In Aileen A. Feng’s seminar course ITAL 410 “Machiavelli and His Legacies,” students this semester went beyond their literary studies to research and interpret Renaissance prints from the University of Arizona Museum of Art collection. 

As they worked through an in-depth study of Niccolò Machiavelli’s famous 1532 political treatise Il Principe in its original 16^th-century language, the students also became guest curators, using the themes from their reading to analyze and interpret artworks made in Italy during the same time period. 

The class then staged a pop-up exhibition, “L’occhio del Principe: Machiavellian Lessons Through Renaissance Prints,” on May 1 in the UAMA study classroom, featuring five prints from the museum’s collection, dating from roughly 1480-1650, alongside interpretive labels written by the students. 

“Originally, I wanted to bring them to the museum so they could be immersed in visual art of the period we were studying, and to bring them to Special Collections so they could consult some of the earliest printed books out of Italy, including the first editions of Machiavelli’s works” Feng said. “But when I met with Willa (Ahlschwede) at the museum to talk about potential class visits and how to get my students really engaged with the collection, she said ‘Why don’t we do a pop-up exhibition?’” 

Feng, Associate Professor and Director of Italian Studies, had already examined the museum’s catalog of more than 200 Italian Renaissance artworks and then for the pop-up she pre-selected 12 prints that presented themes the students would learn about as they studied Il Principe. 

“This was a big ask because these are language and literature students, not art history students. They walked in thinking it was just an Italian literature class, and that their biggest challenge would be learning how to read Renaissance Italian, and now they had to learn about visual art and label writing for a museum,” Feng said. “They had to start thinking about Machiavellian themes very early in their reading and as we got later into the semester, they were really able to take ownership of their prints and bring something to their artworks that other curators wouldn’t necessarily think of.” 

Ahlschwede, Assistant Curator of Education & Public Programs, said part of the museum’s mission is to create art experiences for all students. 

“We work with a lot of students, frequently art and art history, but we strive to work with students beyond that, so we love these interdisciplinary connections. It’s an easy and natural fit with humanities students and how they’re learning to connect with all kinds of cultural artifacts,” Ahlschwede said. “It’s a special treat to pull prints out of our vault and work with students who can bring new insights. 

The class took visits to the museum, looking at the permanent Kress Collection on display and receiving a primer on the art of the era and the transition from the Italian Middle Ages to Renaissance. They also learned how to write interpretive labels in a workshop with UAMA Curatorial Assistant Violet Arma. 

The 11 student—Adrien Able, Sierra Beard, Nina Doering, Alex Gardner, Kate Jaramillo, Manuela Maldonado Cadeñanes, Stella Marcuzzo, Sadie Parent, Jairo Parra, Christian Schifano and Talia Tardogno—then worked in teams, selecting five of the prints Feng presented to them, writing interpretive labels for the pop-up exhibition.

“They each brought something from their own academic backgrounds and perspectives, so they had different engagements with the prints and were able to learn things from one another too,” she said. 

Tardogno and Beard chose Ugo da Carpi’s David Slaying Goliath, a chiaroscuro woodcut from 1518. In Il Principe, Machiavelli praises David for only relying on his slingshot to defeat his opponent rather than borrowing the weapons of others. In the woodcut print, David appears holding a sword over Goliath, rather than with his slingshot, already having downed the giant.

“This represents a part of the battle that’s not usually shown and it signifies triumph and victory,” Tardogno said. “We related it to Machiavelli because in Machiavelli’s ideals, to be a good prince or leader, you have to rely on your own weapons. David [with his slingshot] embodies this ideal that to overcome challenges, you have to do it yourself.”

Beard said the project was daunting at first, but as they developed a deeper understanding of Machiavelli’s text, they realized the artwork became a helpful way to analyze themes like virtù and fortuna, which don’t have single-word meanings. 

“With Italian, there are concepts that can’t be translated as easily into English,” she said. “And this print represents some of those.” 

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Schifano and Parra chose Naval Battle Between the Greeks and Trojans, an engraving from 1538 by Giovanni Battista Scultori. 

“What attracted us was the pure detail of the engraving,” Schifano said. “There are so many intricate things that you could stare at for hours. It really tells a complete story.” 

