In 1994, just before she entered religious life at a Carmelite monastery in Baltimore, Sue Houchins attended a party at a friend’s house. On the friend’s refrigerator was a postcard depicting a black nun, labeled, “Teresa Chikaba, Salamanca.”

Houchins took the postcard to the monastery with her and began to learn more about the African woman who had joined a convent in 18th-century Spain. Kidnapped from her homeland in West Africa, Chicaba (c. 1676–1748) was enslaved, baptized, renamed Teresa, and raised in a noblewoman’s house in Madrid.

The noblewoman freed Chicaba in her will and provided a dowry for her to join a convent, though most communities rejected her due to her skin color before she found a home among the Dominican nuns in Salamanca.

Though she performed menial tasks in the convent and was unable to take formal vows to become a nun, Chicaba became well-known in Salamanca for her holiness. After her death, a Spanish priest wrote a hagiography, a spiritual biography meant to support the cause of Catholic sainthood.

Sue Houchins later left the religious community she had joined and became an associate professor of African American studies at �ֲ���ý. At her job interview, she met Baltasar Fra-Molinero, a professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies who also knew about Chicaba. The professors collaborated on , a translation of Chicaba’s hagiography along with a scholarly introduction that explores the dynamics of race, gender, and religion in 18th-century Spain.

Here, Houchins and Fra-Molinero talk about why Chicaba’s life resonates today, and how the African nun, despite leaving behind few writings, was able to tell her own story.

Why is it important to know about Chicaba today?

Sue Houchins, Associate Professor of African American Studies

Houchins: You have to understand that convents in the United States did not accept black women until the 1960s. Now there are monasteries all over Europe and the United States that bring women from the Third World and make them nuns to fill out their declining numbers. There are Africans in convents in the First World for whom Chicaba might mean something.

I’ve given papers before black theological societies. I cannot tell you how hungry they are for this book. I go and give a paper, and someone says, “I have to show you something.” They take me to a downtown Catholic church, and there is a side altar with Chicaba’s picture. She already has people devoted to her. There is a sense among black Catholics that the time is ripe for her canonization.

You both teach in interdisciplinary programs at �ֲ���ý, and you argue that it’s important to study Chicaba’s life from the perspective of several intersecting disciplines, such as religious studies,�� Africana studies, and gender and sexuality studies. Why is that?

Houchins: There is no way, it seems to me, to read this saint’s life and not understand how race plays into it. blackness plays into her notion of herself and the notion that the Catholic Church had of her and how being a woman plays into that too.

Fra-Molinero: Until recently, there hasn’t been a serious theorizing about blackness in the literature and history of the Spanish-speaking world. It’s been more about indigenous people and mixed races. The study of blackness itself, the study of the impact of Atlantic slavery in the Spanish-speaking world — in cultural terms, in the area of religion, it’s lacking.

The story of Chicaba’s life is not enough. The hagiography itself is tremendously rich and tremendously contradictory, and we had to study those contradictions.

Chicaba was born in West Africa, which many European Catholics saw as pagan. You argue that she and Father Paniagua, the author of the hagiography, worked to “Christianize” her background. How did they do so?

Fra-Molinero: The Catholic Church knows how to reinterpret any indigenous form of religiosity: “No, that was not a female deity; that was the Virgin Mary. That was not such-and-such god; that was Saint this or Saint that.” Chicaba participated in that very consciously, because it’s a way of validating the place she came from.

Professor of Spanish Baltasar Fra-Molinero teaches a Spanish course in Roger Williams Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The hagiography has a poem that is attributed to Chicaba, in which she talks about a polygamous Jesus. That’s not a typical theological position for a nun to write about her Husband, her Spouse. black theologians in the United States immediately accept that. They saw an African diasporic element — it’s clear she never forgot Africa.

Her hagiography says she was kidnapped and taken to Spain at the age of 9, but we suspect it was a bit later because she remembers too many cultural details with the accuracy that only an older person can remember.

