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.

�ֲ���ý has announced eight faculty promotions, including tenure awards and full professorships, effective Aug. 1 for the 2018–19 academic year.

The promotions were recommended by the faculty’s Committee on Personnel and approved by the �ֲ���ý College Board of Trustees.

Malcolm Hill is vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at �ֲ���ý College.

“One of the joys of working at �ֲ���ý is to be surrounded by exceptionally talented and creative people. This year’s tenured and promoted faculty provide outstanding examples of the consequential scholarship and creative work going on at �ֲ���ý,” said Malcolm Hill, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty.

“As leaders in their respective fields and through their continuing hard work, these faculty offer our students unparalleled opportunities in the classroom, and give us all an opportunity to engage with the important ideas of our time.”

Meet the eight newly promoted professors, learn their research fields, and discover why they teach.

Promotions to associate professor with tenure

+Associate Professor of Religious Studies Ali Humayun Akhtar

Ali Humayun Akhtar has been promoted to associate professor of religious studies. (Michael Bradley/�ֲ���ý College)

+Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies Jonathan Cavallero

Jonathan Cavallero has been promoted to associate professor of rhetoric, film, and screen studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Associate Professor of German Raluca Cernahoschi

Raluca Cernahoschi has been promoted to associate professor of German. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Associate Professor of German Jakub Kazecki

Jakub Kazecki has been promoted to associate professor of German. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Associate Professor of Mathematics Katharine Ott

Katharine Ott has been promoted to associate professor of mathematics. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

+Associate Professor of Biology Larissa Williams

Larissa Williams has been promoted to associate professor of biology. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Promotions to full professor

+Professor of Politics Stephen Engel

Stephen Engel has been promoted to professor of politics. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Professor of Classical and Medieval Studies Lisa Maurizio

Lisa Maurizio has been promoted to professor of classical and medieval studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Assistant Professor of German Jakub Kazecki plucks a tiny bronze medal from a shelf in his Roger Williams Hall office. The medal, says the Polish-born scholar, is a symbolic “connection between the German and the American” — and between �ֲ���ý students and the wider world.

In July 2016, a Virginia woman,��Cecilia Mittmann, wrote Kazecki saying she’d found a medal at an estate sale in Alexandria. Might the �ֲ���ý scholar have information about it?

Kazecki, an expert in 20th-century German literature (especially about World War I), dug through back issues of The �ֲ���ý Student at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library. He learned that the original �ֲ���ý German Club, founded Oct. 12, 1905, produced these medals for its 16 members.

The inscription on one side of the medal reads, “Deutscher Verein zu �ֲ���ý, 1905” (German Club of �ֲ���ý), while the other presents a coat of arms adapted from the German empire, in which an eagle holds two symbols: one representing �ֲ���ý, the other, an American flag.

Students founded the original Deutscher Verein “to give its members an opportunity to become better acquainted with German life and customs.” At its first meeting, on Jan. 18, 1906, the club initiated its charter members (men only) and elected officers. Professor of German Arthur Leonard was the club’s inaugural faculty adviser.

One side of a 1905 �ֲ���ý German Club medal depicts the coat of arms adapted from that of the German empire, in which an eagle holds two symbols: one representing �ֲ���ý, the other, an American flag. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

A story in The �ֲ���ý Student describes a March 1, 1906, meeting at the Wood Street home of Leonard and his wife, who would accompany the students on the piano. Club business preceded socializing and refreshments, such as apples and popcorn balls. “German games were played, German songs were sung, and refreshments eaten in the German way,” the story said.

At later meetings, the club had guest speakers, such as German-born Alexander Maerze, Class of 1903, who in November 1906 regaled students for a full two hours with tales of crossing the ocean as a fourth-class steerage passenger.

When Kazecki shared what he had learned, Mittmann decided to donate the medal to the �ֲ���ý German department. And for that Kazecki’s most grateful.

“The medal,” says Kazecki, “is a material piece that kind of anchors this �ֲ���ý experience.”

“Students stay here for four years and explore the world,” says Kazecki, who also researches images of German-Polish relationships in literature, film, and visual arts, as well as laughter and comedy in different media.

“They graduate and start their lives. But there are pieces of material culture that they have produced here that actually bring them back to �ֲ���ý, and create a �ֲ���ý identity.“

Assistant Professor of German Jakub Kazecki holds a medal given to members of the �ֲ���ý German Club. On this side of the medal an inscription reads, “Deutscher Verein Zu �ֲ���ý” — German Club of �ֲ���ý. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Kazecki likes to imagine how German Club students from the early 20th century looked at their medal often in the years after graduating and remembered the delightful meetings.

