Listening to Julia Spiegelman call out the way that French language textbooks present French colonization as justifiable (it is not), Francophone places as places to leave (they are not), and as the Francophonie as a product to consume (it is not). #ddfc @DdfcTweets 1/4
https://twitter.com/juliaspiegelman/status/1326139573882261504
She notes the essentializing discourses that occur in our textbooks that --if not laid bare, questioned, and upended-- leave our students with MISrepresentations. This plays out through: 2/4
Power & domination, reduction and devaluation of francophone cultures, misalignment with intercultural understanding, justification of colonization as an endorsement of (White) French supremacy, & a strategic alignment of an American tourist role w/ a French tourist role 3/4
"Representation matters & ideology has real consequencs." -Julia"Racism looks different [in diff contexts] & so we need to recognize" & disrupt these ideologies as they are made manifest. Julia cites & discusses Kubota's liberal multiculturalism & critical multiculturalism. 4/4
The panel continues w/ Annabelle Dolidon, who presents a open source textbook, w/ objectives including engaging students in/with the contemporary world (including professional realities), that motivates constructive critique and offers multiple perspectives... #ddfc @DdfcTweets 
Annabelle Dolidon wants to re-think and question what a course textbook can do and/or what it can be. This plays out in part by thinking about representation in the illustrations and other aspects of the book, including l'écriture inclusive.
I wonder how/if the textbook will engage w/ diversity in a way that not only leverages representation & visibility, but also questions of INvisibility. I wonder how/if this book will go beyond l'écriture inclusive to be not just feminist, but also explicitly trans-affirming.
Dolidon continues to discuss how this is a personal learning journey about how to continue to adapt to student needs (referencing accommodations), desires, and interests and about how to continue to integrate what she continues to learn through dialogue and feedback in this proj
This panel continues with the fourth and final set of presentations with Masha and Michelle, who draw on their experiences in US study abroad (SA) programs to call out problems encountered in SA and offer possible solutions that foster student reflection.
In SA "students are asked -often for the 1st time- to accounted for their intellectual" selves & other aspects of who they are but Masha & Michelle note that this tends to be framed by whiteness. Michelle moves to talk about the common experience phenomenon of racial suspicion.
Which often manifests in "But where are you really from?" For Michelle, she felt not only was she questioned in terms of Americanness, but that her Asian identity was made to be hyper visible via these types of microagressions on SA.
So how do students and instructors navigate this space b/w the quest for immersion & these microaggressions/this racial suspicion. Masha continues to question how our choices of SA sites often make visible hegemony/racism (e.g., why Orsay over Institut du Monde Arabe).
How do we confront this? How do we create assignments/visits/etc. that explains, reframes, and guides students in CRITICAL reflection as they navigate THROUGH culture shock & other SA experiences? In part: Intersectionality... Questioning the fetishizing view of Paris...
Michelle suggests we need to acknowledge and work to resolve the dissonance that can exist between our academic search for intersectionality, complexity, etc. and the way that we often end up with SA programs and experiences that veer toward essentializing.
Michelle continues to find opportunities in laying bare the colorblindness of France for "students to come to understand in a new light the more familiar multiculturalism alongside French colorblindness" via interviews, dialogues, debates, and EXPERIENCE.
Masha highlights the importance of reflexivity and power dynamics --- Students encounters with others need to be framed by reflexivity (to not understand these people & interactions as essential, but multiple and intersectional) #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Michell and Masha conclude by noting that the goal is NOT to control everything that happens, but rather to SUPPORT students in learning to complexify their experiences, whatever they may be.
Now, in Q&A, many are asking questions about how today's talks play out in various contexts when the proverbial rubber meets the road. Catherine Masson asks, in short, how we parse out ignorance from racism, particularly in relationships with host families on SA.
[Me: I think the question is important but I would rather frame the question as how we address racism as ignorance versus racism as highly intentional violence.] Micehelle suggests that, in any incidence, we work with stakeholders so that everyone understands that friction b/w
US understandings of race and FR understandings of race will always occur so that we can prepare everyone for moments of tension and Masha adds that as SA leaders we have an opportunity not only to educate our students but also the host families and others with which we engage.
Masha also offers us the opportunity to think about polyvocality, co-authored papers, and forms of collaborative construction may offer us interesting and useful openings to plan for friction, resistance, and other such experiences. #ddfc
Hanétha Vété Congolo weaves together the thesis of the earlier presentations (France constructed as default) and the instinctive way that our discussion of SA ended up situated principally in France. Hanétha questions not only the problematic, exclusionary approach that has been
made to be so endemic to how we talk about SA (generally), but also how we present African SA locations to our students (when they are presented at all. [Me: This brilliance went awfully quickly for me and I couldn't capture it all. My take-away is
that all of our efforts are connected and that we must seek out all places/moments where we need to explicitly divest from exclusion (broadly) & racism (specifically).] #ddfc
@juliaspiegelman Closes out by answering a question noting how the desire to perform the role of expert can get in the way of LISTENING (what we actually need to do) - "White people are very --I think-- behind in our racial development" 🔥 And now a short break! #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Annnnnd we're back! Now it's time for a round table with #ddgc @DDGCtweets including members @andreadbryant @Linguacene @pdlayne @BlackPhDE and @rosepena ! So excited to hear from these brilliant people!