Though it depicts a chapter of Homer’s Iliad, their analysis centered on Machiavelli’s analogy of a fox and a lion as two personas a prince must have, with the fox representing cunning and cleverness, and the lion representing strength and power. 

“When we saw this engraving, we thought about how it connects to Machiavelli talking about a battlefield and war,” Parra said. 

The pop-up exhibition drew 64 visitors, including Ken McAllister, College of Humanities Associate Dean of Research and Program Innovation, who said it was impressive to see the students so engaged with their work, and so supportive of each other. 

“As an archivist, I was delighted to see students beginning to understand the often tricky art of producing interpretive materials for an exhibition. Though brief, this practice will stay with these students for a lifetime I suspect. They'll never visit a museum or gallery again without thinking, if just for a second: "Someone made these signs and labels, and to do that, they had to think through a bunch of issues and make decisions about how best to invite viewers into the experience of a piece,’” he said. “It was a brilliant event that reminded me yet again that COH faculty are life changers and world makers.”

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Feng said that when she teaches the course again, the UAMA collaboration and pop-up exhibit will become a permanent part of the class. 

“It gave students an opportunity to critically engage with cultural objects they don’t normally study in an Italian literature class and to apply their specialized knowledge about a political treatise to  artworks of the same period,” Feng said. “They have developed an expertise and a skill set that can be applied to many different media.” 

Eighty years after chemical dumping began contaminating groundwater near the Tucson airport – and 30 years after remediation efforts began – a class of Applied Humanities students brought the story into the digital age, focusing on community efforts for water justice. 

Jacqueline Barrios, Assistant Professor in the Department of Public and Applied Humanities, centered this semester’s course, “Southside Stories of Environmental Resilience,” on the issue of environmental harm from the Trichloroethylene (TCE) water contamination crisis, which dates to the 1940s and continues to this day. 

Through an interdisciplinary approach, students in the course – PAH 420: Innovation and the Human Condition: Learning How to Improve Life in the Community and Beyond – work on analyzing the cultural, political and economic conditions involved in a community-based issue, identifying opportunities for improvement, and delivering a multi-faceted presentation on positive interventions of their design. 

“How do you tell the story of water? It’s endlessly flowing and hard to capture,” Barrios said. “Whose story is it? There are so many wheres, so many whens, so many whos. All of the projects here do their part to try to tell that story.”  

Over the course of the semester, the students were assigned readings, spent time doing archival research, reviewed oral histories, conducted their own interviews, and visited pertinent sites for their own documentation. Their final projects were to prototype publicly engaged projects that introduce new audiences to the ongoing story of environmental contamination and resilience. 

“Altogether, the projects and visual record provided a layered narrative of the complicated histories of the watershed — from contamination to remediation, from depletion to recharge, from histories of harm to an interconnected ecological future with our riparian home,” Barrios said. 

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The 10 group projects included a time capsule, scavenger hunt, short film, mural, digital photography, a comic-style zine, collages, a water-saving campaign and social media campaigns on Instagram and TikTok. 

Zoe Gyuro, Marty Weich, Megan Tierney and Jack Carpenter chose to create a digital photo collection for their project Water Whispers, building a website as a visual archive and map. They visited the Three Hangars site where contamination began, the Santa Cruz River and neighborhood wells and learned about the issues directly from community members. 

“For our project, we hope to contribute to ongoing efforts to rewrite narratives of the Southside as more than a site of environmental upset, but a place of deep culture, resilience and creative expression,” the group wrote. 

“We want to expose what’s been going on in Tucson for many years and what’s still going on with these wells,” Carpenter said. “The highlight for me was seeing these wells, going out into these neighborhood and meeting the families who are still dealing with this problem.”  

For Tierney, who switched from being a business major to an Applied Humanities with an emphasis in Business Administration, the project was valuable for how extensively the students got to interact with the community.  

“This project has been a lot more personal and I feel like it has had community impact,” Tierney said. “We’ve listened to different speakers and we’ve been able to take those stories and create something that can influence people and connect with anyone. It’s taught me a lot about the importance of community and standing up for what’s right.” 

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Gyuro said the project taught her about the importance of community effort and how different people, and different ways of interacting with people, can come together for an impact. 

