Department of Modern Languages
Faculty and Staff Information
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Laura Do, Administrative Assistant. Assists chairperson; responsible for managing department, gift, and grant budgets; composes brochures, fliers, etc.; maintains department website; assists faculty and students; supervises student help; enters course schedule into Peoplesoft; assists with travel forms; schedules and coordinates events; and maintains office supplies. Laura is a Cleveland native and lives in North Olmsted with her family. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology from Cleveland State University. Her hobbies include reading (especially Vietnamese fiction translated into English), searching flea markets and antique stores for old tea cups and saucers, and roaming library book sales looking for "just the right books" for her family library. Room: Rhodes Tower 1619-A,
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Heba El-Attar, Assistant Professor of Spanish. Her teaching interests include both Spanish and Arabic languages and Literatures. Originally from Cairo, Egypt, she has received her M.A. in Translation from Cairo (1996), then her PhD in 20th Century Peninsular Literature from Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2003). In 2004, She received an M.A. in Latin American literature from UW-Milwaukee. Her research interests include Peninsular, Arabic and Latin American literatures.
Click here for a link to Al-Andalus syllabus Room: Rhodes Tower 1625,
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Tama Lea Engelking, Professor of French and Chairperson of the Department. Click here for a link to: Putting the contents of "Entre Amis" textbook and workbook disks on your computer (it will be an Adobe file). Click here for supplementary teaching materials for French Review article, "Senegalese Women, Education and Polygamy in Une si longue lettre and Faat Kine." Click here for a link to: AATF Book Club Preview: Lafayette
Room: Rhodes Tower 1620 |
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Delia V. Galván, Associate Professor of Spanish was born in Mexico City, where she studied business and acquired experience in the international field. She earned a BA in Foreign Affairs, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of Cincinnati. Before coming to CSU in 1991, she taught at Bucknell and John Carroll Universities. Her teaching interests are literature and civilization of Spanish America. Her research and publications are on Latin American women writers of fiction, and contemporary Mexican narrative.
Room: Rhodes Tower 1621 |
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Stephen D. Gingerich, Assistant Professor of Spanish: specializes in Spanish Literature from the Generación de 98 to the present. He received his PhD. in Comparative Literature from the University at Buffalo and worked for two years as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas. He has an abiding interest in Spanish Cinema and in the relationship between literature and philosophy; this latter takes form in his recent studies on Juan Benet and in his ongoing work on post-Heideggerian philosophy. Although he lived in Ecuador as a child, his closest ties in the Hispanic world are to Barcelona, where he studied and worked for several years.
Room: Rhodes Tower 1628 |
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Annie Jouan-Westlund, Associate Professor of French.
Room: Rhodes Tower 1634 |
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Edward R. Haymes, Professor of German and Comparative Literature. Medieval German literature, Old Norse language and literature. Latin language. Medieval Epic.
Room: Rhodes Tower 1649 |
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Antonio Medina-Rivera, Associate Professor of Spanish. Originally from Caguas, Puerto Rico, Dr. Medina-Rivera received his BA in Hispanic Studies from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. His MA is from SUNY at Stony Brook, and PhD from University of Southern California. Dr. Medina-Rivera's fields of study include sociolinguistics and cultural studies with special emphasis on Spanish in the US, stylistic variation, food and literature, Rosario Ferre, and US Latino writers. He is the Director of Cultural Crossings, the coordinator of the Symposium Crossing Over, and the coordinator of Graduate Studies in Spanish. Click here to view Dr. Medina-Rivera's curriculum vitae.
Room: Rhodes Tower 1633 |
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Diana Orendi, Associate Professor of German. A native of Frankfurt, Germany, did her undergraduate work at the Universities of Heidelberg and Munich. She holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in German from Washington University, St. Louis and an M.A. in English from John Carroll University. She teaches German language and literature on all levels, and European and Non-Western Literature in Translation. Orendi's fields of specialization, both in her teaching and for scholarly publications, are Holocaust literature, and multicultural literature, specifically German-Jewish literature in postwar Germany. A book she co-edited on this topic, entitled, Evolving Jewish Identities in German Culture, has just been published.
