¡Hola! Mi nombre completo es Adèle Ellis Beasley Long. Me llamo Adela en español. ¿Estás curioso? Aquí tienes los hechos. Here are the facts.

I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. During my childhood, I lived in Clayton, Alabama (my father's home), in Uniontown, Alabama (my mother's home), and in Houston, Texas, where I took my first Spanish class, in the ninth grade, and graduated from high school.

I continued my study of Spanish at Sweet Briar College in Virginia and spent a year in Madrid with the New York University Junior Year in Spain program. After graduation, I served for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia. Later, I returned to Madrid with my sister to study, this time with the New York University Graduate Year in Spain program. That year was immensely rewarding, possibly the best of my life.

My sister and I shared many experiences, some of which involved the use of the Spanish language. Together, she and I managed our family's cotton gin business in Uniontown for several seasons. Later, we opened our own real estate and property management company in Houston, which we operated for many years. We used Spanish frequently with owners, tenants, and service personnel.

When the real estate market declined, I moved back to Uniontown and began work on my Ph.D. in Spanish at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. While pursuing my studies, I worked as a graduate teaching assistant in Spanish at UA and also taught Spanish at Judson College in Marion, near Uniontown. I put 332,000 miles on my car during those years!

As a doctoral student in Dr. Enrique Ruiz-Fornells' Twentieth Century Spanish Literature class at UA, I discovered the fine sense of humor of Miguel Mihura, a contemporary Spanish playwright. My dissertation is a serious study of three of his comedies using a feminist critical approach. Between writing and revision, it took me three years to complete this monumental project. My appreciation of Mihura's humor was absolutely essential to maintaining my sanity through the grueling process.

A special interest of mine, which stems from my dissertation research, is combining the study of theater with performance. I believe that dramatic presentations offer great potential for stimulating interest in language and culture. Student participation in dialogues, skits, mini-dramas, and plays provides an excellent opportunity for language learning. When a student steps into a role that is emotionally compelling to her/him, it is no longer the student, but the character speaking. As the focus shifts from the student to the character, the student's inhibitions are broken down, and s/he can use the language more freely. I am convinced of the power of drama to enhance second language acquisition through real-world communication and culture. My students at TNCC have confirmed this with their evaluations of the skits they created and acted in at our Open House in Spring 1998 and our annual Foreign Language Evenings beginning in Spring 1999.

I hope to expand the curriculum in foreign languages to include a variety of opportunities for student presentations using the target language. In addition, I plan to pursue the creation of a suitable environment for this type of activity, where students can learn through performance. I am also interested in exploring teaching strategies and instructional technologies that promote student-centered classrooms, in which students take responsibility for their own learning and success.

Outside the academic world, my lifelong love affair has been with a house, my family's home in Uniontown, an ante-bellum plantation house called Westwood, where my mother and sister live now. Soon after moving back to Uniontown, I discovered that the spooky old house in which I lived alone was a perfect setting for Halloween parties. Amazingly, everyone wore costumes and took on fictional personalities. T.C., my favorite of all my cats (including Mish, Fluffin, Tadpole, Tidbit, Misty, Datbaby, and Itty Bitty), raced around the house during many of these parties. Sometimes we rented a jukebox to play our favorite oldies and dance the jitterbug in the front hall to the songs of Creedence Clearwater Revival.

In the realm of music, other favorites of mine are classical, especially Spanish, Portuguese Fado, jazz, danceable Latin, and almost anything with a good beat. One of my first loves is dancing, and my definite favorite for pure fun is country and western. In Houston, I took fifteen levels of classes in c/w dancing and participated in dance exhibitions featuring the Texas two-step, the polka, the waltz, and the swing.

On a more tranquil note, some of my most pleasant memories are of hours of serenity spent working in my vegetable garden in the old one-acre plantation garden plot at Westwood. In that garden, I feel an especially strong and enduring attachment to the land. I love daffodils, gardenias, and peonies, and all the old shade trees in the yard, which I consider my friends.

As sentimental as I am about Westwood, I’m always grateful for relief from the extreme heat and cold of an old house without the amenities of central heat and air conditioning. My favorite escape route takes us three hours south to the beautiful beaches of the Florida Gulf Coast, unsurpassed for their sugary white sand, gorgeous blue-green water, and sea oats. For me, the atmosphere of the beach is perfect for rest, relaxation, and renewal.

A dream of mine is to travel around the world, living and working in each country long enough to learn to communicate in the language. I’ve studied French, German, Latin, a little Portuguese, and a little Russian, but am fluent only in English and Spanish. So I will have plenty of learning to do! My optimism, my enthusiasm, my capacity for work and, especially, my sense of humor, which I consider my most valuable asset, are prerequisites for the survival skills needed for such a jaunt. And, if I can convince my mother and sister to join me, we’ll have the time of our lives!

¡Y con eso basta! And that’s enough about me!

Pero…por si acaso quieres saber más detalles



Updated March8, 2004