The medal also provides Kazecki’s own study and work at �ֲ���ý with a little bit of institutional history. “I build my identity being here at �ֲ���ý based on those pieces that I collect and gather in the office, as we all do,” says Kazecki, who advises today’s German Club. “And I think that is why it’s important to me. It’s part of my life now, and part of my own �ֲ���ý identity.”

Japanese writer Jun Ishikawa faced censorship under two different regimes.

In the 1930s, the nationalist Japanese government fined him for publishing a story that criticized militarism. A decade later, U.S. forces occupying the country told him to remove parts of a short story depicting an American soldier fraternizing with a Japanese woman, rendering the story nonsensical.

In other words, censorship was a “trans-war phenomenon in Japan,” said Visiting Assistant Professor of Japanese Helen Weetman.

Weetman presented on censorship pre- and post-World War II Japan on Wednesday as part of Banned Books Week, a national campaign to protest censorship and promote the freedom to read. To mark the week, �ֲ���ý Ladd Library held a series of presentations on censorship outside the United States in the 20th century.

It was a departure from last year’s series, which explored censorship in the United States and locally. Focusing on censorship around the world allowed the �ֲ���ý community to consider a broader range of reasons why governments, organizations, and individuals try to prevent books from being published or read.

Stephanie Pridgeon, visiting assistant professor of Spanish, presents on censorship in Argentina in the 1970s and 80’s as part of��Banned Books Week. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

“In the United States, it’s much more about sex and religion, and in other countries it has more to do with politics,” Juraska said. “It’s an interesting difference of what tends to get banned where. It tells you something about the culture that we live in.”

In Germany in the 1930s, the initiative to suppress certain books came not from the Nazi government but from student organizations, said Assistant Professor of German Jakub Kazecki. Students led the charge to collect and burn books by authors with an “un-German spirit,” many of whom were Jewish.

Book-burnings took place around the country on May��10, 1933. In Berlin, the students were encouraged by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

Assistant Professor of German Jakub Kazecki presents on book-burning in Nazi Germany on Sept. 28 as part of Banned Books Week (Emily McConville/�ֲ���ý College)

“What always gets me when I look at the photographs of this event is the happy, smiling faces of the students,” Kazecki said. “They were so happy to participate in this event.”

In Argentina in the 1970s and 80’s, censorship also helped a military junta maintain power, said Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish Stephanie Pridgeon.

Book burnings were also common there: At one point, in a quest to eradicate books that were not in keeping with nationalism and Catholicism, the regime collected and burned 1.5 million books from a single publisher, Pridgeon said. People suspected of subversion would often come home to find their bookshelves ransacked.

“At the same time books were being burned, they were also used as evidence of political activists’ subversion,” she said.

In Japan, in addition to censoring Ishikawa, the U.S. occupation government after World War II cracked down on materials that promoted militarism and nationalism, going so far as to have children black out parts of their textbooks with heavy ink, Weetman said.

Then, as Japanese political discourse tipped to the left, the occupation government began to censor suspected Communists, socialists, and unionists as well.

The censors were trying to suppress not only views the U.S. considered unfavorable, but also the existence of censorship itself.

“It’s essential that you make no reference to the fact that censorship is occurring, so you cannot refer to censorship,” Weetman said. “You also cannot largely refer to the occupation itself. It’s not that nobody does, but it’s discouraged.”

Visiting Assistant Professor of Japanese Helen Weetman discusses the history of censorship in Japan during Banned Books Week. (Emily McConville/�ֲ���ý College)

The totalitarian regimes in Argentina, Germany, and Japan eventually fell, the U.S. occupation of Japan ended, and — as within the United States — censorship became less severe in the later 20th century. Each country is reckoning with its past, and censorship, or the memory of it, is a factor in those reckonings.

Pridgeon said one former detention center in Argentina, now a museum and memory center, projects images of confiscated books on its walls — an expression of memory that is still fraught.

“The superimposition of this image comes as part of a broader movement that is deliberately seeking to re-insert politics and ideology into what had previously been presented as an ostensibly depoliticized space of human rights and memory,” she said.

Many book-burning sites in Germany have also become spaces of commemoration, Kazecki said.

At the location of the infamous 1933 book burning in Berlin, a plate of glass allows passersby to look underground into a set of empty bookshelves, enough to hold the books that were burned. On May 10 of each year, a man in Munich blowtorches the grass over a spot where books were burned — “I think it is necessary to remember without covering history with grass,” he has said.