As an enslaved woman, Chicaba grew up in Madrid in the house of a Spanish noblewoman, the Marchioness of Mancera. What was her life like there?

Houchins: The book claims that she was privileged. She learned to read and write. But the book also gives you enough of a sense that she was a slave, that she lived in the slave quarters. We think she did a certain amount of labor, but we know that she must have been treated differently enough so that other servants disliked her. I think since she was young, part of her privilege was to have been a companion to the marchioness.

Fra-Molinero: But Professor Houchins and I define the household as a literal madhouse for an enslaved person. It had to be. It was a place rife with violence. The other servants attacked her; they threw her in a pond. They wanted her to drown. A Turkish girl enslaved with her tries to murder her. There is also the danger of sexual assault; there is a priest who tries to seduce the Turkish girl.

She uses the convent as a space where she can practice her mystical union with Christ, because in no other way would she be able to endure her position.

Houchins: The governess who was set to train her either in reading or decorum hits her so hard that Chicaba says she bears the wound and the pain in the old age. This is not a soft life.

So Chicaba entered a convent after she was freed —

Houchins: We don’t know if she was freed with the stipulation that she join the convent, or whether she was freed and the only sensible choice was to join the convent. But she was freed, and she joined the convent.

Fra-Molinero: In a slave society, the freedom of those who have been slaves is always problematic. They still need the documents to prove that they are free because otherwise, by default, they are enslaved. What were the chances or the choices of a free black woman in a city like Madrid in the early 18th century? The choices were few.

How did Chicaba’s race affect her life as a nun?

Fra-Molinero: She’s not a nun.

Stained glass window of Sister Teresa Chicaba by artist Silvia Nicholas, St. Dominic Chapel, Providence College (photo: Patricia Krupinski)

Houchins: Her vows — “I’m chaste, I’m going to be obedient, I’m going to be a member of the family of the Virgin Mary” — those are the prayers and the vows you say at the altar. That’s a document you sign. We don’t have that document. It doesn’t exist, because she never signed it.

Fra-Molinero: There is a moment in the hagiography when, after a church function, she invites two priests to her cell, and Jesus, as a good jealous husband, rebukes her. This anecdote told us two things. One, she considers herself the Bride of Christ, but second, and most important, it tells us her physical position in the convent.

Houchins: To receive these two priests, these two males, we know that she’s not living in the cloister with the other nuns. She never got to live inside.

Fra-Molinero: With her station, the liminal place where she slept, reminded her of where canon law stipulated she had to remain — outside of sacred enclosure. She was reminded of where she had to be. She had not made vows because of her race, because of her blackness, her Africanity.

How did the people around Chicaba notice that she was potentially saintlike?

Fra-Molinero: Chicaba clearly saw herself as a nun. She saw herself as the Bride of Christ, like all nuns. She uses the convent as a space where she can practice her mystical union with Christ, because in no other way would she be able to endure her position.

Houchins: She counseled people. She’s able to affect cures of some sort. In the monastery I entered, those sisters who had been kept out of the choir [the part of the convent that is closed off from the outside world] were the most devout in the performance of religious duties that they technically had been exempt from by virtue of their lower status.

“She succeeds in telling us, ‘My life was hell, and these were the culprits.’”

Chicaba tells you, “I know how to set up a breviary. I know how to say the Divine Office.” I think that she exhibited a kind of piety, besides the gifts she had for curing and for counseling, that made her very, very special. It must have seemed even more special because she was a black woman.

You point out that the hagiography was written to support Father Paniagua’s own agenda. You argue, however, that Chicaba’s voice comes through in the text. How so?

Fra-Molinero: One of the discussions we had was to say, “In what sense is this a typical hagiography, and in what ways does it depart from the typical hagiography, typical story and the life of a nun who’s saintly?”

Professor Houchins came up with the idea to look to the Protestant tradition of black women who tell to other people — particularly men —their spiritual narrative as well as the “as-told to-slave narratives.”

