Our Faculty and Staff

Dr. Mark Harman

Professor of English and German
harmanm@etown.edu | 717-361-1992

A native of Dublin, Ireland, Mark Harman is College Professor of International Studies and Professor of English & German. A prize-winning literary translator, he did his doctoral work at Yale, and has taught at Dartmouth, Oberlin, Franklin & Marshall, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Among his translations are Franz Kafka's novel The Castle, winner of the MLA’s Lois Roth Award; Kafka's Amerika: The Missing Person; the selected letters of Hermann Hesse, Soul of the Age; Robert Walser Rediscovered, which he edited and co-translated, and Reiner Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet (Harvard). He has written extensively about German-language and Irish authors, with a particular emphasis on Kafka, about whom he has published over 20 articles. His essays, reviews and translations have appeared in journals such as The Times Literary Supplement (London), Georgia Review,  Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Sinn und Form (Berlin), and Sewanee Review as well as newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, The Irish Times (Dublin), Philadelphia Inquirer,  and Washington Post. A new anthology of his translations of Kafka stories, with his commentary, is forthcoming from Harvard.

Besides German language courses, he enjoys teaching modernist & contemporary European and world literature, translation, and autobiography.

Dr. Charla Lorenzen

Associate Professor of Spanish 
lorenzenc@etown.edu | 717-361-1996

Dr. Lorenzen teaches Spanish courses and supervises the major in Spanish with Education Certification K-12 (Spanish Education) program. Her teaching and research interests include: foreign language teacher preparation, teaching Spanish to heritage speakers, and Service Learning as a teaching and learning method. The unifying theme across Dr. Lorenzen's teaching, research, and service experience is an intense interest in bringing linguistically and culturally diverse people together, through a shared love of learning about others' ways of expressing themselves and existing in our shared world, to engage in positive and productive ways.

Dr. Kurt Barnada

Associate Professor of Spanish, Department Chair
barnadkm@etown.edu | 717-361-1255

Kurt Barnada is an associate professor of Modern Languages. He instructs all levels of Spanish, including advanced-level courses on modern Spanish society and Spanish linguistics. He received his M.A degree in foreign languages from West Virginia University and his PhD in applied linguistics from Georgetown University. Early on in his career he was awarded a Dana Fellowship through Dartmouth College and the Charles A. Dana Foundation Collaborative Program. He later served as the College's first Director of International Studies, teaching and advising students from many places abroad. His current interests include work on aspects of Spanish dialectology and the interpretation and application of non-verbal behavior as an aid to enhanced second language learning.

Dr. Montserrat Linares-Farras

Associate Professor of Spanish
linaresm@etown.edu | 717-361-1254

Dr. Montserrat Linares-Farras received her BA from the Universitat de Barcelona, and her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. She has been a member of Modern Languages Department at Elizabethtown College since 2002. She currently teaches Spanish and Latin American Literature, Spanish Advanced Grammar, and Conversation. Her research interests are the Spanish avant-garde novel and contemporary Spanish women writers. She co-edited the volume Women in the Spanish Novel Today: Reflections of Self in the Works of Three Generations of Writers, published by McFarland in 2009.

Dr. Mahua Bhattacharya

Associate Professor of Japanese
bhattacharm@etown.edu | 717-361-1239

Dr. Mahua Bhattacharya is an Associate Professor of Japanese and Asian Studies and has taught at Elizabethtown College since 2001. In the past she has held joint appointments with the departments of Modern Languages and Sociology and Anthropology. A native of India, she has taught Japanese in one of the premier institutions of India called Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU for short) in New Delhi for 13 years where she also got her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Japanese Language and Japanese Studies. Before coming to Elizabethtown College, she was a Visiting Fellow at University of Chicago and taught Japanese at DePaul University in Chicago and Millersville University in Pennsylvania. She was also the Director of the Women and Gender Studies program in the College and is a Co-Director of the Asian Studies program. Her research interests include postcolonial theory, women's studies, popular culture, language ideology, and second language acquisition.

Dr. Nobuaki Takahashi

Assistant Professor of Japanese
takahashin@etown.edu | 717-361-1573

A native of Japan, Dr. Nobuaki Takahashi is an Assistant Professor of Japanese. He received his BA in English from Kanda University of International Studies, MA in Asian Civilization with a specialization in Japanese Language Pedagogy from the University of Iowa, and PhD in Second Language Acquisition from the University of Iowa. He currently teaches a various levels of Japanese language courses. His research interests include second language acquisition in Japanese, form-focused instruction, especially in error correction, and language learning strategies. He has teaching experiences at the University of Iowa, East Carolina University, Princeton in Ishikawa summer program, Middlebury College Japanese Summer School, Hokkaido International Foundation summer program, as well as K-12 education at Beaver Dam Unified School District in Wisconsin and Yujin Gakuen Japanese immersion program middle level in Eugene, OR.