As a French medievalist at heart, I value the concept of liberalia studia, the seven liberal arts which founded the first medieval universities (universitas magistrorum et scholarum) and inspired modern colleges and universities. From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, all the skills that every “free” person needed to become a productive member of society relied on the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and, progressively, on the dialectical study of language, literature, history, and philosophy (studia humanitatis). Despite the recent shift from the humanities to the sciences in higher education due to the recent turn to professional studies, the learning of languages, literatures, and cultures still lays an indispensable foundation for academic, political, and professional development. Being conversant in another language, literature, and culture remains even more relevant in a world that becomes increasingly diverse and globalized. It provides students with skills that can be parlayed into linguistically and culturally diverse curricular, experiential, and lifelong learning and professional experiences that will make them better students and successful professionals.
In the context of a liberal-arts education, I believe that the acquisition of a modern language and the study of culture allow students to leave their Anglophone, nationalistic, ethnocentric positions to inhabit that of a world citizen and gain the means to parlay language and culture skills into linguistically and culturally diverse study-abroad experiences, co-curricular international travels, internships, better professional opportunities, and life-long learning, and prepare for the linguistic and cultural diversity of the local and global constituencies they will encounter in life and work situations. Herewith go some of the goals and outcomes I envision in my imparting of language and culture to my students:
I seek to help my students (and colleagues) comprehend the role and impact of second language learning in today’s twenty-first century education by making cross-cultural comparisons and connections with their own academic disciplines, study/work abroad, and professional opportunities. In so doing, I help students prepare for career opportunities in a world increasingly in need of citizens competent in other languages and assists them in adapting to the multi-ethnic environments and value orientations of others within our own pluralistic society.
I also assist students in developing language-based critical-thinking skills that allow them to have an insider's understanding of the literature, art, music, and films that symbolize the creative works of a historical epoch; understand the cultural worldview of the speakers of the target language by explaining the artistic, aesthetic, and literary aspects of a given cultural artifact, and demonstrate the ability to discriminate between the ideas and opinions of different speakers and to discuss such points of view.
By fostering the use the language in social events sponsored by professional organizations, exchanging, discussing, and supporting individual perspectives on a variety of topics with their peers and speakers of the language within and beyond school setting, I endeavor to build a community of language learners who will become cultural ambassadors of the language(s) that they study and help their academic and their future professional community understand contemporary world issues that impact our modern society.
I encourage students to acquire enough foundational knowledge to foster life-long language learning by procuring first-hand experiences with the target language and culture for personal enjoyment and enrichment, such as watching movies in the language, traveling to the country where the target language is spoken either to study the language and culture, or for personal development.
As a student of the Middle Ages, I emulate the medieval master’s pursuit of learning (clergie) and similar zeal (studium) in the transmission of knowledge. In undergraduate classes I use the history of the evolution of French to both emphasize the primacy of the oral over the written nature of the language and facilitate the learning of its morpho-syntactic structures. Accordingly, my teaching of language, literature, and culture at the undergraduate and graduate levels in medieval and modern contexts remains inextricably linked to other disciplines and fields of studies (manuscript studies, Mediterranean studies, material and visual culture, comparative studies of the past and present, their polities and cultures). Drawing on the literary historical patrimony that the great medieval masters bequeathed us, I enjoin my students across disciplines to appreciate the lessons of history, learn from the past, reconsider the present from another vantage point, and ask questions, read, and think not only “freely” but critically, a privilege that students in the Middle Ages could not yet enjoy in the context of medieval education. Learning about medieval cultures and their historiographical traditions in the context of a(n) (under)graduate or general education program may help students appreciate the linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity they will encounter in life and work situations.
Finally, I believe that a liberal-arts education should imbue our modern generation with not only intellectual but material largesse. Medieval princes and princesses were patrons to poets, writers, artists, and to the less disadvantaged, inspiring generations of educators with the responsibility of empowering others with knowledge. Largesse, material as well as intellectual, continues to be the trait of a well-educated individual, reminding those of us who have received the gift of an education to give back. I seek to convey this lesson to my students by incorporating the concept of largesse into my teaching.