"It started with prosecco in Berlin [...] this collective really grew out of a need and a desire..." @reginecriser talks about how conversations began with @ervinmalakaj feeling unprepared to build programs, recruit, and work with the student population at specific institutions
And how through that initial need ---for existential survival of their programs---, dialogue began and this network of #ddfg started to form. In addition to that need, there was a desire to work against the whiteness, heteronormativity, & ethno-nationalism of the curriculum that
they found when they arrived in their positions and that was so prevalent in the discipline (that they already knew). The work was to bring these conversations out of the margins of conference hallways and cocktails and into the central focus. Another major concern was to
shift power away from national professional orgs & shift power in terms of who decides what is valued and valuable in both teaching and scholarship. The goal was to create parallel structures that uplift, amplify, & empower scholars & scholarship that had been marginalized.
The conference began w/ 30 people & that yielded an edited volume that has been downloaded 3,800 TIMES! So people are very interested in this work, are doing/using this work, etc. Now #ddfg is preparing a 3rd conf of this scholarly COLLECTIVE (NOT organization, NOT association
-- this is MEMEBER driven and a steering committee is now coming to existence for the first time as a matter of equity via decentralization and reaching out to more and more people).
@Linguacene joined the collective in 2019 at the 2nd(?) conference b/c of an attraction to the change-making that was happening and a latent dissatisfaction with many existing professional orgs. David evokes institutional isomorphism as a way to think about what #ddfg is/can be
At that 2019 conference there was a major racist incident and that caused the collective to work together on what they wanted this collective and this field to be which resulted in the open letter to the AATG docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…
From there it became an interesting, international moment --- it got attention: This became a strange moment, a kind of reckoning and that yielded some deep and often tenuous conversations with several professional organizations.
This moment of reckoning made #ddfg realize that they needed guiding principles [NOT a mission statement -- missions are often violent things...] diversityingermancurriculum.weebly.com/guiding-princi…
This was a moment of deciding "what we were here for & what we were NOT here for" - It was not to preserve German studies (certainly not the field as it was) & it was not to make sure that #ddfg would exist in perpetuity. What was more important was the work & the relationships
@pdlayne Talks about her essay on being a Black person in the field of German studies, a very white field, noting: People tend to treat racism as though it entered the room with the person who pointed it out, not that it was a problem that already existed. 🔥
Here is a link to that earlier mentioned volume: link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2… And a related article by @pdlayne and @ervinmalakaj doi.org/10.1111/tger.1…
@pdlayne Continues on to talk about the tensions that exist for someone who is looking to demand and create change from the inside, without compromising values. She also talks about the challenges of making sure to protect the vulnerable people who are a part of this collective
while also wanting to remain open to people who want to learn. What happens when those who are curious engage in racist and other harmful behaviors? (This happened at a #ddg keynote in the past.)
@andreadbryant has joined us an makes an important note about how her participation in this collective is about holding herself accountable for the ways that she has upheld white supremacy and working to shift those practices to instead divest from white supremacy
@BlackPhDE continues the conversation with a discussion of how people are engaging with #ddfg and the issues that were present but weren't being talked about...
1 major challenge was people who wanted to keep one foot in a very traditional articulation of German Studies that upheld white supremacy while also trying to participate in #ddfg & that was frustrating [I add: b/c that desire failed to make good on the req divestment from w.s.]
As the #ddfg wanted to continue to grow forward and broaden what it means to do German studies, it was critical to center Black people, Black voices, Black scholars (see keynote speakers) and figure out how to really make good on/realize the guiding principles of the collective
The desire was really to use this and MODEL something that was new and different --- It can be hard for us to disengage from the systems in which we are entrenched enough to be able to envision alternatives... (ref Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, bel hooks, and many others)
{Now there will be a big giant hole in my thread b/c I present at the top of the hour and need to eat something while I listen to this continued generous sharing of brilliance and community}
"1 thing we learned from the 2019 conf was it's not good enough to be an alternative, a new fun exciting alt [...] really examining what the principles of the collective are that had to be the next step [...]" @Linguacene notes that this wasn't a catch-ALL for others frustrations
We're wrapping up and I'll be radio silent for a minute as I do my own talk --- I'll like a Tweet thread here if anyone live tweets it! :)
Linking up a few tweets from when I was speaking:
https://twitter.com/MBedecarre/status/1327344259062697986?s=20
Lest these tweets get turned inside out: Explaining the conflation that tends to occur b/w grammatical & social gender is an opening to create space for honoring people who are made to be invisible by binary grammatical gender. It is an invite to open up lang & honor trans people
More here: (2021). Le français non-binaire: linguistic forms used by non-binary speakers of French. Foreign Language Annals. & (2020). Subverting the culturally unreadable: Understanding the self-positioning of non-binary speakers of French. The French Review. 94(2), 149-168.
Now Blase Provitola presents "Teaching French Feminism from an Intersectional Perspective" which is about a course that grew out of Provitola's research and the idea that Americans often have an idea of "a French feminism" that tends to serve to divide scholarship and activism.
Blase asks "How do I give my students enough context to be able to understand even what it means to talk about race and/or gender in a French context?"
Blase continues to ask: How do we change the way that we read what gender studies scholars might consider to be the cannon and respond to/contextualize that? #ddfc
Part of Blase's approach entails starting w/ watching Ouvrir la voix. This doc about Black women in France touches on many aspects of race, gender, and sexuality, which Blase found to be helpful in preparing students to begin the semester before they could add more framing
Another multi-week unit invited reflections on bodily autonomy (including as it intersects with class and queerness). These documents allow us to ask: What does it really mean to be a feminist? A question that students tend to very thoughtfully engage w/ in Blase's experience.