“If we work together, we can make sure other people within the community and broadly can feel comfortable expressing to one another when they need help, but that they can help each other,” she said. “When it comes to humanities, you have to involve yourself.” 

For Weich, documenting the areas via digital photography was a way to augment what he found doing archival research in the University Libraries’ Special Collections. Three Hangars especially was an important area to capture, even decades after remediation efforts began. 

“I really wanted to show not only how fallen apart it is, but how fenced off it is,” he said. “This is where it all started and that’s import for us as students to remember.” 

Liz Soltero, CEO of the Sunnyside Foundation, said the organization is grateful to have such a strong and reciprocal partnership with Barrios and her students, who demonstrated care and respect in their projects. 

“This has been a truly great experience,” she told the students during their final presentations. “The work that you are engaging in and focusing on has so much impact in our lives. Every time we talk with students, I share that this isn’t just an assignment, this is our lives. At the Sunnyside Foundation, we feel honored to engage in this way and have an exchange of ideas about the community we love.” 

The course was supported by the University Libraries’ Digital Borderlands in the Classroom program, as well as the Research + Resilience Grants program co-sponsored by the Arizona Institute for Resilience and the College of Fine Arts. Barrios and her students collaborated with Professor Martina Shenal’s students in ART 343A: Traditional Photographic Techniques, working on visual storytelling. Previously, Barrios received a Research + Resilience grant for a related project, Documenting Resilience in Tucson’s Southside, in collaboration with the Center for Creative Photography and College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture. 

The course’s final review featured gallery walks of ten student projects with projected slideshows and table displays, and two sets of lightning talks, with about 50 community and campus guests in attendance, including community activists who’ve spent decades fighting for clean, safe water. 

Marla Franco, Vice President for Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) Initiatives, said uniting students and community partners in collaborative and innovative projects benefits everyone.

“These are the types of experiential, hands-on learning opportunities that are deeply rooted in community needs and desires that I only dream of happening,” she said. “Often it needs only a little seed money and an expression of belief in people. Our faculty and students activated this in ways we never thought possible. This epitomizes what happens when you dream big and bring your expertise and passion to the table.” 

Yolanda Herrera, co-chair of the Unified Community Advisory Board, Tucson International Airport Area Superfund Site, and president of the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association, said she enjoyed engaging with the students and observing how their projects developed. 

“I’m really impressed and motivated and inspired by all the students’ work,” Herrera said. “You are the solution of our future. Never forget that. And always remember, clean, safe water is life.”  

As the inaugural H3 Interdisciplinary Scholars, Ryan Haymore and Nagasriya Ramisetty each developed their own unique ways to unite their studies in the humanities and health. 

Ramisetty is a double major in Applied Humanities, with an emphasis in Public Health, and Physiology and Medical Sciences, with minors in Adolescents, Community, and Education (ACE) and Creative Writing. Haymore is majoring in Spanish & Portuguese, with a minor in Biochemistry. Both are honors students and both are working toward medical school. 

As the first two students selected for the Health Humanities Hub Interdisciplinary Scholars program, they demonstrate how readily new collaborations at the intersection of health and humanities can be created. 

“It was fascinating to see how they each brought their own experiences, strengths, and academic perspectives to bear. At a campus wellness event, Ryan used his language skills to converse with visitors in Portugues, and Sriya used her artistic talent to create a beautiful scaffold for a collective poem. They embody the wide variety of possibilities within the health humanities, from the linguistic and cultural aspects of healthcare to the role of creative expression in studying and supporting well-being,” said H3 Coordinator Christine Hoekenga. 

Ramisetty, a Flinn scholar from the Phoenix area, came into college as a pre-medicine student studying physiology, but soon added the Applied Humanities major since it fit her interest in narrative medicine and the changing healthcare environment.   

“This is the perfect crucible for me to combine all my interests. It perfectly synthesizes why I think the humanities lend themselves to better health practices and how the humanities can be healing,” she said. 

Haymore chose his major knowing that with a diversifying patient population, the intercultural skills from the humanities would be increasingly important, and would also make him stand out when applying to medical school. 

