uo romance languages 623: canons, culture, and commodification

8/8/2019 UO Romance Languages 623: Canons, Culture, and Commodification

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RL623 Spring 2009 Updated 31 March 2009 1

RL 623: Culture, Canon, and CommodificationInstructors: Robert Davis ([email protected]) and David Wacks([email protected])Spring 2009, CRN 34907

Tuesday 2:00-5:00pm in Education 117

Description: The study of language and culture in an institutional setting (school,university, institute) creates market opportunities for cultural and linguisticartifacts. These products determine in large part how the target language, culture,and literature are perceived and in turn transmitted to the next generation ofinstitutional consumer-learners. Language study materials (textbooks, multimedia)and literature textbooks, anthologies, and literary histories are not transparentrepresentations of any given language or culture. Their production and consumptionare conditioned by market considerations, by the intellectual and professionalhabits of their producers, and by the ideologies and administrative policies of wherethey are consumed.

In this class we will read and critique a variety of texts including primary sourcessuch as language textbooks and multimedia, literary anthologies, literature andculture textbooks, and secondary texts dealing with issues of canonicity, literaryhistory, and critical approaches to the commodification of national languages andcultures.

RL MA students: This class will provide an excellent opportunity to begin developinga critical pedagogical portfolio. Graduate students from departments other thanRomance Languages are also strongly encouraged to enroll.

Texts: All required readings are available in Blackboard/CourseDocuments/Readings

Textbook corpus: Each student will select 3-5 language textbooks, literaryanthologies, and literary histories that will serve as the corpus for their weeklycritical interventions.

Requirements:

2-creditcourse

4-creditcourse

Critical presentation: The presentation will be a mockacademic conference paper (Please see "Guidelines for

conference papers" in Blackboard/Documents/) of no more than10 double-spaced pages or 15 minutes in length. Students mustprovide the audience with some sort of visual aid (i.e.PowerPoint slides, handout, film clip, audio recordings, etc.).

--- 20%

Weekly interventions (7, weeks 2-8): Each week studentswill hand in a short (two-page) paper in which they apply criticalreadings to their corpus of materials. Each intervention willconsist of a paragraph of summary giving an overview of the

90% 50%


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critical concepts and the materials to which they will be applied,followed by a detailed analysis supported by specific references.Students may write their weekly interventions with an eyetoward their particular literary, cultural, or pedagogical interests(period, topic, genre, etc) and in particular keeping in mind thelikely nature of their critical project.

Critical project:The critical project will be an article-lengthintervention exploring a problem in some aspect of languagelearning materials, literary anthologies, or literary history in oneor more Romance languages. Topics will be developed inconsultation with instructors and through weekly criticalinterventions. Projects must be submitted in MLA format. Toreceive credit for an M.A. period requirement, the project mustbe written in the M.A. language and address the period in adirect way.

--- 30%

Attendance and participation 10% ---

Week 1 (3/31) Intro: History of FL studies in University

Week 2 (4/7) Canonicity 1: The anthologyVisitor: Wadda Ros-FontReading: Kuipers 2003; Even Zohar 1990; Ros-Font 2001Intervention: Apply readings to primary readings in literary anthologies (2) ofyour choice

Week 3 (4/14) Canonicity 2: Literary HistoryReading: Perkins 1992; Guillory 1993Intervention: Apply readings to primary readings in 2 literary anthologies and/orliterary histories

Week 4 (4/21) History of FL TextbookReading: Richards and Rogers 2001; Musumeci 1997;Intervention: TBA

Week 5 (4/28) The Commodification of Language LearningVisitors: Barbara Altmann, Bill Glass, Peter Suber (virtual)Reading: Wortham 1997; Sercu 2000; Maijala 2007; Suber 2004a; Suber 2004b;Intervention: Apply concepts to textbook corpus

Week 6 (5/5) Culture in the FL textbook 2

Reading: Kramsch 1993: 205-33; Osborn 2000;Intervention: Apply concepts to textbook corpus

