Like many of her fellow students, Jolie Thevenot fulfilled a curriculum requirement to study a language during her freshman year at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For Thevenot, the experience transcended a curriculum requirement and changed both her life and career trajectory.

"I'd been interested in Japanese pop culture like anime and manga in high school, so when I was prompted to study a language at UAB, I thought I would just take Japanese 101-102 to enhance my media consumption," she divulged.

But, as she began studying the language, Thevenot developed meaningful relationships with her professors in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.

"[The professors] showcased the Japanese culture more so than just the language. It made me really excited to study and use it more as a tool and an avenue to communicate than just a class."

As a student, Thevenot had many interests and often changed her major. She eventually landed in the International Studies program due to its interdisciplinary nature. That degree program, paired with a minor in Japanese, allowed her to explore courses in sociology, history, foreign cultures, political science, and economics.

She further cemented her interest in Japanese culture through two study abroad opportunities.

First, Thevenot was selected for a two-week Birmingham's Sister Cities exchange program in Hitachi, Japan the summer after her freshman year. "That wasn't long enough for me, so I wanted to go back and study [in Japan]." Through UAB Study Abroad, Thevenot participated as an exchange student at Nihon University in Tokyo for her junior year.

When she returned to UAB for her senior year, Thevenot was selected for an internship with the Japan-America Society of Alabama. During her internship, the executive director left the organization, which allowed Thevenot to lean into a role outside of typical intern duties. She worked closely with board members, helped organize events, and learned how to run the organization. Those experiences gave her the confidence to apply for the executive director role when she graduated in 2017—a position she continues to hold today.

Founded in 1989, the Japan-America Society of Alabama (JASA) is a private nonprofit organization committed to fostering friendship and understanding between Japan and the U.S. As the Executive Director of JASA, Thevenot is focused on community engagement and outreach, a value she says she learned at UAB by taking advantage of the cultural engagement opportunities and events offered across the university.

After her first year as Executive Director at JASA, Thevenot was named a Next Generation Fellow by the American Friends of the International House of Japan. The Next Generation Fellows Program supports promising young American leaders in the U.S.-Japan relationship.

Thevenot says UAB gave her the skillset to think critically about the world around her and consider everything from different angles and perspectives. Her interdisciplinary degree, in particular, inspired her to be open to many opportunities. "The international studies field is so broad that it allowed for different connections with different fields of study... [UAB] gave me the confidence in taking something I don't understand and knowing who to reach out to and what questions to ask," she explained.

Her advice for current students? Use your time at UAB to get comfortable asking questions and take advantage of UAB's events and opportunities. "You never know when one Wednesday night event will completely change your perspective or get you really excited about something you never knew was possible. There are opportunities like that everywhere," said Thevenot.

Learn about the international studies major at UAB and the minor in Japanese.

Charly Verstraet, Ph.D., an assistant professor of French in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, was recently awarded “Best University Professor” by the American Journal of French Studies for his mentorship and dedication to his students.

Verstraet, originally from the French region of Flanders, knows how daunting publishing in a foreign language can be. He was excited to offer his students an opportunity to publish their work and gain practical experience writing in French when he heard about the American Journal of French Studies essay contest. 

“Every professor hopes their students will be successful, no matter what they do,” said Verstraet. “One of the biggest rewards is when you receive an email from a student telling you what they have done or become. That warms your heart.”

Verstraet encouraged five students to submit essays to the journal for publication. Recent alumna Abby Garver received third place for her personal essay. She wrote about her experience with bipolar disorder and how French became her “asylum from the madness.” Garver later became the journal’s Director of Operations after graduating from UAB. 

“For me, the biggest moment of happiness isn’t me receiving an award but seeing my students succeed,” said Verstraet. “I was much happier for Abby to receive an award than me. She’s at the beginning of her career.”

The American Journal of French Studies is based in Louisiana and began in 2019. Verstraet encouraged his students to submit work to the journal due to the region’s similarity to South Alabama. Verstraet is interested in the similarities shared by communities and cultures between the South of the U.S. and the Caribbean.

“There are many, many different Souths just like there are many different Caribbeans. And that’s a question of representation and visibility, of different histories, of different cultures, different waves of immigration. All of these factors play into that,” said Verstraet. “It is important to advocate for all of them, not just one.”

