• Volume XIV

    Dear Readers,
    It is a pleasure to return to The Kennesaw Tower as the Editor-in-Chief! When I founded the journal in 2009, I had planned originally to offer a space for Undergraduate Students at Kennesaw State University to have a “light at the end of the tunnel” with regards to their senior-level papers. I had never imagined that we would play host to the highest possible level of undergraduate research on a wide variety of topics related to World Language Pedagogy, Cultures, and Literatures. In the current volume alone, we read about comparative Francophone literature as an expression of the complexities of post-colonial cultural intertext, art and the bullfight in Spain, the timelessness of the message of Picasso’s Guernica, and comparative techniques of preservation of the French language among the Quebecoise and the Cajun French speakers of Louisiana.

    As the voices of undergraduate researches grow in authority and in mastery of their topics, the need for a space to listen and be heard becomes that much more evident. The intellectual vitality their work expresses, in its breadth and depth of content and analysis, reveals a potential for the continued work in our fields of inquiry. Their words endure, throughout the generations, as a testament to the power of the mind. With this, I invite you to enjoy Volume XIV of The Kennesaw Tower!

    Dr. Robert Simon
    Professor of Spanish and Portuguese,
    Coordinator of the Spanish Program,
    Editor-in-Chief

L’entre-deux, l’écriture et le retour au pays chez Fatou Diome et Dany Laferrière 

Kayla Burrell is a senior at Furman University in Greenville, SC, where she will receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in French in May 2025 with a minor in linguistics. She has completed two Summer Research Fellowships at Furman University. The first was in linguistics in 2023, when she worked with a team led by Dr. Stephanie Knouse on the Language Learning Experiences project. The second was in French in 2024, when she did research on the British poet of French expression Renée Vivien and translated her poems from French to English with the guidance of Dr. Nathan Brown. At conferences, she has presented findings from both fellowships, as well as two papers developed in upper-level literature classes in French. In addition, she wrote a book review that was published in The French Review in 2023. Seven of her poems have been  published in The Echo, Furman University’s literary and visual arts magazine. Her primary academic interests include poetry, linguistic and cultural identities, and literary translation.
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Pintando la imagen española: La celebridad y la identidad nacional de Goya en su representación de la corrida de toros.

Kaleb Hyatt is a recent graduate of the University of West Georgia, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Foreign Languages and Literatures with a concentration in Spanish. He is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Spanish at Georgia Southern University. His academic interests include Hispanic linguistics, second language acquisition, Spanish art history, and pedagogy in world language education. He is currently the Spanish Teacher at Bay Springs Middle School in Villa Rica, Georgia but hopes to move into higher ed after the completion of his graduate studies. Kaleb has presented at state and regional conferences where he has explored topics related to language instruction and cultural integration. His work focuses on the intersection of language and culture, emphasizing the importance of fostering cultural understanding and its implementation in language education as well as practical application of pedagogical research.
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El eco atemporal de Guernica: un viaje a través de la historia y el significado

Caleb Peare graduated from Wabash College, a private men's college in Indiana, with the class of 2024. He studied Spanish, French, and Education. While at Wabash, he was afforded the opportunity to study abroad in Valencia, Spain for a semester and expanded his cultural and linguistic literacy. He plans on using his degree to teach Spanish at a high school level going into the Fall of 2025.
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Unifier la francophonie nord-américaine : une exploration du passé, du présent et de l’avenir de la collaboration Québec-Louisiane pour la préservation de la langue française

Eleanore (Ellie) Strong is a second-year undergraduate student at Harvard College. She is pursuing a major in Economics, a minor in Computer Science, and a language citation in French. Ms. Strong is the president of the Harvard Undergraduate Foreign Policy Initiative and a leader in finance student organizations, such as Harvard Undergraduate Capital Partners and Smart Women Securities. Ms. Strong has received numerous awards for her academic excellence and varied pursuits, including being awarded scholarships from the American Foreign Service Association and the Fisher House Foundation. She is a member of the National Honor Society and was selected to participate in the Virginia Governor’s French Language Academy. The study of French has been a common thread throughout Ms. Strong’s peripatetic childhood, which took her to six countries, including Saudi Arabia, Bulgaria, and Poland. In addition to French, she is fluent in Czech.
 
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