Week 7 (5/12) New Media, Open Textbooks and the FL materials marketVisitor: Robert BlakeReading: cnx.org; Stevens 2006; Blake 2002 Tesoros

Week 8 (5/19) Culture in the FL textbook 3


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Reading: Herman 2007; Leeman and Martnez 2007

Week 9 (5/26) Presentations

Week 10 (6/1) Presentations

Invited Speakers:

Wadda Ros-Font (Barnard College):http://barnard.edu/faculty/profiles/riosfont_w.html

Bill Glass (McGraw Hill): http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/8a7/3a5 Peter Suber (Earlham College):

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/hometoc.htm Robert Blake (U California-Davis):

http://spanish.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/Blake Barbara Altmann (U Oregon, Romance Languages, Humanities Center):

http://rl.uoregon.edu/people/faculty/profiles/baltmann/index.php

Required Readings:

Even-Zohar, Itamar. "Polysystem Theory." Poetics Today11.1 (1990): 9-26.(see also Codde 2003 for updated overview)

Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Herman, Deborah M. "It's a small world after all: From stereotypes toinvented worlds in secondary school Spanish textbooks." Critical Inquiry inLanguage Studies 4.2-3 (2007): 117-50. (http://0-search.ebscohost.com.janus.uoregon.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=27022854&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-

live&scope=site ) Kramsch, Claire. Context and Culture in Language Teaching, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1993. 205-33. Kuipers, Christopher M., 2003, The Anthology / Corpus Dynamic: Towards a

Field Theory of the Canon, College Literature 30.2, 51-71. Leeman, Jennifer, and Glenn Martnez. "From identity to commodity:

Ideologies of Spanish in heritage language textbooks." Critical Inquiry &Language Studies 4.1 (2007): 35-65.

Maijala, Minna. "Schoolbooks." Imagology: The cultural construction andliterary representation of national characters. Eds. Manfred Beller and JoepLeerssen. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. 418-21.

Musumeci, Diane (1997) Breaking Tradition: An Exploration of the HistoricalRelationship Between Theory and Practice in Second Language Teaching.McGraw Hill Professional Series.

Osborn, Terry A. Critical reflection and the foreign language classroom.Westport, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey, 2000.

Perkins, David. Is literary history possible? Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1992.

Richards, J., & Rodgers, T. (2001).Approaches and methods in languageTeaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
http://barnard.edu/faculty/profiles/riosfont_w.htmlhttp://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/8a7/3a5http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/hometoc.htmhttp://spanish.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/Blakehttp://rl.uoregon.edu/people/faculty/profiles/baltmann/index.phphttp://0-search.ebscohost.com.janus.uoregon.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=27022854&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=sitehttp://0-search.ebscohost.com.janus.uoregon.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=27022854&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=sitehttp://0-search.ebscohost.com.janus.uoregon.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=27022854&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=sitehttp://0-search.ebscohost.com.janus.uoregon.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=27022854&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=sitehttp://barnard.edu/faculty/profiles/riosfont_w.htmlhttp://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/8a7/3a5http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/hometoc.htmhttp://spanish.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/Blakehttp://rl.uoregon.edu/people/faculty/profiles/baltmann/index.phphttp://0-search.ebscohost.com.janus.uoregon.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=27022854&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=sitehttp://0-search.ebscohost.com.janus.uoregon.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=27022854&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=sitehttp://0-search.ebscohost.com.janus.uoregon.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=27022854&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=site


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Ros-Font, Wadda C. "Literary history and canon formation." The CambridgeHistory of Spanish Literature. Ed. David Thatcher Gies. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2001. 15-35.

Sercu, Lies. "Textbooks." Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching andLearning. Ed. Michael Byram. London: Routledge, 2000. 626-29.

Stevens, Vance. "Second Life in Education and Language Learning." TESL-EJ

10.3 (2006). . Suber, Peter. (2004a). "Open Access Overview."

. Accessed 11 Feb2009.