“I always wanted to do something other than a science major, to use the undergraduate opportunity to become more well-rounded. I already knew Spanish somewhat fluently and I wanted to continue learning languages, so that was my introduction to the humanities. I love the history, the art, the music, all those other things that go into learning about the culture and language,” said Haymore, who was drawn to the internship in an email list of opportunities. “As soon as I saw health and humanities in the same phrase, I knew that was exactly what I wanted to do.” 

Together, Haymore and Ramisetty conducted a research project on social prescribing, a promising healthcare approach that connects patients to community organizations to address social determinants of health. There are a variety of activities and organizations, but common areas of focus include nature, exercise and art. 

They reviewed recent research, analyzing dozens of programs to understand the variety of models and created a general diagram of how social prescribing works. Because most of the case studies are in Europe, Australia and Canada, they examined different health care systems and economic structures. They also identified gaps in the literature, opportunities for future research, and potential limitations for social prescribing to gain more momentum in U.S. They presented their research at the Franke Honors Pinnacle in April. 

“One thing they did that’s impressive and different was to go beyond the academic literature and spend time looking at toolkits and action plans created by community organizations outside academia,” Hoekenga said. “It’s a research project with a very applied component.” 

Separately, Ramisetty presented an independent research project, which she also presented at the Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association in March. The work in progress is a literature review of different components of Asian American mental health stigma, analyzing how individuals experience it vs. how the community perceives it and how that is integrated into policy. Next, Ramisetty will conduct interviews for patient narratives as she expands the research into her honors thesis project. 

Haymore, who lived in Argentina before college, completed his honors thesis his junior year, examining connections between language learning and well-being, reviewing literature on how cognitive decline can be prevented by learning another language. He presented his thesis in both English and Spanish. He will graduate after the fall semester and has received early acceptance to the College of Medicine – Tucson. 

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Throughout the semester, the scholars also served as ambassadors for the health humanities. Haymore represented H3 alongside faculty and students from the Center for Digital Humanities at a Fuel Wonder event in February in Scottsdale, showcasing a variety of health-humanities collaborations. Both scholars participated in the Be-Leaf and Bloom event hosted by Campus Health in April, creating a Poe-Tree, an exercise encouraging people to write their own mini-poems about where they are from, to demonstrate how people’s experiences can be linked to social determinants of health. Ramisetty is creating a digital art piece to showcase the results. 

Brimming with more ideas than they can tackle in a semester, Haymore and Ramisetty, along with fellow H3 intern Taylor Raney, are also developing a framework for increased student engagement in the Health Humanities Hub, potentially a club or ambassador program to enable ongoing and larger scale activities. 

Five students in the new Portuguese Flagship Program have received the prestigious Boren Scholarship, worth $25,000, to fund their capstone years in Brazil. 

The Portuguese Flagship Program was launched in fall 2024 with a $1.2 million grant, which provides numerous resources to students studying Portuguese, including one-to-one advising and tutoring, career counseling with local professionals, summer study abroad opportunities in Salvador, the capital of Bahia in northeastern Brazil, and a capstone year in Brazil for additional classes and internships. 

“We are thrilled and proud to celebrate this achievement — it is a huge step in the academic and professional trajectory of these incredible students,” said Kátia Bezerra, Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Director of the Portuguese Flagship Program. 

The U of A is one of two institutions awarded a Portuguese Flagship grant, joining the University of Georgia, and one of four universities nationally with at least two flagship programs. The Boren recipients are Brianna Devlon, Max Hayward, Pablo Enrique Martinez Bojorquez, Julianna Schrader and Austin Willis. 

“What I value most about the Boren Scholarship is the focus on language learning tied directly to public service; I won’t just spend a capstone year in Brazil, but apply my experience in a meaningful way. The scholarship has reinforced my commitment to working in international policy, and is providing me with the tools I need to be successful in my dream career as an attorney for global human rights,” Schrader said. 

“The world I was born into isn’t the only one I’ll ever know. I make my own fate, and through Boren, learning Portuguese became the first step in changing my own world,” said Pablo Enrique Martinez Bojorquez. 

“Boren is so important to me because it is a way that I can further my knowledge about my future career field. As an aspiring Portuguese interpreter, it is extremely important that I expand my Portuguese fluency - what better way to do this than to live in Brazil! I am very grateful to have received funding to be able to travel to Brazil and continue learning a language that is so special to me. Boren is beneficial to me because instead of paying for my Flagship program out of pocket, I now have the financial help to experience Brazil and its culture to the fullest and not having finances impede my experience! I want to say thank you again to Boren for selecting me to receive such a generous and prestigious scholarship,” Hayward said. 

