The Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Mission Statement
Our department believes that the study of other languages, literatures, and cultures is a vital component of a liberal arts education. Understanding the essential nature of language as a living process rooted in social and cultural contexts, we teach the skills and ways of thinking of a second language and offer diverse perspectives on the cultures of the societies where these languages are spoken. Students completing the language requirement understand the diversity of the human experience, and students graduating as majors or minors are prepared to express their ideas in a second language with clarity, grace, and the cultural understanding needed for lives of leadership and service in a pluralistic American society and in a world where nations are increasingly interdependent.
The Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures offers language classes in eight languages –Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Russian, and Spanish—as well as major and minor programs in French and Francophone Studies and Spanish and minor programs in German Studies, Italian Studies, and Russian Studies. In addition, our department is host to the new Comparative Literary Studies program, which will offer a minor.
Learning Goals
The Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures has developed the following broad learning goals for all of our language students:
- Students will recognize and use the writing systems, vocabulary, and grammatical structures of a second language
- Students will demonstrate the ability to interact with our multilingual world in a variety of situations and cultural contexts, listening, reading, writing, speaking, and understanding a second language at the novice level as defined by the ACTFL standards
- Students will contrast their cultural preconceptions and ways of knowing with those of the cultures where a second language is spoken
- Students will gain knowledge that challenges their cultural preconceptions and ways of knowing, which will develop their capacity for equitable cultural interactions and their ability to act as responsible global citizens
