Rehumanizing the language curriculum

As world language departments face reductions and closures at an increasing rate in the United States, Great Britain, and beyond, the 10-chapter essay collection Rehumanizing the Language Curriculum is an energizing reminder of the power of language programs to teach across, and thus impart the value of multiple humanities disciplines at once. Comprising contributions from an international group of preeminent foreign/second/heritage language and literature scholars, the volume's express aim is to illustrate how a more intentional and rigorous integration of literary texts across the language curriculum can invigorate world language education by establishing a deeper tie to the humanities (rehumanizing) through literature. Far from a remedial rehashing of the decades-old debate over the language-content divide, the volume is both a welcome refresher on foundational principles in teaching language through literature and literature through language, as well as a timely critical intervention into the state of target language education. The book garnered substantial advance praise from experts in the field for its wide-ranging yet accessible elaboration on the transformative potential of re-establishing literature in language education, not at the expense of the transdisciplinary perspectives that have enriched the field but as a further mode of supporting students' engagement with the concerns and demands of their own time. The volume editor, Megan M. Echevarría, introduces the collection with a reminder of the significance—and persistence—of the so-called language–literature divide (citing Widdowson, 1985), the separation of language instruction and literary analysis into two pedagogical domains. In summarizing the paradigm shift away from that bifurcation, Echevarría challenges the student-centered trend in language education toward popular, short text genres that would purportedly reflect learners' interests and life worlds back to them. She asserts, in defiance and with ample reference to Claire Kramsch's critique of the same: "Education is not about leisurely indulgence or the expeditious retrieval of prizes: it is about exerting sustained effort in pursuit of valuable, enduring, and satisfying rewards…" (Echevarría, 2023, p. 3; Kramsch, 2006)—rewards that can be obtained through close reading, extensive reading, and other rigorous engagement with literary texts. Following this provocative introduction, the volume is divided into three sections of studied reflections on symbolic competence (citing Kramsch, 2006) as the meeting point of language and literary study. In the first section, essays by Claire Kramsch, Guy Cook, and Geoff Hall probe the essence and contours of "literature" itself in order to provide fresh pedagogical and curricular impulses. Kramsch's sweeping synthesis of the state of world language education in US academia, woven together with a reflection on semiotic equivalence, convincingly supports an argument that "communicative competence needs now to be supplemented by an understanding of language as symbolic power" (Kramsch, 2023, p. 22). Guy Cook's elaboration on the many benefits to be gained from reciting poetry reminds readers that engagement with the distinctiveness of sound is no less important than engagement with a poem's topic, context, or formal elements for understanding the meaning of the work. Geoff Hall, meanwhile, advocates for a broadened concept of literature, defined as the "imaginative or creative use of language valued by a group or groups" (Hall, 2023, p. 46), in order to open greater space for engagement with diversity as an experience and as a value via a wider diversity of literary texts. Moving into the book's second section, the focus shifts from broad, programmatic conceptualizations to more specific contributions of applied linguistics research for closing the gap between language and literary study across the language curriculum. The three essays of Part II substantiate the value of joining language and literary study for attaining a wide variety of linked learning goals at both the secondary and post-secondary levels, from high language proficiency and sophisticated critical thinking (Per Urlaub) to creativity, ethics, and social justice (Janice Bland). Not to be forgotten are the benefits of awakening and sharpening the cognitive skills students need to make sense of the complexity, ambiguity, and abstractness of literature (Elizabeth Bernhardt). In Part III, three essays outline proposals for meeting the practical challenges of target language literary teaching. Megan Echevarría offers a succinct array of scaffolding strategies for leading students through increasingly complex analytical and communication tasks centered on literary texts. Christian Jones presents data-based research demonstrating the utility of literature for teaching interpersonal speaking skills via literary dialogues. The volume concludes with another data-based study by Mark Anthony Darhower and Dawn Smith-Sherwood that considers the utility of responsive and differentiated integrated performance assessments for improving instruction in situations of diverse proficiency levels in the upper-division classroom. Taken together, the 10 essays of this volume make a strong argument for a more rigorous, deliberate integration of language and literary study to meet the goals—and cope with the challenges—of 21st-century language education. Each chapter also stands independently, with a publishing design that lends well to professional development or university course reading purposes. For language instructors and program directors in any institutional setting, at any instructional level, this collection is a valuable resource for evaluating and revising course and curriculum design and advocating for the preservation of language programs for their multifarious value to humanities education. Amanda Randall is an associate professor of German and chair of the German Department at St. Olaf College, where she teaches courses across the German curriculum and contributes to the college's film studies and first-year writing programs. She is the former president of the Minnesota Chapter of AATG and a recipient of several national and institutional professional awards, including co-recipient of the 2019 ACTFL Small Undergraduate German Program SIG Award for Outstanding German Program Development and Advocacy.