Golden Reading Reunion – A la Recherché du Temps Perdu

previewOn 4th September 2015 Reading University’s Alumni Office was kind enough to organise a guided tour for the 6 of us celebrating, with our partners, the 50th anniversary of our freshman year.

We started our visit in the Library which was just a year old and state of the art when we joined in 1965. No computers for general use in those days, though, no eatery, and no information board offering help with our literacy or numeracy!

Our tour on campus continued with a visit to the Students’ Union – a vastly extended enterprise compared with the Buttery and Bookshop we remembered. The SU was on the London Road site in those days, part of St David’s Hall.

image1-20We then moved on to the Language Department of HUMSS where five of us had enrolled for French or French combined with Italian and one for Classics. The foyer of the building seemed little changed and served to jog a memory of being press-ganged into doing Linguistics as our third subject, totally unappreciative of how privileged we were to be some of the first of David Crystal’s students! Here we met up with Dr Veronica heath who had herself been a student in the 80s, taught by many of the profs and lectures who variously inspired, amused and scared us witless. Much nostalgia was evoked by names from the past, including Prof Lehmann, Michael Holland, Dr Dale, Dr Redfem, Geoffrey Strickland, Prof Meneghello, Dr Lepsky and John Scott to name but a few. All of us spent out third year in image2-18Lyon, those there for the whole year witnessing Les Événements of May 1968 at the first hand. It was here that our long-lasting friendship was cemented.

Welcome to new staff in the French section and new developments for 2017!

Photo Marine French seciton blog postWe are delighted to welcome our new Teaching Fellow in French Language, Miss Marine Orain, in September 2016. Marine joins us from Birkbeck College and she will be teaching Language modules. Marine holds an MA in Teaching French as a Foreign Language from the University of Cumbria and she is completing her PhD thesis on French intellectuals.

Marine says:

‘After 9 years in London, I am delighted to be joining the University of Reading. I can’t wait to meet the students of the Modern Languages department. In today’s world, I believe that promoting multilingualism and intercultural understanding is more important than ever. I particularly enjoy teaching beginners and introducing them to my native culture and language.’

Our dynamic Language Teaching team is indeed preparing to launch a new Beginners’ Language module, which will allow students who did not study French at A Level to take French as part of a Joint Honours Degree. For more information on the wide range of degree programmes we offer check our website or contact us at languages.@reading.ac.uk!

 

French @ Reading

Welcome to the new staff in Spanish and Latin American Studies

We are delighted to welcome two new members of staff to the Spanish section as of September 2016.

 

Dream Team

Meet the new Dream Team

Dr Catriona McAllister (Lecturer in Latin American Cultural Studies) joins us from Brunel

University, where she taught extensively and was also Head of Academic Skills Development. Catriona gained her doctorate at the Centre of

Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge, where she completed a PhD thesis on ‘Rewriting Independence in Contemporary Argentine Literature: Postmodernism, Politics and History’, which she is currently re-working as a book.

 

Catriona says:
‘As a Latin Americanist specialising in Argentine literary and cultural studies, my research focuses on discourses of national identity and rewritings of history in contemporary fiction. I’ll be joining the Spanish section in August and look forward to meeting new and existing students in the Languages department’.

Iván Ortega Galiano (Teaching Fellow in Spanish Language) joins us from the University of Strathclyde where he taught Spanish language for several years. Iván holds an MA in Linguistics Applied to the Teaching of Spanish as a Second Language, and will be bringing a Castilian flavour to the Spanish language team (with his colleague Raúl Marchena representing Latin America!)

Ivan says:
‘For me, being part of the Spanish section team is a golden opportunity to inspire all our students to succeed in their learning of the Spanish language and of the Spanish speaking countries’ rich culture’.

Welcome to you both from the MLES Department @Reading!