“Boren is so important for my educational and future career goals. Without it, I would not be able to complete my Capstone year in Brazil. I am so beyond grateful for this opportunity provided by the scholarship and I cannot wait to embark on my professional journey abroad,” Devlon said. 

The Language Flagship programs, are a public/private partnership sponsored by the National Security Education Program of the Department of Defense and administered by the Institute of International Education. The program seeks to graduate students with professional-level proficiency in a language critical to U.S. national security, including Portuguese.

The U of A has nearly 50-year history teaching Portuguese, with a multidisciplinary curriculum that has attracted about 1,600 students into Portuguese language and culture courses over the last five years. 

Jasmine Linabary, Assistant Professor in the Department of Public and Applied Humanities, will receive the 2025 Helen Award for Emerging Feminist Scholarship. 

The award, given by the International Communication Association’s Feminist Scholarship Division, “recognizes and supports those whose early research and leadership demonstrate strong contributions to date and significant promise for future development in feminist communication and/or media studies.” The award will be presented in June at the International Communication Association conference in Denver. 

“We were very impressed with your work, including its/your collaborative nature, and connection with feminism, feminist scholarship, and feminist activism,” said an announcement from the award committee. 

According to a nomination letter, Linabary’s contributions to feminist communication scholarship include co-editing a special issue and forum on feminist organization communication for Management Communication Quarterly and leading an interdisciplinary research team to explore the use of hashtags for feminist activism in response to gender-based violence. Her first-authored article about postfeminist contradictions in the hashtag #WhyIStayed has become often cited among feminist new media scholars as well as in work related to domestic violence and online and offline organizing.

In addition to her academic publications, her nominator spoke to Linabary’s collaborative work with community partners, including her long-term partnership with the nonprofit World Pulse, an independent, women-led social network for social change.

“As an engaged activist-scholar, Linabary is pushing the field forward in her use of feminist participatory action research. Thus, her influence on feminist scholarship has multiple impacts, as she is not just contributing new knowledge on issues of gender equity; she is also creating new knowledge on how to do this work differently, specifically by engaging the voices of those most affected by the issues themselves,” Linabary’s nominator wrote. “This type of creativity and leadership is unique in our field, making Linabary a go-to voice for participatory research and engaged methods.” 

Last year, Linabary received the Dorrance Dean’s Award for Research & Entrepreneurialism from the College of Humanities for her project “Engaging Voices from the ‘Margin to the Center’: Activating Methods of the Humanities to #ShiftthePower.” 

Congratulations to Jiang Wu, Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies and Director of the Center for Buddhist Studies, on being named a Regents Professor! 

Interim Provost Ron Marx introduced Wu to the Arizona Board of Regents as the “recognized go-to scholar for Chinese and East Asian Buddhism.” Marx listed praise from international scholars for Wu’s ground-breaking first book Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-century China, published in 2008, including a statement that Wu is “one of the most productive and creative scholars of his generation.” 

A leading scholar of Chinese and East Asian Buddhism, Wu’s research focuses on how the religion spread and how it has changed and been refined over many centuries. He has written multiple books on Chinese history, including Leaving for the Rising Sun: Chinese Zen Master Yinuan and the Authenticity Crisis in Early Modern East Asia, which won the inaugural Tianzhu Book Prize for Excellence in Chan Studies from the Tianzhu Buddhist Network.

Wu received a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2023 to support his project Scripture and Modernity: The Obaku Buddhist Canon in East Asia and the West, which examines a Buddhist text created in China and later reproduced in Japan. He was also awarded a Certificate of Congressional Recognition by U.S. Rep. Judy Chu of California and received the City of Rosemead, California, Award of Recognition in 2018.

As founding director of the university’s Center for Buddhist Studies, his leadership has significantly contributed to the center’s global reputation in the field. 

Also approved as Regents Professors were Janko Nikolich, Department Head and Professor, Department of Immunobiology in the College of Medicine – Tucson, and Dennis Zaritsky, Professor, Department of Astronomy in the College of Science. 

