Dr. Joel Goldfield

Dr. Joel Goldfield is Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures (in French) and Director of the Assistant Teacher/Oral Practice Session (AT/OPS) Program. He recently completed a three-year term as Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. Dr. Goldfield also served as the founding director of the Charles E. Culpeper Language Resource Center from 1994-2008.

CLASSES TAUGHT:

Prof. Goldfield teaches undergraduate courses in French language and culture, business and culture, approaches to translation, and foreign language methodology. He has also taught an experimental course on Foreign Language Teaching and Technology for undergraduate or graduate school credit. He co-created an Honors Program course, “The Future of the Book,” dealing with the impact of technology and new knowledge on Western civilization.

UPCOMING PROGRAMS: Weekend Immersion Programs (WIPs) for Arabic, French, Italian, and Spanish, April 23-25, 2010. Rassias Method Workshop, tentatively in Spring 2010, Fairfield University. Accelerated Language Programs (ALPs) at Dartmouth College, June and July 2010, for Fairfield University undergraduate credit.

Research and Publications

Joel Goldfield has published hypertextual short stories from 19th-century French literature for Transparent Language and co-authored French textbook materials for University Press of New England and Heinle & Heinle Publishers. He has also authored numerous articles and reviews on computer-assisted literary research, foreign language methodology, computer-assisted language learning and faculty development. Dr. Goldfield has co-authored a recently published chapter with Dr. Kurt Schlichting on a role for geographical information systems (GIS) in language learning ("Foreign Language, Sociology and GIS: Exploring French Society and Culture," in Understanding Place: GIS and Mapping across the Curriculum, Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2007). Additional information on their research is available on the GIS project webpage. Prof. Goldfield’s recent presentations on the role and prospective roles of GIS in language learning include those at Amherst College, Longwood University, Ramapo College of NJ, U. of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign (NCSA), St. Lawrence University, Southern Connecticut State, SUNY/New Paltz, VMI, Wesleyan (CT), and Yale. For more information on his research, please see the citations and acknowledgments.

Professor Goldfield is a co-author with Profs. John Rassias and Jacqueline de la Chapelle Skubly of the workbook, lab manual and audioscript materials for the 4^th edition of Le Français : départ-arrivée and a contributor to the textbook, published in 2008 by the University Press of New England.

Dr. Goldfield’s chapter on "Technology Trends in Faculty Development, Preprofessional Training and the Support of Language and Literature Departments" appears in Chairing the Foreign Language and Literature Department, Part 2, a special issue of the ADFL Bulletin (Modern Language Association, Spring 2001). For information on recent CALL research related to grants, please see below under “Grants.” Please click on the next link to see sample research such as that presented to the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) regarding the International Studies/Language Technology Initiative (ISLT).

Literary Computing

Work on stylometry or stylometrics, literary criticism and corpus stylistics has been the focus of Dr. Goldfield’s long-term research projects since the late 1980’s. His most recent papers in these areas, delivered at the Sorbonne in June 2006 and the University of Oulu, Finland, in June 2008, were entitled, “French-English Literary Translation Aided by Frequency Comparisons from ARTFL and Other Corpora” and “Homebodies and Gad-Abouts: A Chronological Stylistic Study of 19^th-Century French and English Novelists” (co-authored with Dr. David Hoover, English, NYU) as part of the annual conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO). Representative work in literary computing appears in "Computational Thematics, a Selective Database and Literary Criticism: Gobineau, Tic Words, and Riffaterre Revisited," Literary Computing and Literary Criticism: Theoretical and Practical Essays on Theme and Rhetoric, ed. Rosanne G. Potter, U. Penn., 1989, pp. 97-122.

Editorial Work

A former Assistant Editor of Computers and the Humanities and Director on the Board of the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Dr. Goldfield is currently Managing Editor of The Ram's Horn, a peer-reviewed journal on experiential language learning published by The Rassias Center for World Languages and Cultures (formerly The Rassias Foundation) at Dartmouth College. The journal welcomes manuscripts in the call for papers for its upcoming issue scheduled for Fall 2009.