Blase then flips the convo from talking about bodily autonomy re: a right to abortion to talking about bodily autonomy re: a right to have children [Expanding students likely/possible perspectives.]
Blase then discusses the unit they had planned on transidentités working with the films ma vie en rose and wild side, which offers two STARKLY different representations of what it could mean to work through trans topics in their class. They found these two films worked together
In spite of the possible concerns with ambiguity and interpretation (ma vie en rose) and possible concerns about whether these materials could come off as voyeuristic (wild side) [Blase notes that all worked well for them but that SP20 circumstances => cutting short the unit.]
Now, Kelly Biers @kdbiers presents "Decolonial and feminist course design in the first-year French curriculum". Kelly notes that this is about resisting (neo-)colonial structures and practices, re-examining our purpose, and building equity into every facet of teaching & learning
Course planning for this approach entails: Challenging hierarchies of learning and use a solidarity model to engage meaningfully in
Kelly suggests Nilson's 2014 book and specifications grading as a better model for how we carry our feminist & decolonial goals into assessment. "In this system there are NO points, so students aren't motivated by points, they're motivated by achieving outcomes"
In this frame: "Students are rewarded for self determination and autonomy" -- What if we didn't dictate exactly what students did and what all of the outcomes are? What if we gave students space to set some of their own goals and articulate why/how they assign value.
Student autonomy has to be built into the course goals and the overall course structure
but setting up a syst that allows students to recover from failure & allows students to choose a clear path to a B or a C (that offers them autonomy and honors what they want to do and what is meaningful to them) --It honors the human nature of what our students are experiencing.
{Giant hole in my Tweets here again, we're on Q&A!} Good conversations happening about coalition building (see Kiki Kosnick's work as one good example) and proactively planning for resistance (I highly recommend @JMPaiz_PhD's new book!)
Rebecca says "I'm questioning everything!" with a bit of dismay... Me: Questioning everything IS the learning objective of #ddfc (or so I would argue!). And so closes this panel. On to the next set of fantastic talks!
How does one even choose between these two options?! Y'all know I kind of *have* to go to gender & queerness, but I'm going to be scouring to see if anyone live tweets accessibility & ableism (This hour is the intersection at which I live so much of my life....)
Maybe I can watch the recording and later-live-tweet (like LaterGram?) @CecileTresfels's talk, which promises to be thoroughly phenomenal (everything I've seen Cecile do thus far is wonderful, thoughtful, sustaining pedagogical work)!
Kiki Kosnick kicks us off! I've been looking forward to ki's presentation! "French for all genders: An instructional manifesto"
Kiki opens talking about how much growing momentum there is to build coalitions and to reshape and reinvent our field (broadly conceived).
"If we're mindful to uncouple gender from pronoun usage, écriture inclusive mostly is about people who use feminine pronouns [i.e. elle]" -Kosnick, critiquing the limitations of écriture inclusive and [what I'm calling] narrow understandings of feminism
Ecriture inclusive has a slogan that itself puts forward "la femme" and obfuscates non-binary users of French -- We're dealing with pronounced tensions. Kiki talks about the overlaps with non-binary and inclusive French, but underscores a point that I also often make:
Ecriture inclusive & non-binary French share many strategies &/or forms, but they all too often are driven by very different goals -- (narrow) feminism for the visibility of women (oft narrowly conceived) VS visibility for non-binary people and anyone who does not see themself
in either of the traditional, binary inflectional systems. [I got too engaged in the talk, y'all -- You're going to have to follow up with Ki and read some of their work. Here's a place to start: doi.org/10.1080/096394…]
I cheated and snuck in! @CecileTresfels and Chloé Brault are presenting "Harmful Grammar: Fatphobia and Ableism in First Year French" [You'll forgive me for missing the beginning and not being able to keep up with all the brilliance that is happening right here!]
They critique the way that activities (like below) often assume that happiness and health are one and the same. Exercises like the one shown here assume that students can all move in particular ways, among other assumptions...
We all too often end up associating positive descriptors with an absence of disability and/or good health----
We have to take where our textbooks go awry in reproducing both fat phobia and ableism and adapt/supplement/etc. [Me: This dovetails w/ the way myself and others in ALx talk about restive problematizing in queer & trans pedagogies.]
"Disassociate advice giving from moral judgments" and instead teach about how to complete a process (e.g., how to cook) or imagine alternative futures (e.g., what does a more just society look like and how do we work towards that better society)? -@CecileTresfels
Cecile & Chloé offer many alt ways to talk about health & end by inviting feedback & dialogue on what they presented today asking: How might we continue to improve? There is perhaps no better way to find a conclusion that brings together this talk w/ the overall spirit of #ddfc.
@siham_bouamer and @Loic_French deserve a giant 🙏🙏🙏BOTH for putting this whole conference together AND for putting up with my bouncing back and forth during session V! It's just ALL TOO GOOD, y'all. If I were cooler, I might frame this as FOMO 😅🤣🤓🙃
{Another hole in my tweets as I crashed the Q&A of the Gender Issues/Queer Curriculum panel --- Whoops! So grateful to be at a conference that is so engaging I can barely keep up with tweeting. This is my favorite problem to have of all time.}
Alright, y'all we're on to the final panel of the day with @SageGoellner, Sandrine Pell, and @SonjaKlara !
@SonjaKlara is up -- Talking about how to adapt her pedagogy to the unique groups of students with which she works!
Sonja pulls in some important points from Kishimoto (2019), noting that the task of language education requires explicit consideration of both what is or can be seen & what is not or cannot be seen. She invites us to "slow down and learn to see in a collaborative fashion."