Regents Professor is the highest faculty rank at the University of Arizona, awarded to full professors whose exceptional achievements warrant national and international distinction. Appointments to this rank are limited to no more than 3 percent of the university’s tenured and tenure-track faculty members.

Wu is the second College of Humanities faculty member named as a Regents Professor in recent years, following Sonia Colina of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese in 2021. 

The College of Humanities is proud to announce the following recipients of the Spring 2025 COH Scholarships.

Please join us in congratulating them on their outstanding achievements!
 

Alene Kelsey Metcalf Family Scholarship
Daniela Gonzalez | Majors: Russian; Spanish; Linguistics

Dana and Jeffrey Vandersip Endowed Humanities Award
Anthony Jimenez | Majors: Spanish; Personal & Family Financial Planning
Benjamin Rothermich | Majors: German Studies; Performance

Dante S. Lauretta and M. Katherine Crombie Award
Ethan McNew | Majors: Biochemistry; Molecular & Cellular Biology; Minor: Spanish

David Evans and Lucille C. Nutt Scholarship
Elizabeth Lendo | Majors: Spanish; Art History
Chloe Thompson | Majors: Spanish; Biochemistry; Biochemistry

Gerard Agnieray Memorial Scholarship
Jazmin Stein Torres | Majors: French; Italian

Humanities Matter Scholarship
Winner: Kelli Alexander | Major: Applied Humanities
Honorable Mention: Gabe Bermudez | Major: Applied Humanities
Honorable Mention: Adrian Ureta | Majors: Spanish; Business Management

Mary Ann Farman Memorial Scholarship
Amber Grijalva Islas | Majors: Spanish; Nursing

Misto-Ertz Scholarship
Maria Mouza | Major: French
Loyda Vance | Majors: Spanish; Urban and Regional Development

Quiteria M. Nelson Scholarship
Alivia Alexander | Majors: Spanish; Leadership Learning Innovation
Alice Miranda | Majors: Italian; Biochemistry; Molecular & Cellular Biology
Dorothy Stocks | Majors: Spanish; Global Studies

Samuel and Louise McMillan Scholarship
Laurel Burkholder | Majors: German Studies; Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences
Maxwell Eller | Major: Classics

Van de Verde Memorial Scholarship
Matthew Burke | Majors: Spanish; Political Science
Linus Friedman | Majors: German Studies; Sustainable Built Environments
Maddy Ressel | Majors: French; Molecular & Cellular Biology

Stephen D. Todd Interdisciplinary Humanities Scholarship
Mia Roig | Major: Applied Humanities

STUDY ABROAD SCHOLARSHIPS

Alfred and Mary Beigel Memorial Scholarship
Maddie McCaskill | Majors: German Studies; Architecture

Donna Dillon Manning and Larry Horner Endowed Humanities Award for Study Abroad
Adiba Haque | Majors: German Studies; Biomedical Engineering
Sriya Ramisetty | Majors: Applied Humanities; Physiology & Medical Sciences

Donna Swaim Study Abroad Award for Double Majors
Abigail Chavez | Majors: Spanish; Psychology; Mexican American Studies

Werner Schirmer Memorial Scholarship
Rachel DeWitt | Majors: French; Physics
 

A sociolinguist who studies the unique aspects of bilingual speakers in border regions, Ana Carvalho has conducted research for decades in Portuguese-speaking communities of northern Uruguay. 

But Carvalho sought to tell the story of those communities in a different way, so she stepped into the world of documentary filmmaking, directing the 82-minute Vozes das Margens, a celebratory portrait of Uruguayan Portuguese, a unique dialect, while exploring how language, place and society intertwine in border living.

“I’ve been researching there for 30 years, going back a lot to continue to collect data, so it was for me, at this point in my career, an ethical obligation to think of ways to give back to the community,” she said. “I’m grateful to them, but they never saw the results of my work, so I was never able to give back. I wanted to tell the story in a different way.” 

Carvalho, a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, began preliminary work on the documentary during her 2020 sabbatical, writing a grant proposal for the project. With a faculty grant from the College of Humanities, and other funding, she began filming in 2022. The documentary, which premiered last year in Uruguay, Brazil and Portugal, will screen on campus in the fall. 

“This film is meant to celebrate diversity and celebrate bilingualism,” Carvalho said. 