On many of the plaques marking book burnings throughout the country, there is a quote from Heinrich Heine, a 19th-century writer who protested a symbolic book-burning in 1817: “Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people.”

A final presentation on LGBT and religious themes in international censorship by Visiting Assistant Professor of English Tiffany Slater will take place on��Oct. 2.

The �ֲ���ý community rallied in record-setting fashion on March 31, the final day of the month-long Great Day to be a Bobcat giving campaign, easily securing a quarter-million-dollar challenge gift for the college.

“The pride and generosity demonstrated all month long show just how deeply our alumni, parents and friends care about �ֲ���ý,” said Sarah R. Pearson ’75, vice president for college advancement.

“On behalf of everyone at the college, I want to thank those who made gifts in March. You made this a great day — a great month — a great year — to be a Bobcat!”

Joined by the Bobcat himself, students in Assistant Professor of German Jakub Kazecki’s language class cheer”It’s a Great Day to Be a Bobcat” in German: “Es ist ein schöner Tag Bobcat zu sein!”(Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Over the 24 hours of March 31, 1,675 �ֲ���ý alumni, parents, students, faculty, staff and friends made gifts to the college — a record number of gifts in one day — bringing the 31-day campaign total to 3,917 gifts.

“Single largest engagement and fundraising event in �ֲ���ý history.”

With a goal of 2,500 donors during the month of March, the Great Day campaign entered the final day still 500 gifts short. At stake was a $250,000 challenge gift from an anonymous donor.

And what a great final day it was.

“It was our single largest engagement and fundraising event in �ֲ���ý history,” said Assistant Vice President for College Advancement Leah Wiedmann Gailey ’97.

�ֲ���ý staff thank a Great Day donor during the festive livestream on March 31. Rocking the Bobcat hat at left is Cary Gemmer ’07, director of alumni engagement, while Genevieve Leslie, director of Reunion fundraising and programming, holds the whiteboard with a thank-you to donor William Moore ’53. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The giving peaked with 659 gifts between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., a surge that was encouraged by a livestream featuring real-time thank-yous by Office of College Advancement staff, as well as a rousing two-song set by the Manic Optimists, a college a cappella group.

Bobcats of the Last Decade did their part to secure an extra $25,000 from an anonymous donor by making sure that more than 1,000 of the Great Day gifts came from BOLD alumni.

Donors from around the world made gifts on the final day, and more than 2,100 viewers watched the livestream from as close by as campus dorms and in cities like Helsinki, Brisbane, Munich, Sao Paul, Beijing, New Delhi, and Hanoi, among many others.

About “Great Day”

Now in its third year, Great Day spotlights the powerful role that �ֲ���ý donors play in strengthening the college.

The name is drawn from the slogan “It’s a great day to be a Bobcat,” a �ֲ���ý rallying cry coined in the early 1970s by retired football and men’s lacrosse coach Web Harrison ’63.

He adapted a cheer from his days as a U.S. Marine, when officer candidates had to make a “suitable greeting” to superior officers: “Good afternoon, sir! It’s a grand and glorious day to be alive and a member of the U.S. Marine Corps!”

Ali Akhtar, assistant professor of religious studies and of classical and medieval Studies. Photograph by Michael Bradley/�ֲ���ý College.

Six new tenure-track members of the faculty began teaching at �ֲ���ý College in autumn 2012, representing the fields of dance, economics, German, neuroscience and psychology, religious studies, and classical and medieval studies.

All beginning their �ֲ���ý careers as assistant professors, they are:

Ali Humayun Akhtar, religious studies and and classical and medieval studies;

Rachel Boggia, dance;

Jason Castro, psychology and neuroscience;

Raluca Cernahoschi and Jakub Kazecki, who were hired in a joint appointment to the German faculty;

and Paul Shea, economics.

(�ֲ���ý has also engaged biologist Larissa Williams, who starts at �ֲ���ý during winter 2013, and historian Lydia Barnett, who begins teaching at �ֲ���ý in autumn 2013.)

Ali Humayun Akhtar

Read a profile of Akhtar.

Assistant Professor of Dance Rachel Boggia. Photograph by Michael Bradley/�ֲ���ý College.

Appointed assistant professor of religious studies and of classical and medieval studies at �ֲ���ý, Akhtar studies the complex interactions among political, religious and intellectual establishments in Europe and the Islamic world in medieval and early modern times.

Akhtar is a native of New Jersey. Prior to �ֲ���ý, he taught at Bard College and at New York University, where he received his doctorate in both history and Middle Eastern studies. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Cornell in 2004.

