MIDDLEBURY, Vt. - The Middlebury College Language Schools will hold commencement for the 93rd summer session in Mead Chapel on Friday, Aug. 17, at 5 p.m. The ceremony will be preceded by a carillon performance by Alexander Solovov. Mead Chapel is on Hepburn Road off College Street (Route 125). Both events are free and open to the public.

Middlebury College President Ronald D. Liebowitz and Dean of the Language Schools and Schools Abroad Michael Geisler will award degrees to about 160 master of arts candidates in French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish. Five candidates are expected to receive doctorates in modern languages. Awards for distinguished study will also be given to select students in the schools of Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese.

University of Turin Professor of Theoretical Philosophy Gianni Vattimo will deliver the commencement address. One of Europe’s leading contemporary philosophers, Vattimo studied at the University of Turin before joining the faculty in 1964. He is a scholar of Nietzsche and Heidegger, and was a student of Hans-Georg Gadamer, K. Loewith, and Luigi Pareyson. He was a director of the journal “Rivista di estetica” and currently serves on the scientific committees of numerous Italian and foreign reviews. A member of the Academy of Sciences of Turin, Vattimo has taught at several American institutions, including Yale University, New York University, and the State University of New York. He was elected as a member of the European Parliament in Strasburg in 1999 and is currently vice president of the Academia de la Latinidade.

Among his books are “Nihilism and Emancipation” (2004), a collection of Vattimo’s most influential essays on ethics, politics, and law; “Nietzsche: Philosophy as Cultural Criticism” (2000); “Beyond Interpretation: The Meaning of Hermeneutics for Philosophy” (1997); and, with Jacques Derrida, the edited volume “Religion” (1998). He has written numerous studies of modern philosophy, including exploration of the themes of politics, charity, human emancipation, truth, faith, dogmatism, morality and sin, as viewed through the lens of his own life as a devout follower of Christianity. Following Vattimo’s address, an honorary doctor of letters degree will be conferred upon him.
  
Middlebury College Professor Emeritus of Music Emory M. Fanning will accompany the commencement procession and recession on the Mead Chapel organ.

Middlebury College Language Schools 
In the Language Schools’ 93-year history, more than 40,000 students of all ages, nationalities, and from all walks of life have attended one or more of the nine schools. More than 11,000 of these students have earned a master’s degree or doctorate of modern languages from the Language Schools where, this year, more than 1,300 students are enrolled. Under the guidance of approximately 240 faculty members from colleges and universities throughout the world, students live on campus, totally immersed in their target language.

The college currently offers summer sessions for nine foreign languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, as well as graduate-level French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish. In 2007, the Language Schools added a master’s degree in Chinese, which students can earn in four summers at Middlebury’s Vermont campus, or in two summers in Vermont and an academic year at the Middlebury-affiliated Monterey Institute of International Studies. The Arabic and Portuguese sessions also offer non-degree, graduate-level courses.

Middlebury also offers language programs at the C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad located at 30 sites in 12 countries: Buenos Aires and Tucumán, Argentina; Belo Horizonte, Florianópolis and Niteroi, Brazil; Concepción, La Serena, Santiago, Temuco, Valdivia and Valparaíso, Chile; Hangzhou, China; Alexandria, Egypt; Bordeaux, Paris and Poitiers, France; Mainz and Berlin, Germany; Ferrara and Florence, Italy; Guadalajara and Xalapa, Mexico; Irkutsk, Moscow and Yaroslavl, Russia; Córdoba, Getafe, Logroño and Madrid, Spain; and Montevideo, Uruguay.   

For more information, contact Middlebury College Language Schools Director of Institutional Collaboration and Marketing Jamie Northrup at 802-443-5856 or jnorthru@middlebury.edu.