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THE MLA attempts to provide a forum for the discussion of those concerns that most affect the field of language and literature teaching and scholarship in higher education. Currently under way are two such discussions, which I bring to your attention so that you may engage in them: the relations between English and foreign language programs and the worsening condition of scholarly publishing.
The MLA and New York University sponsored the Conference on the Relation between English and Foreign Language Programs: Constructing Dialogue, Imagining Change, April 2002 on the NYU campus. Many views were aired about the distinctive qualities of the two fields, the shared problems and subject matters, and the potential for collaborations. As you are aware, there have been many changes in the scope of English and foreign language departments over the last decade. Boundaries have shifted and become more porous, and the nation-based study of literature has come under pressure from several directions. Administrators confronting constrained budgets may be questioning the organization of literary studies, especially when classes are very small. These developments have had programmatic implications in both disciplines.
For example, American literature is to a greater degree drawing on and recognizing its roots in many different immigrant populations. Thus English departments are moving toward a more encompassing view of American literary studies, one that includes Latino/Latina and Chicano/Chicana studies, which may seem the territory of foreign language departments. Other areas where there is such overlapping, which we hope will foster cooperation, are literary theory, translation, film, and women’s studies. There is also the staffing of courses under the rubric world literature, where both foreign language and English professors can be deployed to good effect. Papers from the April conference may be found in the October 2002 PMLA (“Conference”) and at www.mla.org. The discussion will continue at the ADFL Summer Seminars; at Seminar West, ADFL chairs will meet for the first time with chairs from the ADE.
The crisis in academic publishing in languages and literature has been a concern for some time; in 1999 the MLA created an ad hoc committee to examine the situation. The report of that committee, “The Future of Scholarly Publishing,” gives a full analysis of the background and current issues that are reflected in the letter many of you may have received from the MLA 2002 president, Stephen Greenblatt, about the decrease in the number of books published by university presses in our field. As Greenblatt points out, this reduction is a result of higher costs; the demand for scientific books; declining book sales in our field, especially to libraries; and the withdrawal of institutional support from university presses. One of the chief consequences of the difficulty in publishing is that it makes it nearly impossible to meet the typical requirement that junior faculty members publish a scholarly book as a condition for promotion to tenure.
Having sounded the alarm, Greenblatt invited responses about paths to a solution that might be followed. More than 250 MLA members answered with recommendations, primarily about rethinking the requirements for tenure, establishing new criteria for evaluating junior faculty members, providing book subventions, and investigating the validity of publishing on the Internet. These suggestions, all controversial, and other issues were addressed in an MLA Executive Council meeting with directors of research libraries and editors of university presses. One point emerging from that meeting was that faculty members have influence with editors and librarians and so might begin a dialogue with them. Clearly, it is the junior faculty members who have the most at stake. I urge the readers of this journal, who likely are department chairs, to consider how this issue affects their departments and the profession. Possible questions for discussion can be found in “Developing Recommendations on Scholarly Publishing” in the MLA Newsletter (copies of the article may be obtained by writing adfl@mla.org).
The essays in this ADFL Bulletin reflect these concerns indirectly through the exposition and critique of pedagogical, programmatic, and professional topics. The first group of essays demonstrates how cultural studies approaches to teaching have been profitably incorporated into curricula—in a Romance (Spanish) program and an East Asian (Japanese) program—to help students make the leap from their culture to that of the target language. Haruo Shirane discusses the difficulty of teaching Asian languages, since their writing systems and mind-sets are unfamiliar to English speakers. He cites further complications: staffing necessities, the history of these languages as a part of area studies, and the varied needs of heritage speakers among the learners. There is a strong trend in East Asian studies toward the social sciences, which serve students preparing for a variety of careers, but Shirane stresses that the humanities still need to provide the basis for an understanding of East Asian cultures. By turning to a cultural studies model, East Asian studies can transcend “the traditional boundary between the humanities and the social sciences, as well as those between literature and the arts, while still demanding rigorous disciplinary training, linguistic expertise, and in-depth knowledge of the culture.”