Indeed, this pedagogical self-reflection offered up by Sonja asks us to accord weight not only to the processes of learning, but also to the processes of un-learning and re-learning to open up new spaces, new possibilities. #ddfc
Sonja equally cautions us that conversations b/w students, collaborations among students cannot be an afterthought. In projects, we must plan for 2-3+ class periods where students have time & space to collaboratively reflect as well as create spaces for individual reflection.
"When students have time to think together [...] rather than engage in a sort of Socratic dialogue they produce [better, more meaningful work]" [Me:
From this presentation, I am reading not only the importance of dedicated time, but perhaps more so the importance of showing students that we value process at least as much as product. That we value exploration itself.]
"I see this project based learning as a laboratory where students can explore and where I get feedback that is more valuable than evaluations of my teaching" -@SonjaKlara
Sonia gives examples of how she can see what students are internalizing (e.g., certain forms of French nationalism [or was it something about assimilation? -I'm slowing as the day grows longer...]) in addition to what students are explicitly addressing in their projects & writing
as she closes out her presentation. Now, we have about 25 minutes for Q&A.
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd that's all folks! We've closed down #DDFC for the night! Tomorrow we'll pick back up with Hanétha Vété-Congolo's keynote "Decolonizing the White French Curriculum: Which Ethics?" at 9:30am central (Houston time)/8:30am pacific (Tucson time).
Here's the link to the full schedule and registration, in case anyone still needs it! G'night! 😴 eventbrite.com/e/diversity-de…
Sorry I missed your handle, @chlbrltmcknnn !
Good mornin' y'all! It's day 2 of #DDFC @DdfcTweets I messed up my Saturday registrations (😭🤦) and missed the SOLD OUT keynote (GO #ddfc!), but @kdbiers has you covered!
https://twitter.com/kdbiers/status/1327641505243295744?s=20I plan to watch the recording and will "laterTweet" about its brilliance then!
@celestedaymoore kicks off the panel on Black Lives Matter in the French Curriculum with "Pedagogies of Black Internationalism: Teaching French at HBCU's in the Era of Jim Crow" #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Celeste talks about her own positionality as a historian of French curricula/pedagogy. Historically, black pedagogy reflected broader transformations in language teaching of the 20th century (i.e. Classic Greek/Latin --> Modern languages). [/thread] #DDFC @DdfcTweets
The interest in French was significantly rooted, not only in ties to the Caribbean, but also in the confidence Black educators placed in French universalism, exceptionalism, and colorblindness (ref. how this message circulated around/amongst/against Black soldiers, etc.)
@celestedaymoore also discusses the history of MLA that had regional meetings in the US south that excluded Black educators, which prompted educators to start the College Language Association, which still exists today. #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Celeste continues on to evoke critical pedagogical writings of W.E.B DuBois [Me: I can't keep up w/ the robustness of Celeste's talk & the key points she is making today. I'll keep doing my best, & hope that the caffeine speeds my mind & fingers... though it would perhaps be more
1 key idea: "When the White scholar goes to the sources he [sic] does not come back w/ the truth" but w/ the version that fits convenient/dominant narratives. -There was & is a power in direct access to various languages.
This was an idea present among Black intellectuals historically, which [me:] still holds. Mercer Cook was another key figure in this history --- Cook oversaw many research projects by a number of his students who focused on Black writers (ex. André Gide's accounts of the Congo).
Although Cook did uphold a certain gendered div of labor in the program he oversaw, he made manifest a diff way of thinking abt & engaging in teaching French to Black students. Cook, for ex, would ask ss why particular authors made their Black characters speak in a form of pidgin
Cook had a desire to interrogate how Black people fit into lit written in French. He wanted students to situate themselves w/in & against pieces of lit. It was about fostering a DIFF pedagogy, a Black-centered pedagogy, and a pedagogy that fed community. #DDFC @DdfcTweets
Tho @celestedaymoore recognizes there's much to be critiqued sig insights occurred in the hist exs she gives & this work has seeded many devs since the time of Cook & others. Key: Insights have & continue to emerged out of Black institutions, Black classrooms, Black spaces, etc.
Particularly those that foster connections among educators & communities. I couldn't even come close to keeping up with this rich talk. But I'm seeing connections b/w these hist figs & a broader hist of what Black education means as articulated by Black scholar-educators. #DDFC
I'm thinking about work by Dr. V Siddle Walker & many others [Drop your recs in the comments?]. David Spieser-Landes continues with "Black Lives Matter -In France as well: The Genesis and Implications (for society and the college classroom) of Abd al Malik's Le Jeune noir à l'épé
David begins by talking about the local history of racism & white supremacy in Wilmington, NC (where David teaches) and discusses how this history continues to remain visible. This hist discussion moves to ask what reparations could look like (in W spec. & in the US broadly)
Spieser draws on a documentary entitled Wilmington on Fire, which includes Faye Chaplin (G. Granddaughter of Thomas C Miller) Mentioning how finding direct descendants is a key part of considering reparation & disrupting cycles of perpetuated inequities.
David notes that colleges oft call for more scholarships BUT this is not what these scholars are calling for: It's bigger. Ex: if you give $ to Black ppl related to particular events we know that economic structures=>that $ won't stay in Black communities (ref @KillerMike's show)
David also points us to Sandy Darity (Duke) & Fenaba Addo (University of WI). His takeaway from the documentary: Make higher education free for anyone who descended from enslaved persons so that we move from talking about equality to engaging in actual equity as a society. #ddfc
David now asks: How do we apply thinking from W.on.F. to French lang classrooms? Abd Al Malik's work is 1 ave for opening convos about these topics in the US & France w/ students. D suggests we also bring in work by @DrIbram as we think about how to situate these conversations.
