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Bachata has used mass media throughout its history to foster a sense of inclusion and community among fans, from Radio Guarachita in the 1960s to livestreaming on social media in the twenty-first century. This article considers how the Dominican Facebook Live program, El Tieto eShow, continues bachata’s intimate relationship with mass media through the creation and development of a virtual imagined community of bachata enthusiasts around the globe. The article explores how the cultural roots of the imagined community—the decline of sacred languages and societal high centers and the acceptance of calendrical over sacred time—contribute to this sense of group among El Tieto eShow’s worldwide audience. It also considers the importance of this type of virtual fan community in propagating a sense of proximity to each other and musicians.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the context of world language teaching and learning around the globe in 2020 when schools unexpectedly switched to remote learning. In the face of this unanticipated shift, world language educators sought ways to adapt communicative language teaching to remote delivery. Active discussion approaches effectively encourage students to master course material and gain proficiency in synchronous online classes. This chapter discusses best practices for active discussions and offers examples for creating engaging discussion approaches for synchronous online world language classes.

Boundaries are never as definitive as they appear at first glance, for they create a broader zone, the borderlands, where the people, practices, and products from both sides comingle. Despite boundaries' demarcating intent, the borderlands they cross are a syncretic blend of the lands on each side. The borderland as fictional setting draws our attention not to the fixedness of boundaries, but rather to their flexibility. Set in the Dominican-Haitian borderland, Marcio Veloz Maggiolo's El hombre del acordeón ('The Accordion Man') draws upon the dynamism of that geopolitical border to call into question other apparently definitive boundaries, thus challenging official religious, racial, and musical discourses of Dominicanness.

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