Sophia McClennen finds cultural studies particularly appropriate for the study of the great variety and vitality of Latin American peoples, because this approach encourages insights from social sciences, critiques the notion of a canonical authority, and privileges the study of popular culture. Pointing out that it is not enough to expand the curriculum with cinema studies and the voices of female authors and ethnic minorities, McClennen advocates attention to the kind of pedagogy that will direct students to engage critically with the subject matter in relation to their own cultures. She believes the important tools for introducing Latin American culture are new materials, innovative teaching methods, and an emphasis on cultural context “to bring to the classroom the scholarly insights of Latin American cultural studies and the pedagogical goals of interdisciplinary, cross-cultural studies.”
Gwendolyn Barnes-Karol focuses on helping graduate students reframe their thinking about the teaching of literature to undergraduate students in the various roles undergraduates play as language learners and particularly as “nonintended readers” of texts from cultures very different from their own. She suggests that students can be led to engage in a dialogue with texts, to take advantage of their position as nonnative readers, and to develop the capacity to become intercultural readers. Drawing on a variety of visual and textual sources acquaints students with the historical and literary context of the work and allows them to make comparisons with their own experience and culture. The matrix of cultural sources thus informs and enriches student understanding of the reading.
When students interact directly with a foreign culture without the intermediary of a text, they come closer to understanding how the culture is not only different from but also the same as their own, and by entering the culture, they transform themselves. Programs abroad, no longer confined to language majors and academic study, increasingly offer students from many disciplines a wide variety of experiences, from work to individual research projects. The program at Connecticut College, sponsored by its Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts (CISLA) and described by Catherine Spencer, combines both work and study. It begins with a student proposal for a research project abroad and includes a language requirement, a sequence of courses on the home campus, the internship abroad, and a final project that brings the threads of these experiences together with the ethos of the liberal arts curriculum. The aim of the program is to integrate “the student’s language skills, international understanding, and internship experience with the disciplinary concerns and methods of the major field.” The program has grown considerably over the past ten years, attracting students from many different disciplines, social sciences being the largest. Student destinations still favor Europe but now reach as far as China and Chile. Spencer discusses not only the success of the program but also some of its problems, such as the marginal status of the language component and the low representation of the humanities among student majors. CISLA has created a program of international study that is distinguished by the active participation of the campus community as well as by an insistence on intellectual accomplishment.
The University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire’s program in Wittenberg, described by Jefford Vahlbusch, looks at first like a standard study-abroad program that includes academic course work, student stays with local families, and excursions to places of interest. However, the experiential opportunities that the program offers are notable: project-based learning in topics ranging from Martin Luther to the ecology of the Elbe; service learning with “guided reflection”(a requirement of the university)—involving for example the care of the indigent or work at a children’s zoo; and a short-term business or professional internship. The thread that runs through all these opportunities is interaction with Wittenberg citizens. The intimate involvement with the community and its language deepens students’ understanding and appreciation of the society and helps students gain a significantly better command of German.
From study abroad we move back to the United States campus to consider concerns of the profession, in this case staffing and rewards. Geraldine Nichols notes the growing demands made on today’s department chair and faculty members and suggests a way to identify activities of value. Her department at the University of Florida has developed a system of rewards for both faculty members and graduate students that involve the public recognition, either university- or department-wide, of teaching, publications, or other accomplishments. While symbolic rewards foster departmental spirit, monetary rewards provide a more tangible recognition. In an effort to bring greater order and equality to the merit system of raises, the Romance Languages and Literatures Department established evaluative criteria so that the chair no longer had to be the sole judge of faculty worth. The success of the point system that was developed derives not only from its clarity to everyone and its flexibility in dealing with many different activities but also from the investment by all department members and their agreement to its tenets.
Writing as a full-time lecturer, Kelle Truby points out the advantages and disadvantages of that position. Having interviewed others in her situation, she suggests that lecturers like the emphasis on teaching, the ability to affect student learning, and freedom from the pressures of publishing. Some negative aspects of an untenured position are predictable: lack of time, money, and security. But greater frustration is caused by a lack of empowerment, which, she believes, comes from an administration’s failure to recognize the value of a lecturer’s contribution to the educational environment of an institution.