David Spieser ends by noting: We have to teach students and ourselves how to have true, real relationships ---otherwise reparations will not happen. Next up:
Marda Messay presents "Black Voices from the Francophone World." --- Marda uses short stories and films to center Black voices in her course and allow for students to sit with the thoughts, experiences, and struggles included in these stories. #DDFC @DdfcTweets
Marda draws on @edwidgedandicat's comments on short stories & her most recent collection, in order to situate & articulate the unique richness of using short stories in our teaching & the broader affordances of artistic expression for learning about anti-racism. Marda continues:
She uses work by Fatou Diom's La Préférence Nationale in this course to shift focus specifically to the perspectives of Black women. [I couldn't keep up w/ all of the amazing inclusions in this course & the rich pedagogical thinking that underlies Marda Messay's curric choices.]
As Marda Messay brings her talk to a close, she looks forward to continued improvements she would like to make in the course presented today. In this looking forward she points us to work by @UjuAnya @ProfeRandolph and by Othieno & Davis of @MwasiCollectif #DDFC @DdfcTweets
This dovetails with seeking "new ways of knowing, doing, and being" as we continue to engage with "the struggle for Black lives." #DDFC @DdfcTweets Now we're on to Q&A!
@siham asks "How do you engage your students w/ Blackness that is more global?" She notes that often students struggle to understand articulations of Blackness as they are situated in contexts outside of the US, including but not limited to Blackness in Europe #DDFC @DdfcTweets
A suggestion by @celestedaymoore is to engage with the concept of diaspora more broadly and, where useful, to invite students' personal connections. Marda Messay picks up to say that it needs to be personalized through stories.
On teaching about Blackness: "We have to engage the SOUL in these stories." Marda Messay #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Marda Messay continues saying: Stories allow students to "have experience with Blackness in a way that isn't overwhelming" -- She continues to talk about how this can reverberate with 'everydayness' and individual experience. #ddfc @DdfcTweets
{Giant hole in my tweets as these deep, rich, and critical conversations were met with so much energy in both the verbal discussion and in the chat -- I could not keep up with Tweeting out and with looking inward at my own practices} Now we're on lunch break!
We'll be back in just a bit with more conversations. Check out the #ddfc line up below! (And tag @DdfcTweets in all of your conference-related Tweets! 🤓 )
Here 👏we 👏go 👏! @siham_bouamer opens up inviting us to make connections with the plenary and other talks today and hopes that this panel (A) will provide some opportunities for synthesis and continued thinking #ddfc @DdfcTweets [thread]
Anne Mutidjo opens w/ On addressing the production of postcolonial discourse: uprooting, putting down roots, and weeding. This talk will NOT be about solutions. Instead we'll explore what our choices about inclusion of specific texts can show us about ourselves & our pedagogies.
Mutidjo: To be included in curricula means something -- it is a sort of literary achievement (tied to class/prestige). Inclusion CAN help decolonize the curriculum. #ddfc @DdfcTweets
YET it's mostly when a book achieves some sort of prize that its production is increased. The livre de poche format has turned the book scene on its head somewhat -- A popular book no longer always means it is a good book... #ddfc
The response? A lot more attention is being given to the para-text (e.g., book jacket, marketing) so that it can be made to align and reverberate with certain fields, etc.
[Me synth/thinking: Everything about how the book is presented is now an investment in communicating how the press views its place in the socio-cultural & -political landscape. The text is situated w/ and against other texts but also w/ & against other hierarchies & convos.]
Anne Mutidjo continues to discuss how the press and how these para-textual moves act on and (re)shape the identities of the authors [Me: I am curious how attending to identity VS subjectivity might be a useful distinction to explore here.]
"My point [...] was to show how authors might be pushed in different directions with the marketing of their books, but that the CONTENT of these books tell us a very DIFFERENT story." -Anne Mutidjo #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Madjo discusses how authors who are made to be marginalized, especially Black authors, NEED to play certain games, use certain frames/tropes, speak strategically, write strategically. [Me: are made to need as a part of society's investment in that marginalizing frame] #DDFC
@siham_bouamer Thank you for helping us think about the idea of periphery. [There was more brilliance in this smooth transition than I was able to capture here.] Next up: [/thread] #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Frédérique Marty reflects on how a majority of her students have needed guidance to broaden their frames of reference to open her talk "Decolonizing the French and Francophone Cannons by repositioning Post-Colonial Studies at the center of the curriculum." #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Frédérique picks up on the theme of white bias that has been a part of many talks thus far today. She asks how do we discuss literature, film [me: & other cultural products & perspectives] without reifying (neo-)imperialist frames. #DDFC @DdfcTweets
Broadly: How can we better attend to & contend w/ FR's colonial past? [Me: I also wonder: How do we (w/ & alongside our students) continue to better attend to & contend w/ the ways that colonial, imperialist thinking continues to be endemic today tho oft (re)shaped & (re)formed?]
