RL623 Spring 2009 Updated 31 March 2009 1

RL 623: Culture, Canon, and Commodification

Instructors: Robert Davis (rldavis@uoregon.edu) and David Wacks
(wacks@uoregon.edu)
Spring 2009, CRN 34907
Tuesday 2:00-5:00pm in Education 117

Description: The study of language and culture in an institutional setting (school,

university, institute) creates market opportunities for cultural and linguistic
artifacts. These products determine in large part how the target language, culture,
and literature are perceived and in turn transmitted to the next generation of
institutional consumer-learners. Language study materials (textbooks, multimedia)
and literature textbooks, anthologies, and literary histories are not transparent
representations of any given language or culture. Their production and consumption
are conditioned by market considerations, by the intellectual and professional
habits of their producers, and by the ideologies and administrative policies of where
they are consumed.

In this class we will read and critique a variety of texts including primary sources
such as language textbooks and multimedia, literary anthologies, literature and
culture textbooks, and secondary texts dealing with issues of canonicity, literary
history, and critical approaches to the commodification of national languages and
cultures.

RL MA students: This class will provide an excellent opportunity to begin developing

a critical pedagogical portfolio. Graduate students from departments other than
Romance Languages are also strongly encouraged to enroll.

Texts: All required readings are available in Blackboard/Course

Documents/Readings

Textbook corpus: Each student will select 3-5 language textbooks, literary
anthologies, and literary histories that will serve as the corpus for their weekly
critical interventions.

2- 4-
credit credit
Requirements:
cours cours
e e
Critical presentation: The presentation will be a mock
academic conference paper (Please see "Guidelines for
conference papers" in Blackboard/Documents/) of no more than
--- 20%
10 double-spaced pages or 15 minutes in length. Students must
provide the audience with some sort of visual aid (i.e.
PowerPoint slides, handout, film clip, audio recordings, etc.).
Weekly interventions (7, weeks 2-8): Each week students 90% 50%
will hand in a short (two-page) paper in which they apply critical
readings to their corpus of materials. Each intervention will
consist of a paragraph of summary giving an overview of the
RL623 Spring 2009 Updated 31 March 2009 2

critical concepts and the materials to which they will be applied,

followed by a detailed analysis supported by specific references.
Students may write their weekly interventions with an eye
toward their particular literary, cultural, or pedagogical interests
(period, topic, genre, etc) and in particular keeping in mind the
likely nature of their critical project.
Critical project: The critical project will be an article-length
intervention exploring a problem in some aspect of language
learning materials, literary anthologies, or literary history in one
or more Romance languages. Topics will be developed in
consultation with instructors and through weekly critical --- 30%
interventions. Projects must be submitted in MLA format. To
receive credit for an M.A. period requirement, the project must
be written in the M.A. language and address the period in a
direct way.
Attendance and participation 10% ---

Week 1 (3/31) Intro: History of FL studies in University

Week 2 (4/7) Canonicity 1: The anthology

Visitor: Wadda Ríos-Font
Reading: Kuipers 2003; Even Zohar 1990; Ríos-Font 2001
Intervention: Apply readings to primary readings in literary anthologies (2) of
your choice

Week 3 (4/14) Canonicity 2: Literary History

Reading: Perkins 1992; Guillory 1993
Intervention: Apply readings to primary readings in 2 literary anthologies and/or
literary histories

Week 4 (4/21) History of FL Textbook

Reading: Richards and Rogers 2001; Musumeci 1997;
Intervention: TBA

Week 5 (4/28) The Commodification of Language Learning

Visitors: Barbara Altmann, Bill Glass, Peter Suber (virtual)
Reading: Wortham 1997; Sercu 2000; Maijala 2007; Suber 2004a; Suber 2004b;
Intervention: Apply concepts to textbook corpus

Week 6 (5/5) Culture in the FL textbook 2

Reading: Kramsch 1993: 205-33; Osborn 2000;
Intervention: Apply concepts to textbook corpus

Week 7 (5/12) New Media, Open Textbooks and the FL materials market
Visitor: Robert Blake
Reading: cnx.org; Stevens 2006; Blake 2002 Tesoros

Week 8 (5/19) Culture in the FL textbook 3

RL623 Spring 2009 Updated 31 March 2009 3

Reading: Herman 2007; Leeman and Martínez 2007

Week 9 (5/26) Presentations

Week 10 (6/1) Presentations

Invited Speakers:

• Wadda Ríos-Font (Barnard College):

http://barnard.edu/faculty/profiles/riosfont_w.html
• Bill Glass (McGraw Hill): http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/8a7/3a5
• Peter Suber (Earlham College):
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/hometoc.htm
• Robert Blake (U California-Davis):
http://spanish.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/Blake
• Barbara Altmann (U Oregon, Romance Languages, Humanities Center):
http://rl.uoregon.edu/people/faculty/profiles/baltmann/index.php

Required Readings:

• Even-Zohar, Itamar. "Polysystem Theory." Poetics Today 11.1 (1990): 9-26.