Suber, Peter. (2004b). "Promoting Open Access in the Humanities" Accessed 11 Feb 2009.

Wortham, Stanton E. F. . "The Commodification of Classroom Discourse."Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Eds. Leo Van Lier and DavidCorson. Vol. 6. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997. 251-60.

Additional Reading:

Altieri, Charles. Canons and consequences: reflections on the ethical force ofimaginative ideals. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1990.

Auroux, Sylvain. History of the language sciences: An international handbookon the evolution of the study of language from the beginnings to the present.Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005. (Section XVII contains sections on history oflanguage teaching in Spain, Italy, and France in 15th-18th c.)

Breva-Claramonte, Manuel. La didctica de las lenguas en el Renacimiento:Juan Luis Vives y Pedro Simn Abril: con seleccin de textos. Bilbao:Universidad de Deusto, 1994.

Brown, Joan L., and Crista J. Johnson. "Required Reading: The Canon inSpanish and Spanish-American Literature." Hispania 81.1 (1998): 1-19.

Caravolas, Jean. La didactique des langues. Montreal: Presses de l'Universitde Montral, 1994. Caravolas, Jean.. Le point sur l'histoire de l'enseignement des langues, -3000-

1950. Le point sur--; Variation: Point sur-- (Anjou, Qubec). Anjou, Qubec:Centre ducatif et culturel, 1995.

Caravolas, Jean.. Histoire de la didactique des langues au sicle desLumires : prcis et anthologie thmatique. Montreal: Presses de l'Universitde Montral, 2000.

Codde, Philippe. "Polysystem Theory Revisited: A New ComparativeIntroduction." Poetics Today24.1 (2003): 91-126.

Gorak, Jan. The making of the modern canon : genesis and crisis of a literaryidea. Vision, division, and revision. London ; Atlantic Heights, NJ: Athlone,

1991. Gorak, Jan. Canon vs. culture : reflections on the current debate. Garlandreference library of the humanities. Wellesley studies in critical theory,literary history, and culture. New York: Garland, 2000.

Howatt, Anthony P. R., and Richard C. Smith. Foundations of foreign languageteaching: nineteenth-century innovators. London: New York, 2002.

Hutcheon, Linda, and Mario J. Valds. Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogueon Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Kolbas, E. Dean. Critical theory and the literary canon. Westview Press,
http://tesl-ej.org/ej39/int.htmlhttp://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htmhttp://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/apa.htmhttp://tesl-ej.org/ej39/int.htmlhttp://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htmhttp://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/apa.htm


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Cambridge University, 2001. Kramsch, Claire. "The cultural component of language teaching"ZIF1.2

(1996). http://zif.spz.tu-darmstadt.de/jg-01-2/beitrag/kramsch2.htm Kramsch, Claire. "The cultural discourse of foreign language textbooks."

Towards a new integration of language and culture. Ed. A. Singerman.Middlebury, Vt: Northeast Conference, 1988. 63-68.

Law, Vivien. "Medieval vernacular grammars." The History of Linguistics inEurope from Plato to 1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.190-209.

Pellandra, Carla. Grammatiche, grammatici, grammatisti: per una storiadell'insegnamento delle lingue in Italia dal Cinquecento al Settecento. Pisa:Libreria Goliardica, 1989.

Pozuelo Yvancos, Jos Mara, and Rosa Mara Aradra Snchez. Teora delcanon y literatura espaola. Madrid: Ctedra, 2000.

Sadow, S. "Experiential techniques that promote cross-cultural awareness."Foreign Language Annals 20.1: 25-30. "most foreign language textbooks offerdescriptions of the target culture that resemble a collection of postagestamps" (25)

Titone, Renzo. Cinque millenni di insegnamento delle lingue. Pubblicazioni delCentro di linguistica dell'Universit cattolica. Brescia: La Scuola, 1986.

VanPatten, Bill (1998) Perceptions of and Perspectives on the Term"Communicative". Hispania, 81 (4), 925-932.