Under the rubric “Programs and Practices” we publish two essays each on teacher education and on the uses of technology, the former the purview of unsung leaders of the classroom and the latter the evolving but glamorous sine qua non of current course delivery. Jay Siskin argues trenchantly for the value of the history of language teaching as a corrective to embracing innovation. Historical research in the field shows professional continuity and helps us reflect on why the concerns of the past—for example, that teachers should master their content area—resurface in the present. Facing falling enrollments in French and the diminishing pool of high school teachers, Samia Spencer and her colleagues at Auburn University tried to turn the tide through a series of curricular and advocacy initiatives. They introduced new French majors in education and in international trade and a collaborative major with the Consumer Affairs Department in French and apparel merchandising. Meanwhile teachers were encouraged to participate in professional meetings as a way of improving their pedagogical skills. In the arena of public advocacy, Spencer and her colleagues in the Alabama Association of Foreign Language Teachers conducted a letter-writing campaign to members of the Alabama Senate and House of Representatives to emphasize the importance of language learning in the overall quality of education. Those legislators who wished visited schools in their districts giving particular attention to the language programs; their visits were reported in local newspapers. I mention this endeavor, because it is just this sort of grass-roots effort that is needed, as Spencer says, to bring “foreign language instruction to the forefront of the public debate on education and by increasing its visibility through social, economic, and political networks.”
Alex Chapin describes a Middlebury College vocabulary-learning database that goes well beyond flashcards in that it keeps track of what students learn. Chapin envisions further expansion of the system through collaborative filtering software, such as that used on commercial Web sites (like Amazon.com) to establish customer profiles, to establish learner profiles. A learner profile could then be used to create instructional materials just beyond the student’s level of competence and ultimately to create an individualized course of study. Here we are looking into the future, but it is not too distant a future. Benjamin Rifkin evaluates language-learning software and Web-based materials. Because students have greater access to technology, there are many opportunities for teachers and instructional designers to reach them in new ways and give them a broad range of learning activities. Rifkin maintains that teachers need to know how to integrate computer-based material into their courses; and for them to make informed decisions, their peers need to review these materials in journals. But however fancy or intriguing its technological design, a program must be based on solid pedagogy to be effective. Rifkin argues emphatically that the development of instructional software and Web sites should be considered in the review for tenure and promotion. Otherwise, talented and imaginative faculty members will not be willing to invest the considerable time and intellectual energy required to design materials of high quality.
While the discussions and essays in this issue are heterogeneous in approach and topic, they share several themes and subtexts. One is the predominance of culture, particularly in strategies for helping students enter the attitudes, mentalities, or even the imagination of another culture through language, film, texts, or lived experience. With such teaching comes interdisciplinarity between social sciences and humanities (Shirane, Spencer) or between English and foreign languages. Useful classroom innovation appears in several papers (McClennen, Chapin, Rifkin) and is implied in others, while Siskin asks us to look at innovation in regard to history. In the professional arena a common concern is faculty rewards: considering the accomplishments as teachers and scholars (Nichols, Truby), rethinking the requirement of book publication for promotion to tenure, or including instructional software design as credentials for promotion (Rifkin). These themes, together, give us a multidimensional portrait, almost a moving picture, of concerns and developments in our field and are evidence of the intellectual vitality and sense of responsibility of our community.
“Conference on the Relation between English and Foreign Languages in the Academy: Constructing Dialogue, Imagining Change.” PMLA 117 (2002): 1233–94.
“Developing Recommendations on Scholarly Publishing.” MLA Newsletter 34.3 (2002): 17.
Greenblatt, Stephen. “Call for Action on Problems in Scholarly Book Publishing: A Special Letter from Stephen Greenblatt.” 28 May 2002. MLA Reports and Documents 7 Jan. 2003. 13 Jan. 2003 http://www.mla.org.
MLA Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of Scholarly Publishing. “The Future of Scholarly Publishing.” Profession 2002. New York: MLA, 2002. 172–86.
© 2003 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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