Hicham Assaoui holds an M.A. in Middle Eastern and North African Studies and a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching from the University of Arizona. He is a former Fulbright Exchange scholar in Arabic at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. He has taught all levels of Arabic as well as co-taught courses on language acquisition and linguistics. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Arabic at the department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Virginia Military Institute. His research interests include Arabic language and culture, Arabic dialects, linguistics, pedagogy, second language acquisition, and sociolinguistics.

Camille Bouillon is a French instructor at Virginia Military Institute (VMI) where she teaches intermediate French courses.

After receiving a B.A. in French and Comparative Literature at Université Paris-Sorbonne (IV), Ms. Bouillon spent an academic year as a Language Teaching Assistant at Washington and Lee University (2016-2017); she then returned to France to complete a Master’s degree in teaching French as a foreign language at the Sorbonne and she is now back in the United States pursuing a Ph.D. in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), where she's taught elementary, intermediate and advanced French courses.

Her academic research focuses on sensory studies - more specifically on sound, hearing and sound reproduction technologies - in late 19th-century French literature, including works by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam.

Col. Kathleen Bulger-Barnett earned a Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Kentucky with a specialization in Spanish Golden Age literature.   Since 1989 she has taught courses on  Spanish language, literature, and culture. Research interests include Spanish Golden Age literature (both drama and prose) and also Cuban writers and Caribbean literature.  

Professor
Modern Languages and Cultures

Professor
Modern Languages and Cultures

Dr. García Guerrero is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at VMI where he teaches Spanish conversation and composition along with intermediate Spanish. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was an instructor at Boston College before joining the faculty at VMI. He specializes in nineteenth-century Spanish literature, visual culture, and intellectual history. He is currently conducting research for his first book on racial representations that emerged from nineteenth-century discourses dealing with Spain’s modernization process. Among other journals, his work has been published in Revista de Estudios Hispánicos and Hispanic Review. At VMI, he teaches intermediate Spanish as well as conversation and composition classes.

Dr. Steve Gerome has been teaching Spanish at the university level since 2006. He holds a B.A. in International Relations and Modern Foreign Languages at James Madison University (1998), and he is currently completing his dissertation in translation and intercultural mediation at the University of Salamanca, Spain. He completed his M.A. in Spanish Translation and Interpreting in 2018 from the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley.  He has also taken classes in legal writing, civil law/torts, contracts, and criminal law.

He has provided language instruction to state and local agencies including police officers from the Virginia State Police and local agencies. From 1999 to 2004, he served as a legal interpreter and translator as well as language consultant to multiple agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, The Office of the U.S. Attorney, R.U.S.H. drug task force, and the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia.

He also provided translation and interpretation services in Spanish/English in cases and numerous judicial proceedings involving criminal and civil litigation, workers’ compensation, criminal prosecutions, and in federal and state criminal investigations.

He previously worked fifteen years in commercial business where he used Spanish translating and interpreting skills frequently in Human Resource and Environmental Health and Safety Management while interacting with colleagues and customers conducting business in Mexico, South America, and in Europe.

Education

Ph. D. Universidad de Salamanca, Spain (expected 2022)
Dissertation: “The lexicalization of metaphors in interlinguistic and intercultural communications in the field of public safety relating to the prevention and persecution of money laundering”.

Ph. D. 2008 - Capella University, Minneapolis, MN
Organization and Management
Dissertation: “An Examination of Relationships between Transformational Leadership and Interactive Justice Perceptions Among Membership of a Local Chapter of Human Resource Professionals”.

M. A. 2018 - University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville, TX
Master of Arts in Spanish Translation and Interpreting
Capstone project: “La traducción de la metáfora en una traducción parcial de Countering International Money Laundering, “Total Failure is Only a Decimal Point Away.” (in English: The translation of metaphor in a partial translation of Countering International Money Laundering. 

