Thursday, May 13th, 2:30 PM – 3:50 PM EST
Panel organizer: Silvina Montrul (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Silvina Montrul, Professor of Spanish and Linguistics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Silvina Montrul is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. She is the director of the Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism Lab, founder and director of the University Language Academy for Children, and former director of the Doctoral Program in Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education (SLATE). In 2013 she was named University Scholar for her outstanding contributions to research, teaching and service at the University of Illinois. Her research focuses on linguistic and psycholinguistic approaches to second language acquisition and bilingualism, with particular emphasis on heritage speakers and has been funded by the University of Illinois, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. She is editor of Second Language Research, former Associate Editor of Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, and former editorial board member of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. She is author of The Acquisition of Spanish (Benjamins, 2004), Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism (Benjamins, 2008), El bilingüismo en el mundo hispanohablante [Bilingualism in the Spanish-speaking world] (2013, Wiley-Blackwell), and Heritage Language Acquisition (2016, Cambridge University Press).
Alejandro Cuza, Professor of Spanish and Linguistics, Purdue University
Alejandro Cuza is Professor of Spanish and Linguistics at Purdue University, Chair of Linguistics and director of the Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism Research Lab. He received his MA in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Ottawa in 2001 and his PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Toronto in 2008. His research focuses on Hispanic linguistics, second language acquisition, heritage language development and child bilingual development. Specifically, he examines the role of linguistic factors in the acquisition of Spanish morphosyntax and semantics among bilingual children, L2 learners and heritage speakers. He is also interested in Spanish in the U.S., and Cuban Spanish dialectology. Currently, he is working on various collaborative projects examining the acquisition of Spanish among adult L2 learners and child heritage speakers of Spanish in contact with English, Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin, and Catalan. This includes the acquisition of copula distinctions, clitics, differential object marking, bare plurals, gender agreement, and mood selection, among other structures. His research has appeared in peer-reviewed international journals including Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Second Language Research, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, The International Journal of Bilingualism, Lingua, Hispania, and The Heritage Language Journal.
Eve Zyzik, Professor of Spanish, University of California, Santa Cruz
Eve Zyzik (PhD, University of California, Davis) is Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages and Applied Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has published on a variety of topics related to Spanish as a second language, Spanish as a heritage language, as well as issues related to language pedagogy in content-based courses. She has published two books: an advanced-level textbook El español y la lingüística aplicada (Georgetown University Press) with Robert Blake, and Authentic Materials Myths: Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching (University of Michigan Press) with Charlene Polio.
Liliana Sánchez, Professor of Hispanic and Italian Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)
Liliana Sánchez is a Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She has published Bilingualism in the Spanish-Speaking World with Jennifer Austin and Maria Blume (Cambridge University Press, 2015), The Morphology and Syntax of Topic and Focus: Minimalist Inquiries in the Quechua Periphery (John Benjamins, 2010), and Quechua-Spanish Bilingualism: Interference and Convergence in Functional Categories (John Benjamins, 2003), as well as articles in journals such as Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Glossa International Journal of Bilingualism, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, Lingua, Probus, and Studies in Second Language Acquisition. She is the Faculty Director of RU Bilingual, the Bilingualism Matters Branch at Rutgers.
Chat monitor: William Oliver, The Graduate Center, CUNY
