Charles Forsdick Modern Languages and Cultures

1. AUPHF Workshop for Leaders in French Studies: Leading in Difficult TimesCardiff, Saturday 24th MarchResearch: mapping the landscape Charles Forsdick Modern Languages and Cultures

2. How are modern language departments […] to be defined, given that they imply a travelling-in-dwelling? This relative weakness of public identity could be seen in the light of a more recent reflection on travel as a source of disciplinary strength. […]. If the focus in the past has been very firmly on an integrative, assimilationist approach to the foreign language and culture, with little or no cognizance taken of the native culture or language of the student, it is arguably by a greater attention to the in-between, to the translation dynamic of foreign-language acquisition, that modern language departments […] can have an impact not just on the countries to which their students or graduates are sent but also on the intellectual life of the countries in which they dwell. • Michael Cronin, Across the Lines: Travel, Language and Translation(2000), pp,125-26

3. Research leadership? • lead research communities; • act as mentor; • provide intellectual leadership in their own disciplines and beyond; • have a transformative impact on their subject area; • act as advocates for the value and benefits of arts and humanities research to publics beyond academia; • set and shape research agendas; • foster wider impact from your research, including in policy areas; • develop emerging research areas, methods or approaches; • foster interdisciplinary research in your field; • encourage new research collaborations and partnerships, international collaborations; • be creative and inspire creativity in other researchers; • working with other groups, bodies, organisations, etc • devolved and collegial

4. French studies & Modern Languages • …modern languages, as opposed to French, Spanish or German, is a new kid on the block and has barely had time to elaborate the reasons for its existence before it finds itself under threat. • Alison Phipps and Mike Gonzalez, Modern Languages: Learning and Teaching in an Intercultural Field (2004), pp. 8

5. Locating French studies in wider Modern Languages context • Unity of Modern Languages as symptom of contraction of field? Rapid transformation of French studies in past 20 years • Differing institutional contexts (internal and external) • Changing role of subject associations • Diversity vs. fragmentation • Balance of research-intensive departments and IWLPs • Domestic / ‘foreign’ languages • Modern Languages / Language-Based Area Studies / Celtic Studies; minoritized languages / Community Languages / Linguistics • Strength in unity of Modern Languages, and new opportunities afforded • Challenge / desirability / credibility of maintaining distinctiveness of single-language sub-field

6. Defining French studies: changing frames in which we operate • Postcolonial • Decolonial • Transnational / post-national / Francosphere • Translingual • Multilingual / postmonolingual • Global – langue-monde, litterature-monde, culture-monde, etc.

7. Yasemin Yildiz, Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition (Fordham University Press, 2012)

9. …oceanic (the Transatlantic; the Black Atlantic; various framings of the Pacific; most recently the Indian Ocean), continental (the Americas; Europe; Asia), imperial (Ottoman; Mongol; post-Soviet; Qing); linguistic (the Sinophone; the Sanskrit cosmopolis), and commercial (the silk road; the Mediterranean). • [t]hey break open the limits of the national while retaining enough specificity to allow for in-depth research, knowledge of the relevant languages, and so on. • Christopher Bush, ‘Areas: Bigger than the Nation, Smaller than the World’, ‘ACLA 2014-15 Report on the States of the Discipline of Comparative Literature’, http://stateofthediscipline.acla.org/entry/areas-bigger-nation-smaller-world

10. PI: Charles Burdett, University of Bristol • Transnationalizing Modern Languages: Mobility, Identity and Translation in Modern Italian Cultures • http://www.transnationalmodernlanguages.ac.uk/

11. examines forms of mobility that have defined the development of modern Italian culture and its interactions with other cultures across the globe; • concentrates on a series of exemplary cases, representative of the geographic, historical and linguistic map of Italian mobility; • engages with cultural associations, schools, policy makers and individuals in an exploration of heritage, cultural memory and educational practices; • reframes study of the disciplinary framework of Modern Languages via engagement with the transnational

13. Thinking about disciplinarity • If foreign language departments want to rightsize rather than downsize in the twenty-first century, they are going to have to lay claim to status as a discipline with principles common to all its subfields (language, literature, linguistics, culture) and distinct from other humanities […] and social sciences. • Janet Swaffar, ‘The Case for Foreign Languages as a Discipline’ (1999), p.6 • Modern Languages: ‘configurational’ rather than ‘restricted’, ‘less codified’ rather than ‘highly codified’, ‘nonconsensual’ rather than ‘consensual’ • Julie Thompson Klein, Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory and Practice(1990), p.104 • …a field of study with significant intellectual boundaries rather than a set of high-culture affectations • Janet Swaffar, ‘The Case for Foreign Languages as a Discipline’ (1999), p.7

14. We teach distance, abstraction, reflection, and above all, the mysteries of relation, together with the interpretative skills such matters require. • Michael Holquist, ‘Language and Literature in the Globalized College/University’ (2006), p.9. • The importance of knowing languages and of knowing the world through languages. • Mary Louise Pratt, ‘Building a new public idea about language’ (2003), p.112.