Ms. Ed. 2004 - Master of Science in Education, Adult Human Resource Development/Management

B.A.  1998 - Bachelor of Arts, International Affairs/Spanish, December 1998

Recent publications

Gerome, Stephen. “La autotraducción: la teoría y los retos del género” (in English; Self Translation; theory and challenges in the genre), edited by : Alex Martín Escribà and Javier Sánchez Zapatero, Clásicos y contemporáneos en el género negro, Andavira, 2018, pp.247-254.

Gerome, Stephen, “Lingüística forense, casos penales y la entrevista policial.” (in English; Forensic linguistics, criminal cases and the police interview), edited by Alex Martín Escribá and Javier Sánchez Zapatero, La (re) invención del género negro. Andavira, 2014, pp.241-246.

Recent Presentations

“Lingüística forense y examinación del uso del lenguaje policial” (in English; Forensic linguistics, criminal cases and the police interview),  XIX Congreso de Novela y Cine Negro de la Universidad de Salamanca, April, 2013

“La autotraducción: la teoría y los retos del género” (in English; Self Translation; theory and challenges in the genre). at the XI Congreso de Novela y Cine Negro de la Universidad de Salamanca, April, 2015.

LTC Jeff Kendrick (Ph.D., University of Kansas, 2012) is an Associate Professor of French at Virginia Military Institute where he enjoys teaching French language and culture classes. Before coming to VMI, he taught at the Universities of Arkansas, Arizona, and Kansas as well as the Université du Maine in Le Mans, France. Since his arrival at VMI, LTC Kendrick has co-developed an entirely new French curriculum that emphasizes written, oral, and cross-cultural communication across a French major’s cadetship. His most recent innovations include using a class set of iPads in 2018-2019 to implement a new content-based instructional model emphasizing student interaction with authentic texts, videos, and other content in the target language and cultures in FR-101 and 102. Cadets use iPads to access websites, podcasts and other documents, investigate the themes we discuss and develop their own personalized set of vocabulary surrounding the topics covered in each unit of instruction. In order to get cadets using the skills they develop in the classroom, LTC Kendrick led a new 400-level course in the spring of 2019 in which cadets taught an eight-week French course to local middle school and high school students. He has also created an interdisciplinary course on French cuisine and culture and overseen capstone projects in which cadets integrated GIS software and the study of the sixteenth-century French Wars of Religion.

In addition to investing in the classroom, LTC Kendrick devotes significant time and energy developing cadets outside those four walls. He initiated and, since 2014, has co-directed the VMI in Paris summer study abroad program. He also works with colleagues to coordinate the weekly French Table and hosted a major regional French conference at VMI in 2015. The gathering held its second iteration in December 2017 at Washington College in Chestertown, MD, and LTC Kendrick was happy to accompany three cadets who presented the work they had completed in their capstone course (taught by LTC Abbey Carrico) in the undergraduate research forum of the conference. Most recently, this past summer Cadet Nolan Lipscomb and LTC Kendrick conducted a SURI project in which Cadet Lipscomb explored Catholic propaganda during the French Wars of Religion. Cadet Lipscomb won second place in the poster presentations at VMI’s Undergraduate Research Symposium. More recently, LTC Kendrick worked with Cadet Aubrey Butto on a SURI project investigating perspectives of gender in the short story collectionL’Heptaméron (1558) by Marguerite de Navarre, sister of King Francis I of France.

LTC Kendrick’s primary research interests include polemic and violence in the French Wars of Religion, gender in sixteenth-century French devotional poetry and the integration of classroom technology with language learning. He has published and presented on Marguerite de Navarre, Joachim DuBellay, polemic and politics in the French Wars of Religion, using sitcoms in the French classroom, student-centered learning and flipping the language classroom. LTC Kendrick’s articles have appeared in Esprit Créateur (2018), Lingua Romana (2016), the Australian Journal of French Studies (2015), and Renaissance and Reformation (2013). LTC Kendrick is co-editor (with Professor Katherine Maynard, Washington College in Chestertown, MD) of Polemic and Literature surrounding the French Wars of Religion (2019). Part of Medieval Institute Publications’ Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture series, this volume considers the constant interplay between literature and polemic in sixteenth-century France and how this interaction constructed ideological frameworks that defined the various groups to which individuals belonged and through which they defined their identities. Contributions explore both literary texts (prose, poetry, and theater) and more intentionally polemical texts that fall outside of the traditional literary genres. Engaging the continuous casting and recasting of opposing worldviews, this collection of essays examines literature’s use of polemic and polemic’s use of literature as seminal intellectual developments stemming from the religious and social turmoil that characterized this period in France. Additionally, LTC Kendrick has contributed essays on the “Miroir de l’âme pécheresse” and Marguerite de Navarre’s other devotional poetry for the “French Writing and Culture in the Renaissance” volume of the digital scholarly database The Literary Encyclopedia (http://www.litencyc.com). His published pedagogical materials include a language learning website, French à la mode.