Frédérique discusses how these conversations are often resisted in France and are recognized only long after specific events have occurred (e.g., 2001 @ChTaubira's recognition of slavery, recent recognition of the deaths occurring at a 1961 FLN protest) #DDFC @DdfcTweets
Frédérique notes that this silence is oft reproduced by publishers of French language learning materials, who do not explicitly contend w/ this past (e.g. no mention of WHY much of Africa speaks FR). Through this silence, there's a maintenance of & complicities w/ FR imperialism
[Me] We have to talk about difficult topics in our classrooms. When silent about violence & marginalization we are complicit therein. When we only see marginalization & violence (absent of joy) we are also complicit in ignoring the full humanity of people oft cast in these frames
Next up: Kristen Stern @kr_stern with "Making the Colonial Present Audible to our Students and Ourselves"
@kr_stern makes a critical note: The colonial is not past -it is still very much present in our societies, classrooms, academia (=> everywhere). Colonization is not hidden, it is inaudible: These histories have always been there, we're just finally talking about them in diff ways
[@kr_stern Kristen --- who did you cite for this concept "inaudible" as opposed to hidden or taboo? --I can't keep up with all these brilliant and deeply important points and the citations/references to which you are outwardly gesturing! :) ]
@kr_stern invites us to come to know and think about how we can pedagogically engage with @Hist_Crepues in our French language classrooms #ddfc @DdfcTweets
As I listen to @kr_stern talk about the critical public-facing work of scholar-activists, I think about the field of public humanities and I wonder how we begin/continue to re-imagine all of our fields to be more public, more engaged in these kinds of ways. #DDFC @DdfcTweets
@kr_stern continues this convo, inviting us to think about the work and words of Raoul Peck and to rethinking how policing (actually and metaphorically) reverberates with and against our discipline(s). Kristen invites us to think deeply about these words & to imagine differently
@kr_stern closes with a reflection on the words of Lorgia García-Peña regarding decolonizing the university. Kristen says “I think our discipline is one of these structures/spaces” and notes that in our discipline “We need this as well.”
@kr_stern ultimately closes with a reflection on her own personality and the responsibilities carried by white faculty have to actively work against the overburdening of BIPOC faculty, by taking on that work directly.
Now we're on to Q&A! #DDFC @DdfcTweets
It was another impossible choice b/w panels today! If you went to Panel B: French Programs & heard from @saschechner, Manon Allard-Kropp, Sandra Trapani, Violaine White, Robin Turner @rturne17, & Mary Anne Lewis Cusato) drop your threads/comments below!
After a real quick bio break, we're about to get started on another great set of impossibly good panels to choose from! #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Ok, y'all HERE WE GO! I'm here in Panel A: French Outside the Classroom, and we're about to get started! #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Audra Merfeld-Langston (@audramerfeld) kicks off this panel with "French and Francophone Studies, Beyond Textbooks and Campuses" #DDFC @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Before getting the audience to work, @audramerfeld notes that our students are already experiencing [me: both
We are asked to guess when an image is from.... we guess broadly somewhere from 1945-1980 (with a few people who are onto @audramerfeld's plan here...)
What are we actually looking at... the dissonance between when the image appears to be from and the recent publication year of where it is ACTUALLY from... @AudraMerfeld uses this to critique and question what/who we are representing in textbooks...
[Audra is laying down the textbook critiques so quickly and so well, I can't keep up!] #DDFC @DdfcTweets
@AudraMerfeld now moves to talk about the specificities of our current moment and what this might mean for => greater awareness of problematic moments in our classrooms & curricula (parents are involved in new/diff ways and many are calling out the issues they're seeing)
One major take-away is an evergreen reminder about bringing together all stakeholders: We need to KNOW each other better --- More connections among educators where we are and more broad-spanning k-13 connections! #DDFC @DdfcTweets
This suggestion is not new, but it also is one that is too infrequently taken up oft (I would argue) for structural reasons [too much to lay out here while trying to keep up!]. #DDFC @DdfcTweets
For me, I always think back to models built by Black educators (see for ex Their Hidden Potential and other books by Dr. Vanessa Siddle Walker aas.emory.edu/home/people/fa… and contemporary work that builds on that history like #TITUS titusemory.wordpress.com/about/) #ddfc @DdfcTweets
{Hole in my Tweets again! Audra has concluded and now we are listening to Stephen Bishop!}
Stephen Bishop continues this panel with "Decolonization and Diversity Outside the Classroom: The Case for Refugee and Asylum Assistance in French" #DDFC @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Steve notes that when students are set up to work with families and individuals, they often continue far beyond the time that the course lasts. #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Steve: For refugees/asylees these courses are oft only positive/beneficial, but for students there needs to be a lot of pre-semester training (esp re: privacy training & re: how to recognize certain signs of trauma & difficulty that they may perhaps not know anything about) #ddfc
We have to teach students not to ask well-intentioned but misplaced Qs: "What happened? Why are you here?" etc Students also need to be prepped for people to bring up traumatic stories on their own &students need to be equipped for the possibility of experiencing vicarious trauma
Steve: They need to know what that can look like and how to get help if they find themselves experiencing (vicarious) trauma. Another challenge: [/thread] #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Students need to be able to travel & go to wherever their partners may be (you don't ask people to come to campus for these things). Steve further continues to discuss the responsibilities involved in setting up & shepherding these kinds of courses & the risks it entails. #ddfc
On ethics: If students don't do well in a course like this, it's not just a bad grade... if a student messes up when trying to help a person learn how to read or get a driver's license the consequences are much more important than a bad grade. #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
The professor has a high level of responsibility. Additional challenges: Sometimes the university is worried about the legal liability of helping people. [Steve did open by saying he is "a recovering lawyer" ;)] "Some universities can be quite shy about that." #DDFC @DdfcTweets
Steve also is remises that it must be asked: "Is your college going to recognize this type of work? because this takes a lot of time and energy... but you might not get any tenure credit for this whatsoever." #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Next up: Nina Wardleworth presenting "Decolonizing Narratives of Resistance in the French Curriculum" coming to us at nearly 9pm from Leeds in the UK! -- One of the largest French programs in the UK! #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
We begin with a bit of contextualization from Nina, who takes this moment to call out how problematic and exoticized the treatment of francophone concepts/content had been leading up to what she discusses today... #ddfc
Nina then moves to discuss the ways that she discussed something familiar to students (WWII) and use that familiarity to bridge into asking larger questions about fascism and about localizing these topics in multiple contexts (UK --> France --> Caribbean, etc.) #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Nina continues on to talk about how this leads into research projects (here: profiles) that she and her students engage in with and alongside one another. #ddfc @DdfcTweets