(see also Codde 2003 for updated overview)
• Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
• Herman, Deborah M. "It's a small world after all: From stereotypes to
invented worlds in secondary school Spanish textbooks." Critical Inquiry in
Language Studies 4.2-3 (2007): 117-50. (http://0-
search.ebscohost.com.janus.uoregon.edu/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=ufh&AN=27022854&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-
live&scope=site )
• Kramsch, Claire. Context and Culture in Language Teaching, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993. 205-33.
• Kuipers, Christopher M., 2003, “The Anthology / Corpus Dynamic: Towards a
Field Theory of the Canon,” College Literature 30.2, 51-71.
• Leeman, Jennifer, and Glenn Martínez. "From identity to commodity:
Ideologies of Spanish in heritage language textbooks." Critical Inquiry &
Language Studies 4.1 (2007): 35-65.
• Maijala, Minna. "Schoolbooks." Imagology: The cultural construction and
literary representation of national characters. Eds. Manfred Beller and Joep
Leerssen. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. 418-21.
• Musumeci, Diane (1997) Breaking Tradition: An Exploration of the Historical
Relationship Between Theory and Practice in Second Language Teaching.
McGraw Hill Professional Series.
• Osborn, Terry A. Critical reflection and the foreign language classroom.
Westport, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey, 2000.
• Perkins, David. Is literary history possible? Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1992.
• Richards, J., & Rodgers, T. (2001). Approaches and methods in language
Teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
RL623 Spring 2009 Updated 31 March 2009 4

• Ríos-Font, Wadda C. "Literary history and canon formation." The Cambridge

History of Spanish Literature. Ed. David Thatcher Gies. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001. 15-35.
• Sercu, Lies. "Textbooks." Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and
Learning. Ed. Michael Byram. London: Routledge, 2000. 626-29.
• Stevens, Vance. "Second Life in Education and Language Learning." TESL-EJ
10.3 (2006). <http://tesl-ej.org/ej39/int.html >.
• Suber, Peter. (2004a). "Open Access Overview."
<http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm>. Accessed 11 Feb
2009.
• Suber, Peter. (2004b). "Promoting Open Access in the Humanities"
<http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/apa.htm > Accessed 11 Feb 2009.
• Wortham, Stanton E. F. . "The Commodification of Classroom Discourse."
Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Eds. Leo Van Lier and David
Corson. Vol. 6. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997. 251-60.

Additional Reading:

• Altieri, Charles. Canons and consequences: reflections on the ethical force of

imaginative ideals. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1990.
• Auroux, Sylvain. History of the language sciences: An international handbook
on the evolution of the study of language from the beginnings to the present.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005. (Section XVII contains sections on history of
language teaching in Spain, Italy, and France in 15th-18th c.)
• Breva-Claramonte, Manuel. La didáctica de las lenguas en el Renacimiento:
Juan Luis Vives y Pedro Simón Abril: con selección de textos. Bilbao:
Universidad de Deusto, 1994.
• Brown, Joan L., and Crista J. Johnson. "Required Reading: The Canon in
Spanish and Spanish-American Literature." Hispania 81.1 (1998): 1-19.
• Caravolas, Jean. La didactique des langues. Montreal: Presses de l'Université
de Montréal, 1994.
• Caravolas, Jean.. Le point sur l'histoire de l'enseignement des langues, -3000-
1950. Le point sur--; Variation: Point sur-- (Anjou, QuÈbec). Anjou, QuÈbec:
Centre Èducatif et culturel, 1995.
• Caravolas, Jean.. Histoire de la didactique des langues au siècle des
Lumières : précis et anthologie thématique. Montreal: Presses de l'Université
de Montréal, 2000.
• Codde, Philippe. "Polysystem Theory Revisited: A New Comparative
Introduction." Poetics Today 24.1 (2003): 91-126.
• Gorak, Jan. The making of the modern canon : genesis and crisis of a literary
idea. Vision, division, and revision. London ; Atlantic Heights, NJ: Athlone,
1991.
• Gorak, Jan. Canon vs. culture : reflections on the current debate. Garland
reference library of the humanities. Wellesley studies in critical theory,
literary history, and culture. New York: Garland, 2000.
• Howatt, Anthony P. R., and Richard C. Smith. Foundations of foreign language
teaching: nineteenth-century innovators. London: New York, 2002.
• Hutcheon, Linda, and Mario J. Valdés. Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue
on Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Kolbas, E. Dean. Critical theory and the literary canon. Westview Press,
RL623 Spring 2009 Updated 31 March 2009 5

Cambridge University, 2001.

• Kramsch, Claire. "The cultural component of language teaching" ZIF 1.2
(1996). http://zif.spz.tu-darmstadt.de/jg-01-2/beitrag/kramsch2.htm
• Kramsch, Claire. "The cultural discourse of foreign language textbooks."
Towards a new integration of language and culture. Ed. A. Singerman.
Middlebury, Vt: Northeast Conference, 1988. 63-68.
• Law, Vivien. "Medieval vernacular grammars." The History of Linguistics in
Europe from Plato to 1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
190-209.
• Pellandra, Carla. Grammatiche, grammatici, grammatisti: per una storia
dell'insegnamento delle lingue in Italia dal Cinquecento al Settecento. Pisa:
Libreria Goliardica, 1989.
• Pozuelo Yvancos, José María, and Rosa María Aradra Sánchez. Teoría del
canon y literatura española. Madrid: Cátedra, 2000.
• Sadow, S. "Experiential techniques that promote cross-cultural awareness."
Foreign Language Annals 20.1: 25-30. "most foreign language textbooks offer
descriptions of the target culture that resemble a collection of postage
stamps" (25)
• Titone, Renzo. Cinque millenni di insegnamento delle lingue. Pubblicazioni del
Centro di linguistica dell'Università cattolica. Brescia: La Scuola, 1986.
• VanPatten, Bill (1998) Perceptions of and Perspectives on the Term
"Communicative". Hispania, 81 (4), 925-932.