15. Where to locate French studies in context of interdisciplinarity? • French studies as ‘interdiscipline’: strength or weakness? • Moving away from instrumental / ornamental understanding of French studies input to interdisciplinary working • Catalytic role of Modern Languages in interdisciplinary working – languages-led interdisciplinarity • Role in challenging linguistic indifference and nurturing linguistic sensitivity • Links between interdisciplinary and international research • Understanding long-distance interdisciplinarity (moving beyond the cognate)

16. current opportunities (and challenges): • Translating Cultures • GCRF • creative economy • OWRI • Diversification of funding

18. Translating Cultures: key concepts • examining nature of the ‘language barrier’ • key place of multilingualism, and present era of post-monolingualism; • recognition of ‘translation zones’ (including ‘multilingual university’); • avoidance of ‘presentism’; • study the ‘domestic’ and the ‘foreign’, and problematize the relationship of the two; • ‘impact’/Knowledge Exchange as a translational process; • translation-as-research

19. Translating Cultures:lessons learned • translation increasingly evident (or persistent) across a wide range of disciplinary fields – potential leavening effect of the concept and practice; • translation is not only a form of transmission and circulation of ideas, ideologies and forms of knowledge, but should also be seen as a constitutive element of culture and society in its own right – but lack of translation can be seen as a form of epistemicide; • importance of untranslatability; • language as social category: avoid the pitfalls associated with being alinguistic or linguistically indifferent/insensitive; • translational/multilingual poetics; place of creativity in translation research; • policy dimensions: mobility; social coherence; service delivery.

20. ‘Translating Cultures’ in the policy sphere • translation and the challenges of multilingualism increasingly evident across the range of areas of public life; • language should be understood as a social ‘category’, avoiding the pitfalls associated with being linguistically indifferent or treating monolingualism as an unmarked case, and encouraging greater linguistic sensitivity; • bilingualism, multilingualism and linguistic superdiversity are increasingly evident in twenty-first century UK society, meaning that awareness of linguistic variability is as important in domestic as in international policymaking – impact across a range of policy areas – linguistically-sensitive policymaking; • understanding academic engagement and the transfer of research findings in the policy sphere in the light of ‘translation’ rather than ‘impact’ allows a clearer grasp of the dynamics of the processes of knowledge exchange.

21. Translating Culturesforms of legacy • Strategic Legacy: bridging‘Diasporas, Migrations, Identities’ and OWRI, and embedding theory and practice, concepts and methods of language, translation and interpreting at heart of AHRC portfolio; • Critical Legacy: influence of theme evident in new approaches to issues such as multilingualism, translation and creativity, translation-as-research, linguistic indifference; • Embodied Legacy: community of people, knowledge and networks generated by the theme across over 120 projects and other activity; importance of ECRs; • Social Legacy: theme has supported development of activities such as BL translator-in-residence, International Translation Day, etc., and their continuation will act as form of legacy

22. Parallel programmeAHRC Open World Research Initiative • 'Creative Multilingualism': Katrin Kohl (Oxford) with colleagues at Birmingham City, SOAS, Cambridge, Pittsburgh & Reading • 'Cross-language dynamics': Stephen Hutchings (Manchester) with colleagues at Durham and London • 'Language acts and worldmaking': Catherine Boyle (King's College London) with colleagues at Open University, Westminster and QMUL • 'Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies': Wendy Ayres-Bennett (Cambridge) with colleagues at Edinburgh, Nottingham and Queen's Belfast

23. New political contexts • Trump • Brexit • Transmediterranean migration • Rise of extremism • Xenophobia and linguaphobia • Ecological crises…

24. impact, policy, public engagement, public understanding, national strategy… • [T]he general decline in foreign-language learning in the English-speaking world in recent years can be attributed […] to the desire to maintain the benefits of connectedness without the pain of connection. • Michael Cronin, Translation and Globalization (2003), p.49 • …ability to see one’s own nation, in turn, as part of a complicated world order in which issues of many kinds require intelligent transnational deliberation for their resolution • Martha Nussbaum, Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010), p.26

25. c.forsdick@liverpool.ac.uk @charlesforsdick