We say this hagiography is an as-told-to slave narrative. There are no other hagiographies like this in the Catholic tradition in which the story of her enslavement is so central — all the way until Chapter 19 of the 40 chapters of the book, she’s enslaved. Paniagua could have put it in just one chapter and then moved on to her life in the convent.

Black Bride of Christ, by Balthasar Fra-Molinero and Sue Houchins, is on display in the Ladd Library along with other publications by �ֲ���ý faculty.

But no. There is all this suffering, all this violence. In other hagiographies, particularly of martyrs, the violence is exerted by enemies of the faith, sometimes they are the Muslims or indigenous people, or Protestants against Catholics, but here the violence is done by fellow Catholics.

These acts are in plain daylight, and [committed by] people from the system. That is where we find her voice. She succeeds in telling us, “My life was hell, and these were the culprits.”

Learning a new language opens up career prospects, richer travel experiences, and opportunities to communicate with people.

It also helps you see your own culture from a different perspective.

“You won’t know your own culture or language until you learn another language or culture,” says Keiko Konoeda, a lecturer in Japanese whose research focuses on teaching languages.

�ֲ���ý offers countless resources to learn a language, through courses, clubs, language tables, tutoring, and study-abroad opportunities.

“You can be immersed in the language,” Konoeda says. “There is a strong community for that.”

Lecturer in Japanese Keiko Konoeda teaches an introductory Japanese course. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

We asked foreign language faculty and student tutors about their best strategies for learning a new language, whether it’s French, Japanese, or ancient Greek. Here’s what they said.

1. Immerse yourself in any way you can.

Immersion is speaking, listening, and thinking in a new language as much as possible — but that doesn’t mean you have to go to a country where the language is spoken, says Michael Lombardi ’21, who tutors Japanese in the Academic Resource Commons.

Plenty of resources are available right on campus, such as “going to language table sessions, seeing your ARC Peer Tutor, and immersing yourself in the vibrant �ֲ���ý community,” he says.

Laurie O’Higgins,��Euterpe B. Dukakis Professor of Classical and Medieval Studies, presides over an induction ceremony for the classics honor society in 2017. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

2. Dedicate time each day.

Ancient Latin and Greek are somewhat different from modern languages, says Laurie O’Higgins, Euterpe B. Dukakis Professor of Classical and Medieval Studies — the learning focus is often on reading, rather than speaking and listening.

O’Higgins recommends setting aside quality time with the language. “Give 20 to 30 minutes, six days a week, to learning new forms and vocabulary. Those must be the best 20 to 30 minutes you can spare, when your brain is at its best. Have the environment as quiet as is possible. Focus exclusively on saying the words, reading them, and writing them too, if it’s Greek. Then stop.”

3. Do everything.

Communicating involves speaking, listening, reading, writing, and nonverbal expression. So does learning a new language.

“The best students practice writing by hand, read grammar explanations, listen to audio, practice speaking on their own, practice speaking with others, watch movies in the target language, and even practice acting out verbs or adjectives with their faces and bodies,” says Justine Wiesinger, assistant professor of Japanese.

Language-learning resources are particularly abundant in libraries, says Associate Professor of German Raluca Cernahoschi. “All the major newspapers have an online presence, and Ladd Library has a good selection of print newspapers and magazines in several languages. There are international editions of all major fashion magazines and many more online resources.

“Have a favorite novel? It’s probably been translated into your new language, too. The resources are endless and often only a click away.”

4. Listen to music.

“People are wired to remember rhythms and rhymes — song lyrics in a new language can help build vocabulary and grammar. My advice is to find a band you love to listen to in your target language,” Michael Lombardi says. “You’d be surprised by how much variety there is out there!”

5. Put vocabulary in context.

Dennis Browne is an associate professor of Russian who’s been learning German for several years. Browne likes to rehearse personal stories — for example, learning car-related vocabulary in order to talk about a time his car broke down — and tell the stories to native speakers of German.

