Languages Across the Curriculum
Students of Russian and their professor, Andrea Lanoux (far right), visited the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
Connecticut College established the Foreign Languages Across the Curriculum (FLAC) program to provide students in a variety of English-language courses the opportunity to participate in an optional section taught in a foreign language.
This program helps bring diverse perspectives to a broad range of subjects and continues to grow with the addition of new FLAC offerings. The program expanded to eight sections in 2008-09, offering Chinese, German, Russian, Czech, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Japanese. All of the foreign language sections are offered on an optional basis for an additional course credit. Eighteen new or significantly revised courses with a language component were added in 2009-2010 and 2010-2011.
Here is a list of FLAC courses recently offered:
Economic Growth and Development in Latin America
An interdisciplinary examination of the factors affecting growth and development in Latin America, with a FLAC section in Spanish.
First Year Seminar: Russia after Communism
An examination of the radical social changes following the fall of the Soviet Union from a range of disciplinary perspectives.The course included a Russian language component and student-to-student Skype partnerships with students from the St. Petersburg School of Economics in Russia.
Language, Narrative, and Self
A revised version of the Human Development course that examines the various cultural/narrative sources that children and families from diverse backgrounds draw on when constructing moral meanings about their own and others' actions. The course includes an emphasis on foreign languages and cultures.
Representations of the Holocaust in Film and Literature
A significant revision of this German course emphasizes the interdisciplinary connections with history, film, religious studies, and international relations. The course includes a FLAC section in German.
Emerging Market Economies: BRICS
The course is an examination of the economic and social forces in Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Students with a knowledge of Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, or Mandarin are encouraged to conduct research and write course papers in those languages.
Gender and Media
Taught by a sociology professor, the course examines popular culture and media from a variety of international perspectives. Intermediate knowledge of a foreign language is a prerequisite for the course.
First Year Seminar: Made in China
A cultural studies course examining pertinent aspects of China’s recent and rapid rise as a global market economy.
Advanced French through History
An interdisciplinary course in French history focusing on language, popular culture, literature, and film, in French.
Contemporary Russian and American Cultures
A team-taught, dual language telecourse with the St. Petersburg School of Economics.
Latin American Immigration and Migration - Spanish
An examination of the movement of people within Latin America and of Latin Americans abroad. Topics include Iberian colonization; the African Diaspora; Asian, German and Jewish immigrants; rural-to-urban migration; and Latin Americans in the United States and Connecticut. Specific topics in the U.S. and Connecticut portion deal with migrant labor, bilingual education, gender roles, racism and transnational identity. The course includes an oral history project. An optional section in Spanish is offered for this course.
The Japanese Tea Ceremony: Warriors, Merchants, and Monks - Japanese
With roots in Zen monastic practice and samurai culture, the Japanese tea ceremony represents a microcosm of medieval society during the Warring States period. This course explores the changing nature of the ritual of tea drinking as a cultural practice to examine post-war Japanese society. It is taught in English with an optional section with conversation and readings in Japanese.
Representations of War and Disaster in Japan, 1000-1945 - Japanese
How does one record an unfathomable horror? This English-language course examines representations in Japanese visual and textual materials dealing with epidemics, war and disasters from the 11th to the 20th centuries. This course includes an optional section that meets for an additional hour each week to discuss supplemental readings in Japanese.
A Difficult Past: German History, 1850-2000 - German
This course examines German history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing especially on the uses and abuses of the study of the past. Important topics include the nationalist narrative of German history; the centrality of Hitler, Nazism and the Holocaust; and the nature of political and cultural division in the Cold War era. This course includes an optional section that meets for an additional hour each week to discuss supplemental readings in German.
Witches, Weirdness and Wonder in German Cultural Imaginations - German
An introduction to the imagination of symbolic order and chaos in German literature and popular culture. The course traces stories as well as contemporary media and film productions of witches and wonders in Grimm?s fairy tales, works by Kafka, Hesse and others. Included is an optional section that meets for an additional hour each week to discuss supplemental readings in German.
Art, Entertainment and Propaganda: German Culture Through Film - German
An introduction to classics in German cinema, exploring major works in their social, historical and cultural context. Students view and analyze films from the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, the division of the two Germanys and the present, with emphasis on the relationship between cinema and politics, popular and high culture. This course includes an optional section that meets for an additional hour each week to discuss supplemental readings in German.
Reformation and Counter-Reformation - German
The causes and impact of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations across Europe. The course examines the consequences of religious reform for religious belief and practice, politics, and society. Covers the theologies of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and Loyola; religious conflict; and the long-term results of the Reformation. This course includes an optional section that meets for an additional hour each week to discuss supplemental readings in German.
The Late Renaissance: Art, Science and Religion - Italian
A study of Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Galileo (1564-1642) in English, including readings of Michelangelo's poetry and Galileo's prose. The course includes an optional section that meets for an additional hour each week to discuss supplemental readings in Italian.
Dante - Italian
A study of Dante Alighieri’s great epic poem, The Divine Comedy, in English. This course includes an optional section that meets for an additional hour each week to discuss supplemental readings in Italian.
Post-Authoritarian Brazil - Portuguese
An examination of trends and processes since the transition to democracy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Some of the topics covered include democratization, social movements, economic restructuring, violence and religion. Ethnography and oral history are emphasized in discussions of these issues. The course includes an optional section that meets outside of class to discuss supplemental readings in Portuguese.