This gets paired with forms of digital activism (showing us examples by one of her students @faridaugust ) [I'm seeing possible resonances w/ @DanMaroun's talk on using social media in the 4-5:15 pm (Houston time) later today!] #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Nana also groups in these projects and digital activism with school outreach in her local primary schools. #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Nina sees study abroad and PAID internships as ways to make continued engagement accessible to a wider swath of students, which dovetails with her own work in this area of widening research pathways and pathways to postgraduate study. #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Nina Wardleworth concludes noting the challenges that she has experienced in trying to widen these pathways through positive action in the UK while also synthesizing what she sees as the deepening importance of collaboration and co-creating in our current moment #DDFC @DdfcTweets
We close out this panel with Molly Krueger Enz (from @SDState) presenting "Breaking Stereotypes about Africa and Decolonizing the French Curriculum through Study Abroad in Senegal" #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
{I'm failing to keep up w/ tweeting as I turn inward and reflect...} #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
I'm thinking about many conversations that @j_macca and I continue to have about where/why/how/whether/for whom intercultural competence is a useful frame. Janice: we need to get to writing through these conversations again when we can turn our energies back in that direction. 🙃
@DanMaroun is up next in Session IV, Panel A: Social Media and Multimodal Instruct with his presentation "De-canonizing Contemporary Culture Courses: Teaching Culture on Twitter" Let's go! 🎉 #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
and has no shortage of example texts that we're about to critique! You ready? Get ready? [I can't keep up! @DanMaroun is on a roll, y'all! ⏩] #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
@DanMaroun It says a lot that all of the textbooks he is talking about today follow (more or less) the exact same structure... #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
@DanMaroun uses this look at textbooks to lead us into considering how we might go far beyond what textbooks offer us (or... fail to offer us...) #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
He offers us hashtagify.me as a way to begin to create intertextual references and a corpus for our students to work through and compare their answers/explorations/data with. #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
And that's just hashtages --- We can also use Botometer. The point? @DanMaroun argues that this gives us a chance to create a virtual cultural context for our students to engage in and engage with. #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Dan argues that "this not only how we decolonize and diversify classrooms, but this is how we help guide students to decolonize and diversify their thoughts" (rough quote -- correct/add at will in the comments, @DanMaroun?) #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Phew! I missed a lot --- Get with organizers and/or Dan directly for everything that I couldn't even come close to capturing here today! #ddfc @DdfcTweets
Up next: Bethany Schiffman @b_schiffman presents "Beyond the Book: Democratic and Multi-Modal Expression as Anti-Racist Pedagogy" #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Bethany discusses how academia and textbooks reify myriad hierarchical structures #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
She asks: Who is being kept out of these spaces, these dialogues through multiple forms of gate-keeping? #DDFC @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Bethany argues for adding multimodal texts and media into our courses, our syllabi, etc. She notes: Through this we lend these texts legitimacy (b/c we [educators] are situated as powerful gatekeepers) & we diversify & amplify voices... #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
...(b/c there are more/diff voices that we can hear if we participate beyond the proverbial walls of a gate-kept academy). Moreover multimedia texts engage students and is just plain good pedagogy (=provides models). Bethany continues to ask us: #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Can we not just include these texts, but bring multimodality through into our assignments and assessments? She argues this is good pedagogy that gives students the agency to cultivate their own talents/interests. They also can be used to help students find/use their voices. #ddfc
By engaging with multimodal texts and assignments, moving away from forms of expression that we control, we open the possibility of de-centering power in our classrooms. #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Bethany's talk is making me think about my own graduate work on the importance of diverse speaker models (which I situated in terms of gender but which is equally true for myriad forms of being & representation). Eventually that work got turned into: #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread
Knisely, K. (2016). Language Learning and the Gendered Self: The Case of French and Masculinity in a US Context. Gender and Language 10(2), 216-239. journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/GL/a… #DDFC @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Knisely, K. (2017). Exploring the role of culture in the formation of French language ideologies among US post-secondary students. Contemporary French Civilization 42(2), 189-210. liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journals/artic… #DDFC @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Knisely, K. and Wind, S. (2017). Developing a Survey to Explore Sense of Belongingness related to Language Learning Using Rasch Measurement Theory. Pensamiento Educativo. 54(2), 1-20. pensamientoeducativo.uc.cl/index.php/pel/… #DDFC @DdfcTweets [/thread]
and Knisely, K. (2018). Intégration des réseaux sociaux dans les cours de langue: justifications et mises en garde. The French Review. 92(1), 97-111. #DDFC @DdfcTweets [/thread]
This questioning of representation and the importance of seeing ourselves is what ultimately lead me to thinking more expansively about what was possible in academia for me and come to work on trans-affirming language pedagogies #DDFC @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Enough about me and enough of my editorializing! Let's get back to these presentations, y'all! 🤓#DDFC @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Bethany closes by noting that these multimodal texts can (me: and should?) cohabitate with what we understand to be more canonical or traditional textual forms, assignments, etc. #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Up next: Thomas Muzart presents "Les podcasts comme outil pédagogique pour les classes de français intermédiaire et avancé" #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Which also invites us to think about the ways that multimedia can invite voices into our classroom that have historically been gate-kept out or that have been presented exclusively through the eyes and words of those with more access to forms of institutional privilege. #DDFC
Thomas Muzart continues to present work upon which he draws inspiration, outlining the 5 characteristics of podcasts (Kaeppel & Björngard-Basayne, 2018) #DDFC @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Thomas Muzart then moves to present the podcast project that he himself engaged in with his students, in several stages that allowed students to analyze existing podcasts and use that analysis in proposing their own #DDFC @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Now, Julia Gorham presents "Decolonizing Intermediate French: A Multimodal and Critical Literacies Perspective to Questioning Colonization, Racism, and Prejudice," which builds on her MA thesis at the University of Arizona. #DDFC @DdfcTweets [/thread]
This project was based on the use of several films in a a 4th semester French course #DDFC @DdfcTweets [/thread]
@CharlottePrieu asks a deeply meaningful question about how we use hashtags & other suggestions from today's panel in ways that are unequivocally ethical & meaningfully contend w/ with what it means to be WITH minoritized people in a way that does not just TAKE from communities.
