Congratulations to Dr. Eleanor Reeds on her recent honor - the Hastings College Invited Faculty Lecture. The Invited Faculty Lectures began in 1967 and are the highest and longest-standing faculty honor at Hastings College. Each year, two faculty are elected through a joint faculty and student vote. The honorees then deliver lectures on topics of their choosing to the campus community. We are very proud of Dr. Reeds. Check out her lecture below.

Every year, the Department of Languages and Literatures has the honor to recognize a few of our amazing students at Hastings College's Celebration of Excellence. At this year's ceremony, held on April 28, we recognized the following talented students: Patrick Hudson Secondary Spanish Education major from Gothenburg, Nebraska Clara Altman Award for Foreign Languages Patrick is an aspiring teacher of Spanish who, in the last couple of years, has shown extraordinary progress in Spanish language competence and knowledge of the target culture. His speaking skills in Spanish have increased remarkably in just a short period of time. We know that his passion for the Spanish language and culture will make him a great teacher! This award was named in honor of Clara Altman, who was Professor of Spanish at Hastings College from 1921 to 1958. It honors a junior who is majoring and/or excelling in a foreign language, but also majoring in another field. Kyler Samples English major from Hastin...

  This month, the Department of Languages and Literatures was pleased to host the 2021 Nebraska SkillsUSA Digital Cinema Production contest. SkillsUSA is a national nonprofit organization committed to helping middle school, high school, and college students prepare for technical, skilled, and service careers. The contest was held virtually this year from April 9 to April 13. Contestants worked in teams of 2 and were given a prompt (A New Day). They had only 35 hours to plan, shoot, and edit their short film. Films were scored on  Cinematography/composition Editing Audio/music/sound effects Lighting Use of prompt Creativity Overall impression of the film Shot log, storyboard, or screenplay Story Team interview The DLL is happy to celebrate the achievements of these talented students! Winners will be announced April 26 at the Nebraska SkillsUSA awards ceremony. A New Day Postsecondary Division Film by Lily Butler and Camille Kouba Metropolitan Community College  Moving On P...

     Our group, along with every other group in our Roman Myths class, was given the task to choose one myth or character from the books The Aeneid or Metamorphoses.  We were to explore the many different instances and representations of that myth across different contexts. While reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses , we came across one origin story of the horn of plenty that was a result of a fight between Hercules and Achelous. Since none of us had ever heard of that story, we thought it would be interesting to explore more interpretations and instances of the cornucopia. The horn of plenty is a symbol that represents abundance, fertility, and fortune in many different cultures. Its roots go back to early Greek and Roman mythology, but its application and representation are still around today. Within this blog post, we want to explore the many different contexts in which the cornucopia has appeared throughout time and see how its meaning and symbolism is similar i...

The Hero's Quest By: Ally Banks, Tatum Jelleberg, and Effy Widdifield Introduction: In myths and legends across the world, a universal story structure can be seen time and time again. While the characters and details of their journey will be unique to each story, the overarching narrative that a Hero's Quest framing provides is a way for the main character to achieve a daunting goal while building experience and proving their strength along the way. The details of each quest and elements of the myths that endure over time are a product of their cultures, not only of when the myth was created but when variations are made to the myth.  This blog post was created as an assignment for ENGL 211 Ancient Literature with the purpose of identifying different versions of one myth/mythological character in different cultures and times. Our group used the character type of Hercules to find other heroes with lengthy and impressive reputations from ancient Mesopotamia to 20th century America...

The Myth of Icarus The Myth of Icarus By Kenzie Kolle, Denise Howie, Brooklyn Elwood, and Keilan Caton | ENGL 211 —————————————————————————————— Table of Contents Introduction Icarus Around the World Icarus in Art Icarus in Poetry Icarus in Music Icarus in Business Icarus in Pop Culture Icarus in Other Media About the Authors —————————————————————————————— Introduction For Ancient Literature 211, our group was tasked with finding a myth from one of our primary texts and creating a blog post detailing how that myth changes in different historical contexts. We chose to focus on the story of Icarus, a widely told story all across the globe. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, written around 8 AD, we learn the tale of Daedalus and Icarus, a father and son imprisoned in a tower. The father, Daedalus, is an inventor and fashions wings made of leather straps, stray bird feathe...

      Many cultures have some sort of story of a great flood. With our current technology, we can see evidence all around the world of there actually being a historical great flood. With this common history, however, there are still so many differences between the exact details of these flood myths. These variations reflect the culture, geography, and religion of the group that they belong to, and we can learn quite a bit about a culture based on their literature and/or religion involving a great flood.                                                                                                               Deucalion and Pyrrha, printed c. 1690...