PhD students spend the summer doing language studies

By Sydney Johnson, Communications & Office Assistant

Over the summer, a few first-year Comp Lit PhD students spent their time doing intensive language studies in various programs. These programs, offered both domestically and internationally, are intended to help graduate students strengthen language skills.

Some Comp Lit grad students offered to share their experiences at their summer language programs!

This past summer, Department of Comparative Literature and Africana Studies doctoral student Lucas Joshi participated in the Portuguese Language School at Middlebury College, which was hosted at Bennington College. There, Josh deepened his fluency in Portuguese and began research into Indo-Portuguese literature in conversation with other doctoral students working on the literatures of the Lusophone world. He had a wonderful time and got to meet and study alongside an alum of Brown’s PhD program, Luciano Tosta, who is now a professor at the University of Kansas!

This past summer, graduate student Caroline Holyoak spent a month living in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France, where she completed a four-week intensive language course through Aix-Marseille Université’s Service Universitaire des Langues (SUL). Designed to increase language proficiency

Katerina Ramos-Jordán and Caroline Holyoak — Comp Lit PhD students, Katerina Ramos-Jordán (left) and Caroline Holyoak (right)

through linguistically and culturally immersive programming, SUL orchestrated weekly excursions to various nearby cities including Arles, Avignon, and Marseille. In Avignon, the cohort got to enjoy the world-famous theater festival! Additionally, Caroline and fellow graduate student Katerina Ramos-Jordan visited the Archives Nationales d'Outre Mer in Aix-en-Provence, an archive which includes primarily materials from France's colonial presence overseas.