Room: Rhodes Tower 1627
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Tina (D'Onofrio) Plesca, a native Ohioan, obtained her undergraduate degree in International Relations with a second major in Spanish from Cleveland State University in 2001. She also received her Master's degree in Spanish Culture from CSU in 2004. Her teaching interests include both Spanish and Italian languages, literatures and cultures. Before becoming a full-time faculty member of Cleveland State University, Tina Marie worked with the University Studies Program at CSU, as well as with the Academic Testing Services, and was a substitute teacher at the local High Schools. Beyond this she also has been actively involved in programs on campus as well as within the community with groups like Latinos Unidos and the Cleveland Council on World Affairs. A few of the CSU programs of interest have included work with the Upward Bound Program. Within the community, Tina Marie has been involved in programs that not only focus on the Hispanic community, but is also within the Italian community. She has attended many conferences and presented many topics that surround her research interests and goals. In her research she strives to capture the community by displaying how writers and artists work as social and political "mobilizers" for lesser heard voices of Latin America. She would also like to take her work into the peninsular realm of Spanish and also branch into Italian social issues. Her concentration of late however mostly focuses on her teaching and the importance of language acquisition among students of Spanish and Italian. Tina Marie Plesca loves to travel, and frequently travels to Mexico, as well as Italy, and Spain.
Room: Rhodes Tower 1615 |
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Reenie (Maureen) Pruitt obtained her undergraduate degree in Spanish Education from the University of West Florida in Pensacola. As a part of her studies, she lived in Costa Rica where she taught English as a Foreign Language. She subsequently earned a Master’s of Accountancy degree from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and for several years worked as a tax manager of a Fortune 500 company and as a tax accountant and investment consultant for one of the Forbes Richest 200 people in the World. She later earned her Master’s in Spanish with a concentration in linguistics and culture from Cleveland State University to return to her first love teaching. She taught in several colleges and high schools and coached basketball in her community before returning in 2006 to CSU to teach Spanish. Reenie loves to travel and has visited 43 states and 18 foreign countries, including Spain, Mexico and Costa Rica.
Room: Rhodes Tower 1614 |
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Abed el-Rahman Tayyara, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic. He earned his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies at New York University. His dissertation is entitled, "The Reflection of non-Islamic Cultures in Early Islamic Universal Histories." He earned his BA in History and Classical Studies, and M.A. in Roman History at Tel-Aviv University. He taught at New York University before coming to Cleveland State University where he is teaching Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic. Dr. Tayyara's teaching and research interests include a wide range of areas, such as History of Islam and the Middle East, Islamic historiography, classical Arabic literature, the transmission of knowledge from Greek culture to the Islam, Semitic languages, and Byzantine history.
Room: Rhodes Tower 1606
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Lee Wilberschied, Associate Professor of Spanish and Foreign Language Instruction: holds a bachelor's from Cleveland State University, a Masters degree from University of Akron, and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University. She is a member of the ACTFL New Visions Task force on Teacher Recruitment and Retention. Her research work has included recruitment and retention of preservice and inservice foreign and second language teachers, service learning in language instruction and teacher training, and peer mentoring.
Room: Rhodes Tower 1610 |
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Kelly Wrenhaven, Assistant Professor of Classics. Obtained her PhD from the University of St Andrews. Also holds an MPhil in Ancient History from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Classics from the University of British Columbia. Before arriving at CSU, she held lectureships in Ancient History and Classics at the University of Victoria and Trinity College Dublin.
Her research interests include Greek slavery, especially how the Greeks used artistic and written representations of slaves to justify and "naturalize" the institution. She is also interested in ancient perceptions of the body, especially ideas about beauty and ugliness and perceived differences between slave and free, barbarian and Greek bodies, depictions of courtesans in art and literature and, more broadly, ancient ideas about prostitution and sexuality. She is currently preparing a book, tentatively titled Reconstructing the Slave: an examination of slave representation in the Greek polis (Duckworth). In addition, her recent article on "The Identity of the Wool-Workers in the Attic Manumissions" is due out shortly (Hesperia 78.3) and she has two chapters forthcoming in edited collections on ancient slavery and Attic comedy.
Room: Rhodes Tower 1629 |
The Modern Languages Department
College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
Cleveland State University
2121 Euclid Ave., RT 1619
Cleveland, OH 44115-2214
Rhodes Tower, Room 1619
1860 East 22nd Street
Phone: 216.687.4645
Fax: 216.687.4650
E-mail: modlang@csuohio.edu