Students are expected to do the assigned readings and come to class prepared. Each student will also write a five page analysis of Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” (“Vor dem Gesetz”) in MLA Style. This paper will go through numerous drafts, and will receive criticism both from the instructor and classmates. Although there are only three formal dates for the submission of paper drafts, past experience confirms that turning in weekly drafts yields the best papers. Students will also draft a program of study that will serve as a guide for their future endeavors.

CPLT 703: Imagining Human Rights
Taught by Professor Steele
M 3:00 pm – 5:30 pm
This class will look at human rights not just as principles and laws but as shared imaginative constructions or social imaginaries. We often think of human rights in terms of the principles found in political documents, such as the Bill of Rights or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but these rights are inescapably bound together with the stories that make up who we are.

This course presupposes no prior study of literary or political theory, and in the opening section of the class, we will study the emergence of two different Western social imaginaries for understanding rights, the American and French. (We will pay particular attention to the role of the novel in the shaping of the imagination of human rights.) This will give students a common philosophical and historical background. In developing the particulars of these different cultures of rights, we will examine recent controversies over secularity and religion, over the politics of national histories and colonial legacies, over the relationship of universal rights, ethnocentricity, and identity, and over economic and social rights. This will mean looking at texts of various kinds, from government documents to newspapers, histories, films and court cases.

We will then look at international human rights issues and the political difficulties surrounding their implementation. Students will be encouraged to bring their own interests to the class--e.g. postcolonialism and globalization, genocide, gender, the environment, transnational imaginaries, etc.--and we will adjust the second half of the syllabus to accommodate these interests.

The class will be interdisciplinary, drawing on philosophy, law, literature, and social science, and there will be guest lectures by faculty in these disciplines. This course will prepare students to participate in a conference entitled “The Futures of Human Rights,“ which will be held in February, 2009.

Students will develop their own projects, and the nature of these projects will depend on the level and interests of the student. Students may do preliminary development for a long-term project or they may bring one to closure. They will present their research to the class and submit a 20 page paper.

FORL 510: ADV STY TCH FORL/SEC SCH
Taught by Professor Ducate
TTH 9:30 am – 10:45 am
This course will focus on a study of historical perspectives and recent innovations in the field of teaching foreign languages in secondary schools. Students will be expected to examine theory and research findings as they relate to the improvement of instruction and professional leadership in education and draw implications from these for the improvement of classroom instruction. One of our goals is to help students develop the skills necessary to critically evaluate language acquisition theories, methods, teaching practices, and materials, and to reflect critically on their own teaching skills. In addition to discussing theoretical issues, students will carry out a variety of assignments, including participation in discussion board groups, development and evaluation of teaching/testing materials, and possibly observation of classes.

FORL 776: The Teaching of Foreign Languages in College
Taught by Professor Moreno
MW 8:00 am – 8:50 am (schedule to be defined in July)
The purpose of this course is to explore the question: How does one effectively teach a foreign language? We will do this by investigating several different theories of second language acquisition (SLA) and approaches to foreign language (FL) teaching. During the course, you will gain both practical knowledge to incorporate into your everyday teaching as well as an understanding of which approaches to teaching might be more effective than others in various classroom contexts and why. Among the topics we will discuss are: teaching methodologies and approaches, theories of SLA, the National Standards, teaching the 4 skills and grammar in a communicative FL classroom, teaching culture, and testing. Through the activities you complete and our discussions, you will gain experience rating and developing activities for the 4 skills (listening, reading, reading, writing), culture, and grammar, writing tests, and evaluating textbooks for their proficiencies in teaching these skills.