Carvalho has studied bilingual Spanish-English communities in and around Tucson, but has conducted most of her research in the border region between Uruguay and Brazil. There are about 200,000 native Portuguese speakers in Uruguay, a legacy of colonization and poorly delineated borders in the 1700s and 1800s. By the end of the 19^th century, the Uruguayan government began to implement measures to eradicate Portuguese from the area and make Spanish obligatory. 

“While Uruguay was successful in implementing Spanish, in areas were Portuguese was the main language, it’s remained as a heritage language,” Carvalho said. “It’s still a local language and very attuned to the idea of the border area and identity.” 

Uruguayan Portuguese speakers can face linguistic discrimination and mocking and Carvalho said she wanted to counter the misperceptions of language abilities that designate people as “semi-lingual.” The documentary shows how truly bilingual the border residents are.

“I also wanted to disseminate ideas of language as a human right,” she said. “People have the right to speak their home language in public domains.”

The film consists of interviews with about 20 people, filmed over a 22-day period in which Carvalho and three independent documentary cinematographers she hired in Uruguay traveled more than 600 kilometers to visit various communities. 

With no outside interviews or expert opinions, the subjects of the film relate their own experiences with language. Carvalho identified common topics throughout the narratives, editing the film around the themes of bilingualism (how, when, where and to whom people are socially conditioned to speak different languages), how they acquired Portuguese at home as a heritage language, linguistic discrimination and insecurity, the community language shifting to Spanish monolingualism over generations, and not to end on a sad note, the value of local language and identity. The film features poetry and music in Uruguayan Portuguese, demonstrating regional pride. 

The film premiered in the communities where it was filmed and then at a Cinemateca in Montevideo. Carvalho said she was struck by the contrast between the largely rural audiences and the intellectual urbanites of the capital city, most of whom had no idea about the bilingual border communities. The documentary was featured in television interviews in both locales, as well as radio and newspaper interviews. 

“The press and publicity were very welcome. People could see, hear or read about sociolinguistic concepts, language ideologies and how harmful language prejudice can be,” she said. 

After showing in Uruguay, Vozes das Margens began showing at conferences and film festivals. Last October, it screened at Portugual’s long-running international festival Doclisboa, becoming a finalist for an award. The film has been submitted to additional festivals for 2025 in Germany, Italy and Canada. 

The long-term plan is to make the film available for streaming. Carvalho is currently preparing accompanying materials for teachers to use in classrooms, guiding them through discussion topics like heritage languages, bilingualism, ideologies and code-switching.

“Uruguayan Portuguese is a variety of Portuguese like any other. Because people also speak Spanish, code-switching is common, as is the use of some words only in Spanish, such as names of institutions or professions,” she said. “The documentary celebrates linguistic diversity and hopefully, will lead viewers to critically re-think language ideologies.” 

The UA Poetry Center received an award at this year’s Tucson Festival of Books for outstanding service and dedication to the festival. 

The Poetry Center has played an integral role in the festival since it began in 2009, helping to identify outstanding poets to invite and manage the poetry venue, said Brenda Viner, one of the festival’s founders and secretary of the board. 

The Tucson Festival of Books drew an estimated 130,000 people to campus on March 15 and 16, with presentations by more than 400 authors, including 16 poets.

“TFOB can't imagine a more appropriate partner,” said Executive Director Abra McAndrew. “The national reputation of the UA Poetry Center enhances our capacity to attract major literary stars to Tucson, including poets recognized with Pulitzer and Pushcart Prizes, National Book Awards, Poet Laureates and other significant recognition. The Poetry Center has helped to welcome participating poets to Tucson, a city well-prepared to value and appreciate their work thanks to the education, events and library it offers.” 

The TFOB’s 2025 community award was presented at the Friday evening gala for authors, accepted by the Poetry Center Executive Director Tyler Meier and Event Coordinator Paola Valenzuela. 

“The Poetry Center is so grateful for the work of the Tucson Festival of Books, and for the juggernaut it has grown in to. It is one of the finest book festivals anywhere, nurturing and celebrating a vibrant city of readers,” Meier said. “For those reasons alone, this recognition from the Tucson Festival of Books is deeply meaningful, and we’re honored to receive this award.”