About Our Ninth Issue
The 2025 issue of CANAL features eleven projects created in five languages: French, Italian, Khmer, Portuguese, and Spanish.
The range of this work reflects the diversity of the students and graduates of UMass Lowell’s Department of World Languages and Cultures. Writing on international contexts of human rights and health equity appears next to analysis on the effect of literary strategies on philosophical ideas. A unique student contribution to the university’s Open Education Resources in Italian is joined by dynamic creative work in Khmer, Portuguese, and French. All of these projects, shaped by the department and its professors, show what is possible through the careful, engaged study of language and culture.
The issue begins with Aaron Preziosi’s documentation of Dacia Maraini’s invited lecture at the university on November 20, 2024. A translation (and expansion) of his article for The Connector, it allows Italian readers to learn how Maraini’s latest book, Vita mia, reflects on her family’s imprisonment in Japan during World War Two. Preziosi writes about how Maraini’s early experiences with hunger and repression shaped her dedication to speaking out against state violence while advocating for human rights and civil liberties.
Dylan Hubbard’s essay on Rossella Schilaci describes the film screening of her documentary Ninna Nanna Prigioniera (Imprisoned Lullaby, 2016) at UMass Lowell in the spring of 2024, together with the conversation with the director that followed. Hubbard highlights the issues of human rights and criminal justice from the film, which showed a Roma woman, Yasmina, who was being held in an Italian prison together with her two small children.
These two lectures were organized by the Italian professors of the Department of World Languages and Cultures, Fabiana Viglione and Giulia Po DeLisle. The next two works featured in the issue also focus on human rights and criminal justice.
Dunia Gomes’s essay is a personal reflection on the internship that she was able to complete at Lowell’s District Court in 2024 through the Department of World Languages and Cultures. She writes that her advanced Spanish courses prepared her to assist clients with legal questions, provide necessary translations, and work with others to ensure that their situations and responsibilities were clear. Each case, for her, represents a complex set of life circumstances that reveals different aspects of the legal system in Lowell. Gomes shows how linguistic barriers can create unique challenges for immigrants in Lowell and demonstrates the need for multilingual proficiency to best serve the community.
Bianca Correa, in “Os Impactos de Gênero, Sexualidade e Raça nos Resultados de Saúde: Reflexões sobre o Brasil e os Estados Unidos,” presents her research and personal reflections on health disparities in Brazil and the United States. Her project, conducted with Diana Gomes Simões, combined her own survey results with current academic research on systemic barriers in both countries. Focusing on how discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and sexuality can affect people’s access to appropriate medical care, Correa shows why she is dedicated to using her Portuguese abilities to improve healthcare equity.
Dylan Goldman, in “La Voix De Camus À Travers Ses Œuvres,” offers a study on how Albert Camus’ literary strategies shift across different contexts and genres. It is the result of a directed study with Kristen Stern and focuses on three works by Camus: L’Étranger, La Peste, and Reflexions sur la guillotine. Goldman interrogates the notion of authorial ‘voice’ to suggest that novels and essays allowed Camus to present his philosophical ideas in a variety of registers, styles, and voices that added to their impact as well as to the complexity of his own public identity.
In “Uma Viagem Inesquecível” Kaylee Estevao and Bianca Correa join Marcella Viana, Anne-Marie Vaudo, and Juliana Motta, authors of “Dia da Lavandaria,” in sharing the short stories that they wrote in Diana Gomes Simões’s Portuguese course “Advanced Composition and Conversation.” The authors reflect on how these exercises in storytelling improved their own speaking abilities by combining creativity, collaboration, and structured attention to grammar. Sofía García Soto’s “Do Campo para a Cidade: Quem Sou Eu” is a thoughtful biographical text written in Frank Sousa’s “Advanced Portuguese Grammar” course that describes the shift the author experienced when she left Puerto Rico’s countryside for the city of Boston in a way that is inspired by the work of the poet Luís de Camões.
Aliiyah Cole’s “Arte e alfabeto” is a meditative art and language project that was created to add to the university’s Open Educational Resources (OER) developed by Giulia Po DeLisle and Fabiana Viglione in Italian. Cole used traditional Italian techniques to create original paintings for a video teaching students about the alphabet in Italian. Each letter was paired with a food item (and a painting) to create a visually striking educational resource for students beginning to study Italian.
The final two projects of the issue combine music and poetry. The first is a French rap video produced by four teams of students guided by Danielle Boutwell. Titled « Et, toi ? Tu viens d’où ? », it is a dynamic collaboration involving acting, writing, production and organization. Bringing music, poetry, and videography together, it shows how creative energy, fun, and self-expression can be intertwined with linguistic study.
The second project comes from one of the graduates of our program, Lay Lon. His two music videos, created in Cambodia, began with poetry he wrote about his experiences with Lowell’s Cambodian community as well as his time at UMass Lowell. They too are collaborations, including music composed by Ouk Sam Art (a Khmer Rouge survivor), production and editing from Mai Vathana, and the singing of Pech Chakriya and Toeng Buntem.
It is with great appreciation to both the creators of these projects and the professors who helped shape them that we invite you to read and share the essays, videos, and stories in CANAL’s ninth issue.