students of the World Languages and Cultures department will be hosting the Fifth Annual Vernacular Symposium on Thursday, March 21 and Friday, March 22, 2024.

The Symposium, which addresses the theme “Lost and Found in Translation: Literatures and Language in a Multicultural World”, will be held in hybrid format at the main auditorium of the Humanities Center and online from 12:00pm-5:00pm on March 21 and 9:00am-5:00pm March 22. Registration is free and will be open 30 minutes in advance of the start of the program on both days for those desiring to attend in-person. A link will also be provided to log-in online. All are invited to attend and share information about the event. Please note that undergraduate students are being asked to attend virtually.

The Symposium’s presentations will be drawn from the areas of teacher education, French, Spanish, and German literatures, second language acquisition, Latin American studies, and world literature and will be presented by graduate students and faculty from the departments of World Languages and Cultures and Teacher Education at UTK as well as other universities in the USA and the West Indies. Special sessions will be offered on the job market (geared towards graduate students interested in pursuing careers in academia), practical writing skills and oral fluency (for both undergraduate and graduate students who want to improve their language skills in any language), and national parks and German American forestry through an analysis of the work “Tragedy of the Commons”.

The keynote presenter will be Dr. Charles Geyer, Assistant Professor in the Spanish and Portuguese Department of the University of Arizona, who will present the topic “Jachar, or the Art of Crossing in Yuri Herrera’s Señales que precederán al fin del mundo”. You are encouraged to save the date for this event and stay tuned for further updates and the online link. For more detailed information, you may contact the Symposium Coordinator, Cecily Bernard, at cbernar5@vols.utk.edu.