Dr. Knowles is an Instructor of Spanish at Virginia Military Institute who teaches Spanish language and culture, conversation, and introduction to Latin America courses. He has a degree from Montreat College, studied at La Universidad de las Americas (Cholula, Puebla, Mexico), and a Cambridge U. (UK) sponsored program for overseas teachers of English (Mexico City) and received his MA and Ph.D. degrees from Virginia Tech.  

Dr. Knowles originally went to Mexico City for a six-month field work experience as a component for a ministerial degree in the 1970s. Over the following twenty-four years with his family, he lived in several central and southern states of Mexico, working as an educator, involved in leadership training with youth and adults, and later as founder/director of non-profit organizations, including a bilingual K-12 and a two-year internship program with an international outreach.  After returning to the U.S., he served as a mentor for student foreign language teachers in training, and as academic coordinator for a residential leadership community at Virginia Tech, and taught Spanish at Radford University, Roanoke College, and Virginia Tech before coming to VMI.  He has led study abroad experiences and provided guided tours and service-learning experiences for foreigners to Mexico.  He was the lead consultant for an academic consortium that evaluated and then wrote a new Spanish curriculum for the U.S. Border Patrol Academy in Artesia, N.M.

Dr. Knowles presents his research on Hispanic immigration in various forums and continues to be closely connected to Mexico.  He has done research on the Cristero Wars (post-Mexican Revolution), and Mexico’s “Dirty War”, and is currently working on a narrative of his tenure in Mexico.

Instructor
Modern Languages and Cultures

Dr. Sabrina S. Laroussi is an associate professor of Spanish at Virginia Military Institute where she teaches courses on Spanish and Latin American literature, cultures and film, in addition to Spanish language courses. Before coming to VMI, she was a visiting assistant professor at the College of Charleston and received her degrees at the Université d’Alger in Algeria (BA), Universidad de Alcalá in Madrid (MA) and Texas Tech University (MA and Ph.D.).

Her academic research interests include metafiction, the grotesque, representations of violence and death in contemporary Latin American and Peninsular literature, culture, and visual media, as well as cultural ramifications of drug trafficking in Colombia, Mexico and Galicia. She currently serves on the director board of BETA, Asociación de Jóvenes Doctores en Hispanismo.

At VMI, she directs La mesa de español and the summer study abroad program in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). She also serves as the chapter adviser for the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society, Sigma Delta Pi. Dr. Laroussi is the director of the Shepherd Poverty Program (SHECP) at VMI. 

Courses Taught at VMI

• SP101 Elementary Spanish I
• SP102 Elementary Spanish II   
• SP201: Intermediate Spanish I
• SP202: Intermediate Spanish II    
• SP303W Spanish Composition and Conversation (content developed)
• SP305 Survey of Spanish Literature I
• ML311 Internship in Spanish
• SP312 Culture and Civilization of Spain
• SP313 Advanced Spanish Grammar
• SP322 Hispanic Cinema (content developed)
• SP426 Contemporary Spanish Literature I
• SP424 Narcos, Hitmen and Religion. Drug Trafficking Culture in Colombian Literature and Media (course developed)
• SP450 Modern Language Capstone Course
• “The Narco as Neo-cultural and Transatlantic Model. Literary, Audiovisual and Artistic Critical Approaches” (2020, content developed)
• “Self-Reflection in Contemporary Hispanic Fiction and Film” (2022, content developed)
• SP481 Survey of Spanish Culture and Society (course developed, taught in Spain)
• ML498 and ML 499 Reading and Writing for the Honors Thesis in Modern Languages and Cultures
  • Cadet Steven Foster Jr., “Narcos, Sicarios and Narcocorridos: The (De)humanization of Mexican Drug Trafficking Figureheads in Media,” 2017- 2018
  • Cadet Christopher Soo, “Narco Souvenirs for Sale: The Fight Against the Touristification of Colombia’s Narco Heritage,” 2021- 2022

