Micro-Seminar: ¡Al rescate!: Save the LA River…with your Spanish PART ONE

Micro-Seminars have two parts. Attendance to both parts is required. Registering for the PART ONE session will automatically enroll you in the PART TWO session on Friday.

Part 1: Thursday, August 22, 2024 from 3:00 – 4:30 pm (PST)
Part 2: Friday, August 23, 2024 from 10:00 – 11:30 am (PST)

All are welcome to this micro-seminar (no Spanish necessary) with a brief history of the Los Angeles River, its current state, revitalization plans through film, photography, and other graphic arts. We will visit the LA River X/Río de Los Ángeles X humanities project to understand how it disseminates the revitalization of the iconic river through the promotion of artistic representations of the river in English/Spanish Instagram posts that are later archived in the Western Water Project at The Claremont Colleges.

You will create/find an image of the river that resonates with you and caption it. As a group, we will edit captions and translate them.

At the conclusion of the seminar, you will be able to:
•discuss critical moments in the evolution of the LA River; how it has shaped the ecology and the landscape of Los Angeles; and impacted Losangelinos; their lives, their livelihoods, and their way of life
•recognize different organizations that work on the revitalization of the LA River; compare/evaluate their competing interests
•create or access imagery to represent your interpretation of the LA River, compose captions in English and Spanish to illustrate the images, revising them for clarity and impact
•use your images to disseminate your learning on Instagram

Day 1 In class: History of the LA River, revitalization and reimagination through text and film. Task: Visit the LA River or Zanja Madre in person or online or create an image of the river. Photograph/film (digitize)what you see or inspires you and post it here.

Day 2 In class: Presentation and discussion of images. Creation of captions in English for the images. Workshop-style translation/editing of captions and hashtags. Post images to your Ig. Wrap-up and invitation to Collaborative Translation Workshop.

Lead By: Professor Gayle Fiedler Vierma

Gayle Fiedler Vierma, Associate Professor (Teaching) of Spanish in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, teaches courses in Spanish Language and Culture, Translation, and the Methodology of Teaching Foreign Languages, specializing in Evaluation and Statistics. She is the author of Testing Manual to Accompany Atando cabos and co-author of the Electronic Workbook to Accompany Conéctate: Introductory Spanish. Her current project focuses on the Los Angeles River ecosystem and gave rise to a collaborative translation workshop for the LA River X/Río de Los Ángeles X, a digital humanities project, with her undergraduate students. This project offers students the opportunity to learn real-world translation skills and to have their work published, then archived in the Western Water Project at The Claremont Colleges.

Academic Honors and Fellowships | Website | View More Events

Contact the organizers