Rachel Boggia

Read a profile of Boggia.

Appointed assistant professor of dance at �ֲ���ý in 2012 after two years at the college as a visiting faculty member, Boggia employs sophisticated technology in her art and teaching.

Boggia served as acting director of the �ֲ���ý dance program in 2010-11 after teaching at Wesleyan University and at Connecticut and Dickinson colleges. She earned her MFA in dance from The Ohio State University in 2003 and a bachelor of science degree in neurobiology at Cornell in 2000.

Jason Castro, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

Jason Castro

Read a profile of Castro.

Analyzing neural electrical patterns and chemical imaging that reveals cellular activity, Castro, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience, investigates the relationships between the properties of neurons and sensory capabilities, such as the ability to distinguish between odors.

Castro came to �ֲ���ý from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where he had been a postdoctoral fellow since 2008, the year he received his doctorate in neuroscience at Pittsburgh. In addition to a 2002 liberal arts diploma from the European College of Liberal Arts, Berlin, Germany, Castro earned bachelor’s degrees in biology and English literature at the University of Rochester.

Raluca Cernahoschi

Read a profile of Cernahoschi.

Assistant Professor of German Raluca Cernahoschi. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

Cernahoschi, who has been a visiting professor at �ֲ���ý the past two years, is a native of Romania. But her Romanian education never introduced her to one of her primary academic interests: the literature produced by that nation’s German minority.

Instead, it wasn’t until her graduate studies at the University of British Columbia that she discovered this literature. “I happened to be taught by one of the only North American experts on this literature,” Cernahoschi explains — Peter Stenberg, now professor emeritus of German at UBC.

She taught previously at Central Connecticut State University, McMaster University and UBC. She earned a bachelor’s degree in German studies and English at Mount Holyoke College.

Jakub Kazecki

Read a profile of Kazecki.

Kazecki has done considerable research on the connection between war and humor, as evidenced by his book Laughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives, released in July 2012 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing).

Assistant Professor of German Jakub Kazecki. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

A native of Poland, Kazecki taught at Central Connecticut State University for four years prior to �ֲ���ý, and previously taught at McMaster University in Ontario and the University of British Columbia, where he received a doctorate in Germanic studies.

He earned master’s degrees at Adam-Mickiewicz-University in Poznan, Poland, and at Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S.

Paul Shea

Read a profile of Shea.

People’s expectations influence the economy, which makes the accurate prediction of expectations important to economists. That’s an aspect of the field that interests Shea, a macroeconomist and econometrician who develops mathematical models for such predictions.

Working with algorithms that simulate various factors affecting economic behavior, he aims to model expectations such that the agents — the theoretical people in his models — “are just about as smart as the people who actually make decisions in the economy.”

Paul Shea, assistant professor of economics. Photograph by Michael Bradley/�ֲ���ý College. Photograph by Michael Bradley/�ֲ���ý College.

Jakub Kazecki, assistant professor of German. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

If you grew up with M*A*S*H�� or the World War II cartoons of Bill Mauldin, the power of battlefield humor won’t be new to you.

Jakub Kazecki, hired in 2012 as assistant professor of German in a joint appointment with Raluca Cernahoschi, has invested considerable research in the topic — as evidenced by his book Laughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives, released in July 2012 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing).

Kazecki’s book focuses on World War I fiction with an autobiographical basis, including such well-known works such as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. But while Kazecki’s field is German literature, he points out that humor operates in similar ways across nationalities and other constructs of identity.

Within a given military setting, Kazecki argues, even pro- and anti-war factions tend to find the same things funny. Remarque is considered a pacifist, but what his soldiers laugh at “is much the same as what the soldiers in works by more conservative authors laugh at. They subscribe to a similar set of values.”

“Humor has a strict social function that organizes relationships between members of groups,” he says. For instance, when we laugh at someone slipping on a banana peel, “it means, first, that we’re bonding and creating a group.”

But it also means that the group is marking as undesirable a trait — here, clumsiness. “We’re acknowledging shared values about not being clumsy,” he explains. “That function is universal across cultures.”

In short, you’re either laughing with someone or laughing at them — but both have the same result, the strengthening of group identity.

A native of Poland, Kazecki taught at Central Connecticut State University for four years prior to �ֲ���ý, and previously taught at McMaster University in Ontario and the University of British Columbia, where he received a doctorate in Germanic studies.

He earned master’s degrees at Adam-Mickiewicz-University in Poznan, Poland, and at Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S.