Publications

Co-Edited Volumes

• With Yasmina Romero Morales (Universidad de La Laguna) and Luca Cerullo (Università degli Studi di Palermo). Reescrituras del paradigma. Alteridad y género en el mundo literario hispánico. SÍLEX Press. (Expected publication date: spring 2022) 
• With Iana Konstantonova (Southern Virginia University). Crear entre mundos: nuevas tendencias en la metaficción española. Albatros’s book series, Diálogos peninsulares, fall 2021.

Book Chapters

• “Cuando Almodóvar desnuda a Pedro y viceversa: la meta(auto)ficción en Dolor y gloria.” Crear entre mundos: nuevas tendencias en la metaficción española. Edited by Iana Konstantinova and Sabrina S. Laroussi. Diálogos peninsulares, Albatros Press, 2021, pp. 38-50.
• “Violencia y blasfemia: lo grotesco en La Virgen de los sicarios y Rosario Tijeras.” Perspectivas sobre el género negro hispano. Edited by Jorge Zamora and Rodrigo Pereyra. Editorial Libros Medio Siglo, 2017, pp. 119-35.

Articles

• “Entre lo católico y lo narco: una lectura grotesca de María, llena eres de gracia.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, vol. 98, no. 10, 2021, pp. 1031-40.
• “Contigo en la distancia: Colombia, Galicia y el negocio narco entre la realidad y la ficción, entre el humor y el dramatismo.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 39, 2021, pp. 120-33. 
• “Nacho Carretero y Fariña. La historia de un periodismo de investigación que tumbó el tabú del narco en Galicia.” Letras Hispanas, vol. 16, 2020, pp. 92-101.
• “Dicotomía grotesca de la mujer en la narconovela colombiana: ¿virgen o puta?” Forum, vol. XXII, 2015, pp. 65-84.
• “Destino fatídico y tremendismo gore: la monstruosidad de Pascual en La familia de Pascual Duarte.” Hispanet Journal, vol. 5, April 2012, pp. 1-20.

Book Review Essays

• James H. Creechan. Drug Wars and Covert Netherworlds (2021) [Forthcoming in Journal of Strategic Security]
• Aldona Bialowas Pobutsky. Pablo Escobar and Colombian Narcoculture. Hispanófila, vol. 191, 2021, pp. 217-18.
• Nilda Garcia. Mexico’s Drug War and Criminal Networks. Journal of Strategic Security, vol. 13, no. 3, 2020, pp. 157-59.
• Kristine Vanden Berghe. Narcos y sicarios en la ciudad letrada. Letras Hispanas, vol. 15, 2019, pp. 151-52.
• Oswaldo Zavala. Los cárteles no existen. Narcotráfico y cultura en México. Revista de literatura criminal hispana,, no. 1, 2019, pp. 178-81.
• Guadalupe Pérez-Anzaldo. El espectáculo de la violencia en el cine mexicano del siglo XXI. Middle Atlantic Review of Latin American Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2018, pp. 164-65.
• Andrea F. Castro, Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola, and Chloe Rutter-Jensen, eds. Territories of Conflict. Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 36, 2018, pp. 190-92.

Dr. Lu is an Assistant Professor of Chinese at Virginia Military Institute. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Chinese Linguistics. Her research interests include teaching Chinese as a second language, prosody, interface between language and music, and second language acquisition. Before joining VMI, Dr. Lu taught at Wake Forest University, College of William and Mary, University of Iowa, and Luther College. At VMI, she teaches all levels of Chinese language classes and culture classes.