Currently, Verstraet is teaching a course called, “The French Revolution and its Caribbean Aftershocks.” He is also translating Crusoe’s Footprint by Martinican writer Patrick Chamoiseau in association with the University of Virginia Press. Verstraet uses his experience publishing in a second language to advise his students.

“I had a student who told me in French this semester, ‘I’m so scared to speak French, I’m still a nestling, I’m still a little bird.’ The fear of flying is part of the process of flying. You have to be scared and jump into the void to learn how to fly,” said Verstraet. “It’s very similar for languages or learning other cultures. It's scary and there’s fear in the process but once you overcome that fear there’s a whole world that’s waiting for you.”

Learn more about the French concentration in the UAB Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.

Dr. John Maddox, an assistant professor of Spanish in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, has published, “Challenging the Black Atlantic: The New World Novels of Zapata Olivella and Gonçalves,” (Bucknell University Press). The book is Maddox’s first literary criticism.

We talked to Dr. Maddox about his research and how these novels, not well known outside of Latin America, are actually broadly relevant to the issues of race, identity, and justice, with which we continue to struggle in the U.S.

Summer Guffey: What is your area of research and what inspired your pursuit of that subject? 

John Maddox: I specialize in Afro-Latin American literature and culture. My areas of focus are the Hispanic Caribbean and Brazil, which also includes the Caribbean coast of Colombia. My subspecialty is contemporary historical novels about slavery, particularly those by Black Latin Americans. I was inspired by the fact that, unlike the United States, there are virtually no slave narratives in the region. The general silence in literature – and in many approaches to history – creates a desire in Afro-Latin American authors and critics to re-create or imagine the perspective of the enslaved through historical fiction. Thankfully, we live in a time when the academy is attempting to overcome its Eurocentrism and seek out what, at first, seem like the lost voices of the past both through archival research and historical fiction.

SG: How does this book relate to your area of research and other publications of yours? Is this your debut book?

JM: “Challenging the Black Atlantic” compares the most important novels of Afro-Colombian Manuel Zapata Olivella and Afro-Brazilian Ana Maria Gonçalves. Both works are monumental sagas: They total over 1,700 pages. As I read, I noticed that their work encompassed a much greater area and timespan than the most popular model of African diaspora history, Paul Gilroy’s “Black Atlantic,” hence the title. Gilroy’s book was published in 1993 and popularized an interpretation of African-American writers that wrote outside the United States, making his “Black Atlantic” a term critics use to describe the study of Black culture in a post-modern, trans-national framework—but it has limitations

SG: What do you hope to accomplish with this book? 

JM: I hope every reader knows that, by far, most Black people outside of Africa live in Latin America, not the United States. Both Zapata and Gonçalves display unique versions of W.E.B. DuBois’s notion of Black consciousness (a combination of Western and non-Western beliefs), the key theoretical concern of Gilroy. Both authors display a greater emphasis on women and even LGBTQ characters than Gilroy. The novels matter for the future, since they show that Black people have influenced Latin America throughout its past and, certainly, will do so for years to come. 

SG: How do the experiences of the people in this book apply to society and events today, both in the U.S. and globally?

JM: The authors deal with some of the most vital issues of our time. Police brutality toward and mass incarceration of Black people are discussed in Zapata’s novel, which includes the United States. Both authors look to the United States for inspiration in their struggles in Latin America. Of course, their setting is different. Generally speaking, the dominant outlook in Latin America is that slavery was not as brutal as the United States and that, since virtually everyone is mixed-race, there is no racism in the region. These authors show the violence of slavery in the past and the continuation of racism. Their novels are relevant today throughout the Americas, with implications for Africa and Europe, since all three regions became tumultuously intertwined by colonialism, which continues today in different forms.

SG: Who is the intended audience?

JM: While my primary audience is literary and culture critics of Latin America, I hope scholars and students in other fields will read it as well. Since the novels are long, I include useful summaries of the plots and virtually everything written on the works, so that should help graduate students and those who want a general introduction. Monolingual English speakers in African American studies can access Gonçalves’s text for the first time, since it has not been translated. Scholars in English, literature, history, cultural anthropology, sociology, and religion will also find it useful.