Associate Professor of Russian Dennis Browne serves sausage during ”the Wurst day of the semester,” an open house for the Department of German and Russian Studies. An associate professor of Russian, Browne has studied German for years. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“You tell that story and find they don’t use those words in everyday German,” Browne says. “That’s useful because you realize that there are these technical terms, and then the terms people actually use.”

6. Tell stories.

Especially when a new language has a different writing system from English, it helps to associate feelings, images, and narratives with concepts you’re learning, says Wiesinger.

In kanji, one of the Japanese writing systems, characters represent things or ideas as opposed to sounds. Research has shown that narratives help with memorization — for example, Wiesinger encourages her students to think of the Japanese character for charcoal, 炭, as made up of symbols that look like a mountain, a cliff, and a fire.

“If you can imagine the shape of the mountains as you climb and the coolness you feel on your skin as you walk out onto a cliff, and then the smell of the charcoal fire you kindle, it will help retain the elements of this character in your mind and help distinguish it from similar characters, such as 岩,” which means rock, Wiesinger says.

Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies Baltasar Fra-Molinero teaches an intermediate Spanish course in Roger Williams Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

7. Talk to a lot of people

Language learning happens in community, says Professor of Spanish Baltasar Fra-Molinero. “You learn a language not speaking to another person but by speaking to two, three, four, five other people. That’s how the process of language acquisition happens.”

8. Use flash cards.

“I recommend note cards or notebooks and keeping them neat and up to date,” says O’Higgins. “It’s not high-tech, but it works.”

Katherine Ziegler ’19 of Katonah, N.Y., who tutors Latin in the ARC and minors in German, heightens the tech just a little. “I really like to use sites like Quizlet to learn new vocabulary,” she says. “Quizlet is a website that allows you to make your own flashcards and then quiz and test yourself in a variety of ways. This is particularly helpful for Latin, which involves a lot of memorization.”

9. Keep a language notebook.

“I like to have a little notebook to write down new vocabulary, grammar paradigms, writing exercises or diary entries in the target language,” Ziegler says. “It’s also a nice place to write down any poems or phrases that you like. This helps remind me why I’m learning the new language in the first place.”

10. Plagiarize.

Well, not really, says Kirk Read, professor of French and francophone studies. But he recommends copying native speakers’ words and forms as much as possible. “Imitating good syntax, playing with it, feeling it and how it guides your thoughts, is the way to go. It will get you away from word-by-word translation, which is silly, wrong, and ineffective, though often hilarious.”

11. Make mistakes.

“Stop thinking,” says Read. “Language learning the first time you do it is all about hearing, mimicking, reproducing. No child ever turned to their parent and said, ‘How do I conjugate that verb?’”

Mary Rice-DeFosse, also a professor of French and francophone studies, asks students to “give up total mastery” once they’re at the intermediate level.

“It’s important that students not look up every word and instead begin to get the gist of a reading based on what they think they understand,” she says. “My job is to provide a safety net as they develop that skill. Eventually, they start to think — and even dream — in French.”

Associate Professor of German Jakub Kazecki makes a point in his introductory German language and culture course in 2017. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

12. Find what works for you.

“Put sticky notes with new vocabulary on furniture and your belongings in your room, listen to a lot of news and podcasts in the language, pick up a few lines from songs and sing them out loud, enjoy any silly language joke you can find,” says Associate Professor of German Jakub Kazecki.

“Because, you know, the German sausage is the Wurst.”

13. Be fearless.��

”Learning a new language can be greatly intimidating or even feel embarrassing when you mispronounce or misuse a word, but the more you practice it out loud — whether that’s in class, with your roommate, or with a peer tutor — the easier and the more comfortable it begins to feel,” says Claudia Glickman ’19 of Houston, a student tutor of German.

Featuring what he calls “community-based cinema,” the latest film from Craig Saddlemire ’05 follows four Lewiston families, including that of �ֲ���ý professors Charles Nero and Baltasar Fra-Molinero.