I am a Spanish instructor at Virginia Military Institute (VMI) where I teach elementary and intermediate Spanish courses. I received my Master of Education degree with a concentration in Equity and Cultural Diversity from James Madison University.

I have also been teaching Spanish at James Madison University for fifteen years. I have taught Intermediate and high intermediate courses as well as Medical Spanish.

Up to the present time, I have been working as a medical interpreter for Area Health Education Center (AHEC) for more than ten years in local hospitals, clinics and schools.

Before coming to the United States, I received certification as an ESL teacher from Alianza Uruguay-Estados Unidos Institute. I taught English as a second language for more than twenty years in my home country of Uruguay.

At the same time, I was also an ordained minister and my mission work was to help troubled teenagers where sports such as soccer and counseling became an important aspect to get them off the streets and from committing crimes.

Another important highlight of my life was being a missionary in Guatemala amidst the Kechi indigenous people, establishing a clinic that attended to their medical needs.

My teaching philosophy

The teacher is a facilitator, providing opportunities for students to communicate genuinely, spontaneously, and meaningfully in a target language. It is through the interaction between the speaker and the listener that meaning becomes clear. The students interact with the language as they share their ideas and opinions. This cooperative interaction gives the students the security they need to develop their language skills.

Areas of Interest Research and Objectives

• To define what is acquired in language acquisition and consider how this transforms the speaker.
• To become familiar with the process, stages and strategies for language development.
• To contrast similarities and differences between L1 and L2 acquisition, and L2 learning.
• To interpret various theoretical claims made by language acquisition researchers and consider these claims in light of one’s personal approach to teaching.
• To achieve institutional coherent in assessment and evaluation practices.
• Developing strategies to limit exam anxiety in the classroom setting.

MAJ Schroepfer earned his B.A. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from the University of California at Berkeley and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught several introductory and upper-division Arabic courses since joining the faculty at VMI. He has worked in leadership and teaching roles for both VMI’s Arabic Startalk program and Project GO. His research focuses on Arabic dialectology and sociolinguistics in Arabic-speaking communities, with a particular interest in Egypt. His scholarly work has appeared in Penn Working Papers in Linguistics (The University of Pennsylvania Press), The Semitic Languages (Routledge), The International Journal of Arabic Linguistics, and Arabic Dialectology: Methodology and Field Work (Harrassowitz).

Mohammed Shihab obtained his M.A. from the University of Virginia (Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic Language and Culture) and his B.A. in English Language and Linguists from the University of Baghdad. He also holds an associate degree in Civil Engineering from Institute of Technology in Baghdad.

Before coming to VMI in fall 2015, Mr. Shihab taught Arabic language and culture at UVA, where he developed a course entitled “The Art of Arabic Calligraphy” based on his specialty as an Arabic calligrapher. He has taught a variety of topics, including the Arabic language (all levels), Arabic media, and Arabic societies. Moreover, he is a native Arabic speaker and is able to communicate in more than six dialects (Iraqi, Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, most dialects of Arab Gulf countries as well as Modern Standard Arabic). He has experience tutoring and working with upper-level college and post-graduate students from the Defense Language Institute (DLI) and the Department of State.

Mr. Shihab has more than five years of experience in both written and oral, written translation (documents, literary works, conferences, etc.), and has many research interests, including Middle East Affairs, troubled societies in the Middle East and related problems, and Arabic language and poetry.

Instructor
Modern Languages and Cultures

Prof. Sunnen received his Ph.D. in Germanic Languages & Literatures from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1990.  Although a medievalist by virtue of his interest in Arthurian tales and their Germanic versions, he has concentrated his research and teaching on 20th-century Germany in recent years.  His main interests at present revolve around the Resistance (both military and civilian) in Germany against the Nazi regime and the efforts to save refugees from war-torn Europe.  He is also the faculty liaison for VMI’s exchange with Helmut-Schmidt-Universität (also known as the Universität der Bundeswehr, Hamburg).

Professor
Department Head