Cultural Constructions Conference

The University of Texas at Arlington

March 27^th – March 28^th 2025

Library 6^th floor, Parlor and Atrium

 

 

Thursday March 27^th

 

9 am: Breakfast & Welcome remarks by the Dr. Cynthia Laborde, Chair of Modern Languages

 

9:15-10:00 Panel 1: Globalization and Localization

Moderator: Blake Carpenter

 

Savannah Fennell (UTA): “Methodology Matters: How Translation Theories and Technologies Have Shaped Journey to the West.”

 

Maryam Hady (UTA): “Language Service Providers in the Healthcare and Life Sciences Industry”

 

10:10-11:20 Panel 2: Translation and Interpreting in Health Care

Moderator: Dr. Alicia Rueda

 

Ana Marcial (UTA): “Enhancing Access to Health Services for CALD Patients Through Simulation-Based Learning: Training Nursing, Social Work, and Interpreting Students to Work as a Team”

 

Danielle Danso (UTA): “Translating Rare Diseases: Enhancing Spanish Wikipedia through Project-Based Learning”

 

Dr. Amy Olen (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee): “Medical Interpreter Approaches to Communication Facilitation”

 

11:30 to 12:30: Panel 3: Enhancing Career Readiness: Developing Transferable Skills through Study Abroad.

Moderator: Dr. Neal Liang

 

Maria Robles (UTA): “Adaptability & Resilience”

 

Logan Stewart (UTA: “Intercultural Communication”

 

Briana Bronson (UTA): “Cultural Exchange and Cultural Overlap”

 

Ayana Lackey (UTA) “Critical Thinking & Problem-Solving"

 

Tanner Mills (UTA) “Initiative and Relationship Building”

 

 

 

Lunch break

 

 

 

2pm - 2:30pm Course Fair

Come see what classes we offer in MODL in Fall 2025!

 

2:30pm - 3:45pm Panel 3 American Sign Language and Deaf Studies

Moderator: Laurel Whitsett

 

Greyson "Grey" Layden (UTA) “The Silent Language of the Seraglio: Exploring the Lives and Language of Deaf Courtiers of the Ottoman Courts”

 

Katherine M. Hamilton(UTA) “The Misrepresentation of American Sign Language and Deaf Culture in Mainstream Film Media”

 

Dr. Lisalee Egbert (UTA) “Social Development of Deaf children: “Mindreading” and Literacy.  Blending Theory of the Mind (ToM) with Reading and Writing  

 

 

4pm - 5:30pm: Keynote address by Dr. Benjamin Hiramatsu Ireland, Associate Professor of French and Director of Asian Studies at Texas Christian University

“The Children Left Behind: Untold Histories of Japanese Internment in the French Pacific”

 

Sharing episodes from his upcoming book, Voices Beyond the Grave: Japanese Internment in the French Pacific (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2026), Dr. Benjamin Hiramatsu Ireland uncovers largely unknown Second World War histories of Japanese internment outside the United States. This historical exploration centers on France, Australia, and the United States’ classified financing of Japanese internment in the French Pacific islands, namely in francophone New Caledonia and Tahiti, between 1942 and 1946. Informed by rare testimonies from mixed-race Japanese and Indigenous Melanesian children whose fathers were deported from New Caledonia to internment camps in Australia, Ireland recreates the harrowing timeline of their Japanese fathers’ deportation, incarceration, and repatriation to a war-torn Japan. Ireland shares his ongoing global humanitarian project that has reunited descendants of Japanese civilian internees, separated by these atrocities of war, presenting for the first time stories of survival, perseverance, and love. The haunting afterlives emerging from this interdisciplinary project, as Ireland argues, redefine both collective memory and the transnational breadth of Japanese incarceration during World War II.

End of first day

 

 

Friday March 28^th

 

9 am Breakfast

 

9:30-10:45 Panel 4 Creative Writing in Spanish

Moderator: Dr. Chris Conway

 

Dr. Julio Aguilar (Baylor) “Bougainvillea Patio and Other Poems: A Reading”

 

Brian Duran-Fuentes “Poesía y evolución especulativa”

 

Dr. Ignacio Ruiz-Perez (UTA) “Poemas inéditos de un libro en formación”

 

11:00-12:30 Panel 5 Languages and humanities

Moderator: Dr. Sonia Kania

 

Dr. Maia Lamarque (East Texas A&M University): “Texts and Oral Narratives in Indigenous Languages in Peru”

 

Dr. Julio Aguilar (Baylor): “Literature in the Service of Medicine, and Vice Versa”

 

Oliva Arroyo (UTA): “Cultivating Compassion: Integrating Medical Narratives in Medical Education”

 

Closing remarks by Dr. Amy Austin, Associate Chair of Modern Languages

 

For out-of-town participants or guests who want to attend the conference:

1. In order to get in the library, you will have to show a government ID (such as a driver’s license).
2. For parking information (free parking available) please email Erika.ward@uta.edu

 

 

 

End of CCC 2025