Research Grants

Dr. Goldfield is an Associate Investigator in the new U.S. Dept. of Education Grant for 2007-2010, “Critical Languages Eurasia Initiative” (Dr. David McFadden, History, Principal Investigator). His 2007-2008 sabbatical project was entitled: Bilingual Critical Reader of Selected Tales from the Nouvelles asiatiques of Gobineau with Critical Essays on Stylometry.

He received a 2003 summer research grant for French literature and literary computing exploring the vocabulary and style of Balzac, Gobineau and Stendhal. He was also one of three investigators in a three-year grant project (1999-2002), the International Studies/Language Technology Initiative. It examined new possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration in using foreign languages across the curriculum (FLAC), especially in the social sciences. Funded by The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the former Charles E. Culpeper Foundation and the Archbold Charitable Trust, the ISLT Initiative involved approximately twenty-eight faculty from fourteen different disciplines in applications of Virtual Language Lab technologies and Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

The Assistant Teacher/Oral Practice Session (AT/OPS) Program

Dr. Goldfield is the Director of the Assistant Teacher/Oral Practice Session (AT/OPS) Program, adapted by the DMLL from the Dartmouth Intensive Language Model. These non-credit “labs” are small sections taught by students trained and supervised by faculty. The OPS function as guided oral homework for students in Core (general education) courses for as many as eight modern languages currently taught at the University. These OPS help students bridge the proficiency gap between what they can read/write and what they can communicate orally. Results of testing by a third party (ACTFL) regarding the effects of the Rassias Method on raising the proficiency level of beginners in a variety of languages are now available in Breakthrough: Essays and Vignettes in Honor of John A. Rassias, ed. Mel B. Yoken (New York: Peter Lang) 2007.

Workshops, Faculty Development and Institutional Projects

Much of Dr. Goldfield’s teaching and research time at Fairfield or as a leader of workshops at other educational institutions is devoted to faculty development on foreign language standards, second language acquisition, methodology and the integration of technology into teaching styles and the curriculum. He has held New Hampshire teacher certification in French, German and Music. He has also conducted several internally grant-funded projects for faculty development in oral proficiency testing and integrating computer-assisted language learning (CALL) into language and literature curricula. In 1995-96 he researched and co-authored the University’s first study of its information resources for Standard 7 of the reaccreditation visit by the New England Association of Schools & Colleges (NEAS&C).

Language Immersion Programs

Dr. Goldfield is the academic director of the University's program for the summer Accelerated Language Programs (ALPs) in a partnership between Fairfield University and the Rassias Foundation at Dartmouth College. In this program undergraduate credit is offered for ten-day intensive language/culture courses through Fairfield's University College (continuing education). He also serves as Academic Director of the University College’s Rassias Institute for Language and Cultural Studies, which is currently offering weekend, non-credit weekend immersion programs (“WIPs”) in the Fairfield area in Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, French, Italian and Spanish in cooperation with The Rassias Center for World Languages and Cultures. Other languages may be offered by request: German, Hebrew, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Russian.

The Culpeper Language Resource Center

As founding director of the LARC, Dr. Goldfield was responsible for teaching and supervising a staff of approximately a dozen undergraduate and graduate students and occasionally, adjunct faculty members who undertook special curricular projects and assisted in managing the center. Many "alumni" of the LARC have gone on to careers ranging from foreign language teaching to academic computing support to international business. The LARC also helps faculty from other departments working on intercultural or foreign language projects, such as the new U.S. Dept. of Education grant (“Critical Languages Eurasia Initiative” for Mandarin Chinese and Russian) and the on-going federal FIPSE grant for Economics and Brazilian Portuguese.

Short biographical statement about Dr. Joel Goldfield

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E-mail: jgoldfield@fairfield.edu

Tel.: 203-254-4000, ext. 2304

Academic degrees:

Ph.D. 1985. Littérature et civilisation françaises, option moderne et contemporaine. Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier III, France. Boursier du Gouvernement français. Dissertation on the Nouvelles asiatiques of Arthur de Gobineau and a methodology for computer-assisted stylo-statistical and thematic analysis.

M.A. Literary Studies: Comparative Literature. Brandeis University.

A.B. Comparative Literature. Dartmouth College.