American Association of Teachers of German

Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum
Call for Papers

Frankly Speaking: Challenges in Integrating
Languages and Cultures into a Post-Secondary Curriculum
October 15-17, 2008
FedEx Global Education Center
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
http://www.unc.edu/clac

The Fall 2008 conference on Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) provides an opportunity for faculty, graduate instructors, and administrators to share expertise in building and managing post-secondary CLAC programs.  A special focus this year will be on the implications of the May 2007 MLA Foreign Language Report (http://www.mla.org/flreport) on CLAC initiatives nationwide.

CULTURES AND LANGUAGES ACROSS THE CURRICULUM (CLAC)

The CLAC movement intends to make global competence a reality for students and to create alliances among educators to share practices and methods for incorporating an international dimension in curricula, and, more generally, to achieve internationalization goals. General principles of CLAC include:

1. A focus on communication and content;
2. An emphasis on developing meaningful content-focused language use outside traditional language classes;
3. An approach to language use and cross-cultural skills as a means for the achievement of global intellectual synthesis, in which students learn to combine and interpret knowledge produced in other languages and in other cultures.

Within this large framework, CLAC can take many forms, depending on specific content and curricular goals within a discipline.

PROPOSAL GUIDELINES

Proposals for 30-minute papers or 90-minute panels on any issue relating to CLAC are welcome, although the following topics are of particular interest:

• Institutional, professional, and practical obstacles to CLAC
• CLAC: in competition or collaboration with foreign language departments?
• Innovative interdepartmental or interinstitutional links
• CLAC models for less commonly taught languages or heritage languages
• Preparing graduate students and faculty to implement CLAC
• The role of Title VI Centers and other funding agencies
• CLAC evaluation and assessment
• Sample teaching materials: syllabi, classroom activities, lesson plans
• The use of technology in CLAC
• The implications of national foreign language standards on CLAC
• Languages for special purposes / professional use / service learning

To submit a proposal, please email an submission form (available on the web at http://www.unc.edu/clac) and a one-page abstract (max. 350 words) to clac2008@unc.edu by May 15, 2008.

Selected papers will be published on the CLAC conference website. Submission of a proposal constitutes agreement to online publication. This in no way limits the author's rights to publish the paper elsewhere.

For additional information, please visit the conference website at http://www.unc.edu/clac.

Tanya E. Kinsella, Ph.D.
Undergraduate Academic Program Coordinator 
Center for European Studies 
FedEx Global Education Center, Rm 3213 
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
919-962-1602; fax 919-962-5375  

www.global.unc.edu/europe  (Center for European Studies) 
www.unc.edu/lac (Languages Across the Curriculum) 
www.unc.edu/depts/europe/major (EURO Major)