[That's my paraphrase of the question. Feel free to correct/add if you'd like or if I got any of that wrong in my summary, @CharlottePrieu 🙏 -- I may have over used my own words from a forthcoming chapter on this very topic! (...how "academic" of me.. 🙃🤓🤦) #DDFC @DdfcTweets
HOW CAN WE CHOOSE b/w such great panels?! If you went to Panel B: Beginner & Intermediate courses & heard from Jessica Miller, Anne Violin-Wignet, @JerseyDriver68, Laura Edwards, Sandra Keller, Eva Dessein, Julian Ledford, & Roxane Pajoul drop your threads/comments below! #ddfc
Alright, y'all HERE 👏WE 👏GO 👏 ! We're starting the last panel of the conference (before we all cheers 🥂🎉 together at the closing remarks)! You ready? #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
@MayaAngelaSmith starts off this panel with her presentation "Third Space and Inclusive Pedagogies in the French Foreign Language Classroom" #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Maya talks about how faculty who are minoritized (in various ways) often have to engage in unpaid emotional labor in ways that our non-minoritized colleagues do not. But that we do this labor because of what it can mean for our students to hear that we've felt how they feel.
Maya connects her introductory story of a student who felt 'not _____ enough' to the native speaker fallacy and the anxieties that this framework can produce/reify. #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Instead of putting forth an idealized native speaker model that students can never achieve, we would do better to call out native speakership for what it is (my summary: a game of power & gate-keeping) #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
This native speaker model is particular, as @MayaAngelaSmith shows us --- It is a model that interfaces in significant ways with Whiteness, Frenchness,... #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
@MayaAngelaSmith continues, pulling in the concept of symbolic competence to talk about how we might better prepare our students to engage with multilingualism and the structures of power with which the construct is entangled #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
@MayaAngelaSmith suggests that we think more expansively and make room for complexity and robustness in how we think about multilingualism #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
@MayaAngelaSmith takes this excerpt from her data and asks how these real world experiences of multilingualism might inform our pedagogy of multilingual formation [Me: I often thing about this as a process of (re)(un)becoming] #DDFC @DdfcTweets [/thread]
Maya continues, situating multiplicity and complexity against the fallacy of native speaker ownership of so-called authenticity. #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
This helps students to understand that their perspectives are equally important in the classroom as those of the instructor -- It allows us to decenter power and highlight student agency. #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
What a rich presentation from @MayaAngelaSmith, the brilliance and depth of which I could only begin to capture here! 🙏🔥 #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
And now, for the last paper of the conference: @CeciliaBenni presents "French and its Accents: French Language and Literature in a Multilingual Classroom" #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
"French as a tool for linguistic and thus political emancipation" -@CeciliaBenni #ddfc @DdfcTweets [/thread]
[I'm growing tired and slowing in my abilities to keep up here --- Correct me if I misquoted and feel free to add a bit about your talk in the comments if/as you'd like, @CeciliaBenni ! Thanks for sharing your thoughts with all of us today!]
Annnnd now we're on the last Q&A of the conference, y'all! We've got one last time of being in community together this weekend, but this conference is just the beginning of #ddfc. Deepest thanks to @DdfcTweets @siham_bouamer @Loic_French & all who made this a reality 🙏 [/thread]
Thank you as well to #ddfg @DDGCtweets for joining us at #ddfc @DdfcTweets and for beginning a model on which we can continue to all build. I think I can speak for all in saying: We hope that we can pay forward all that we have learned from you all.
Scroll up in this 2 day long thread to check out my best efforts at capturing just a glimpse of the brilliance of this 1st #ddfc conference. Add your own comments, work, & threads! Tag yourself where I missed your handles & follow @DdfcTweets for continuing conversations! 🙏🎉🥂
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#ddfg, ha! See how much I love it when #ddgc @DDGCtweets and #dsfc @DdfcTweets come together!? My subconscious was writing toward our connectedness and collaboration.
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