Faculty | Program Name | SIU

Spanish

Lourdes Albuixech received her Ph.D. from U.C. Riverside in 1997. A native of Spain, Dr. Albuixech specializes in Spanish Literature of the Middle Ages (especially Late Middle Ages) and the Early Modern period.

American Sign Language

Kimberly Berger fell into the Deaf World while finishing her bachelor’s degree in 1991. It was her very first American Sign Language class at SIU that launched her passion for ASL and the people who use it. Its art, literature, politics and cultural ideals captured her heart for a lifetime! Kimberly has been serving the deaf community as a nationally certified interpreter for more than a quarter century. She earned her master’s degree in Applied Linguistics while continuing to study the structure, discourse, and history of American Deaf people.

German

Mary Bricker earned her doctorate from the University of Illinois. Her research and teaching spans Jewish Studies, Business German, and eighteenth- to twentieth-century German literature. She teaches all levels of German language and literature as well as Holocaust literature, Business German, Germanic and Norse Mythology, and the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Her research includes Children and Young Adult literature, G. E. Lessing, M. M. Bakhtin, and exile literature. She serves as the Treasurer of The Lessing Society.

German

Christopher Chiasson received his Ph.D. in Modern German Literature and Culture from Indiana University. He works on the emergence of narratives in unusual places: the stories that arise from visual artifacts in German Romantic literature; the possible stories of "the people" that history and sociology created as they became academic disciplines; and stories that arise from stasis in slow cinema. His general interests include narrative theory, psychoanalysis, Marxism, and the history of ideas. He has taught courses on the Brothers Grimm, witches, Norse myth, Viennese Modernism, detective stories, Nazi cinema, and the human body from Winckelmann to Leni Riefenstahl.

Spanish

Grace Darmour-Paul earned her MA in Foreign Languages and Literatures with a focus in Spanish from SIU in 2014 and her MA of Teaching from SIU in 2015. She earned her BA from Beloit College in 2010 with majors in Music and Spanish. She taught Spanish at the high school level and then developed Spanish curriculum for the private sector before returning to SIU, this time as an Assistant Lecturer. Teaching is her passion. She teaches a variety of Spanish grammar and content courses. Her academic interests include Second Language Acquisition, Modern Latinx music, and Equity in Education.

Santiago Gualapuro is an Assistant Professor in Spanish Linguistics at SIU's School of Languages and Linguistics. He earned his Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics at The Ohio State University in 2023. He is an Otavalo Kichwa from Northern Ecuador. His primary research interests concern the sociolinguistics of indigenous-colonial language relationships in Ecuador, Kichwa-Spanish language contact and its effects in Kichwa, indigenous ideologies, writing systems, and language activism in indigenous languages.

Classics

David M. Johnson (a.k.a. Dr. J) is a classicist who has taught content courses from the Bronze Age to Late Antiquity, and language courses in both Latin and Greek. Johnson's primary research interest is the Athenian author Xenophon (c. 430-350 BCE), particularly Xenophon's works about Socrates. Johnson received a Ph.D. in Classics from UNC Chapel Hill in 1996, and has taught at SIUC in 1998.

Spanish

Dr. Jennifer Smith received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Literature from Indiana University. Her main area of research is late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iberian literature and culture, with a special focus on medical discourses on gender and sexuality and their dialog with literary works. Her research also explores questions of race and class. She has published four books: Women, Mysticism, and Hysteria in Fin-de-siècle Spain (Vanderbilt UP, 2021, author), Modern Spanish Women as Agents of Change (Bucknell UP, 2018, editor), Intersections of Race, Class, Gender, and Nation in Fin-de-Siècle Spanish Literature and Culture (Routledge, 2017, co-editor with Lisa Nalbone), and Emilia Pardo Bazán’s Insolación (Cervantes & Co., 2011, editor). She has also authored numerous articles and book chapters.

Japanese

はじめまして！

I am a professor in the School of Languages and Linguistics. My academic interests include Japanese language and culture, language pedagogy, and international education. I enjoy teaching a variety of courses in these areas. In addition to on-campus courses, I teach a study-abroad course that takes place in Japan. I hope to meet and learn with you in one or more of my courses!

Chinese

Shu-Ling Wu received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Literatures from the University of Hawaii. Prior to SIU, she taught at the University of Hawaii, Kapiolani Community College, the Defense Language Institute, and the United States Military Academy at West Point. Her research interests include: second language acquisition, language testing and assessment, and Chinese linguistics and literature. She enjoys teaching Chinese language and culture courses at all levels and aims to cultivate experts who have a deep understanding of Chinese language and culture and can contribute to the exchanges and dialogues between the East and the West

Chinese

Wan-Jun Wu received her MA in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language from the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom in 2016. Sponsored by the Taiwan Huayu Best Grant Program and Wenzao University, she is teaching at SIUC as a visiting instructor. Before SIUC, she worked as a Chinese lecturer at Lunghwa University of Science and Technology. She has taught Chinese language and culture courses at all levels domestically in Taiwan and abroad in Indonesia and Poland. She is enthusiastic about promoting cultural exchanges and helping learners to improve their Chinese skills.