The film, Household: Four Stories of Kinship and Curiosity, features an extended refugee family from Somalia, a single mother in a housing cooperative, a mother of six who has fostered nearly 50 children in her lifetime, and the family of Nero and Fra-Molinero, a same-gender married couple.

Filmmaker Craig Saddlemire ’05. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In creating the film, Saddlemire used a participatory technique, inviting a member of each household to narrate what they see in the household of another family.

The result is a collage of viewpoints, rather than the filmmaker’s single perspective.

aired Thursday on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network and airs again at 11 a.m. on April 12.

Like his participants, Saddlemire is a Lewiston resident, and has been one since graduation. He calls what he does “community-based cinema,” where success is measured “according to the relationships it forms within a community rather than [by] the final product itself,” as he told MPBN’s in-house magazine, Experience.

“The stories in Household,” he says, “demonstrate the different ways that families in my life are creating family by birth, by choice and by circumstance.”

Professors Baltasar Fra-Molinero (left) and Charles Nero (right) are among the families represented in Household, the latest from documentary filmmaker Craig Saddlemire ’05.

A former member of the Lewiston City Council, Saddlemire returns to campus this Short Term to lead one of four new practitioner-taught courses, part of the college’s Purposeful Work initiative.

Along with Sarah Standiford ’97 and Aditi Vaidya ’00, he will teach Social Change Organizing and Advocacy.

While a student he started filming Neighbor by Neighbor: Mobilizing an Invisible Community in Lewiston, Maine, which documents downtown residents’ responses to a controversial urban renewal project.

Promoted to full professor in May 2011, Baltasar Fra-Molinero is a professor of Spanish whose research interests include the Spanish Golden Age and Spanish-American colonial literature. He focuses on the representation of blacks and their diaspora and is the author of the book La imagen de los negros en el teatro del Siglo de Oro (“The image of the black in the theater of the Golden Age”; Siglo XXI, 1995).

Fra-Molinero chairs the Spanish program at �ֲ���ý. In addition to all levels of Spanish language, he has taught Spanish theater, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, medieval Spain, Latin American and Spanish cinema, and the Afro-Hispanic diaspora.

Now in his 17th year at �ֲ���ý, Fra-Molinero received his doctorate in Spanish and a master’s in linguistics from Indiana University. He holds a doctorate and bachelor’s degree in English philology from the University of Seville in Spain.

In collaboration with �ֲ���ý professor Sue E. Houchins, he is producing a critical edition and translation of the 18th-century Compendio de la vida ejemplar de la Venerable Madre Sor Teresa Juliana de Santo Domingo (“Compendium of the Exemplary Life of the Venerable Mother, Sister Teresa Juliana of Santo Domingo”). He co-edited a monographic issue on Equatorial Guinea for Afro-Hispanic Review (2009) and was guest editor of a volume on Don Quixote and Race for Annals of Scholarship (2010).

�ֲ���ý College students enrolled in the course “Afroambiente” (“Black Environment”), taught by Associate Professor of Spanish Baltasar Fra-Molinero, will give a multimedia presentation on the effects of Hurricane Katrina on both New Orleans and the United States at 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 29, in Room 204 of Carnegie Science Hall, Campus Avenue. The public is invited to attend free of charge.

Topics the students will discuss include a chronology of events surrounding Hurricane Katrina, the response to the emergency by authorities, a profile of the storm’s victims, media coverage of the situation and an analysis of the crisis in the context of environmental injustice.

State Sen. Peggy Rotundo will speak about the Katrina Relief Initiative, a combined effort by �ֲ���ý students, staff and faculty to help victims of the hurricane and local residents affected by rising fuel costs. As of Sept. 27, the campuswide initiative has raised $12,686 –$5,097 from students and $7,589 from faculty and staff. The �ֲ���ý College Harward Center for Community Partnerships is serving as the collection point for donations, which can be made by contacting community volunteer coordinator Marty Deschaines at this mdeschai@bates.edu.

A discussion will follow the presentations, and refreshments will be served. For more information, contact Dustin Drury at this ddrury@bates.edu.