I'm reminded each time I teach that our students come from far and wide to study at our institution and that they're often the best people to ask when it comes to understanding their cultures. However, they're not always cognizant of other cultures and languages, unsure of how to discuss and navigate differences in attitudes and approaches to learning.
Many of our courses in Modern Languages ask our students to draw on their own cultural contexts to think about others, and I'd encourage more discussion in class about ways to facilitate these encounters. Amy Lee's Teaching Interculturally is a great resource, providing tools for "intercultural pedagogy" and there are some thoughts and strategies from teachers at OSU that are definitely worth reading through.
As usual, we bring you a selection of tips, tricks, and links from around the world, we're really interested in where you are and hope this newsletter encourages conversation and dialogue, that it provides you with an opportunity to try something new, learning from someone, somewhere who is also experimenting and testing ideas.
A mural painted on the side of an apartment block in Odintsovo, Russia as part of the https://urbanmorphogenesis.ru/ (for English translation use Google Chrome to view) Photograph: Sergei Bobylev/TASS
Links and Stories
Maps are powerful forms of storytelling, we create mental maps, maps from memories, our own personal landscapes, and geographies. These maps tell stories about our love of Food! Taste Atlas tells you where your food comes from and how it is celebrated. When I moved to Pittsburgh little did I know I was living only a few miles from the Latrobe, the home of the Banana split!
This second is the work of a student here at CMU and generously shared with us in the Multicultural Pittsburgh course. This Eat the World map explores the restaurants of Pittsburgh through a map of the world. Its creator Anjie Cao tells me that the best part of this map was sampling as many foods as possible.
There are many tools to create your own maps and I would encourage you to explore MapHub which enables you to create interactive maps, color them, add pins, information and embed them on your sites. This is an incredibly flexible tool and there's a short youtube tutorial here. (I would turn the painful music off). Zeemaps also does something similar, you get a maximum of 5 maps on a free account.
This excerpt from the BBC's Shortcuts podcast introduces us to Sahand Sahebdivani who became a translator for his parents when they moved to the Netherlands from Iran. He's now a storyteller and musician still translating films and novels. It's an incredibly moving story and a reminder of the positive power of translation.
Thank you to Sebastien Dubreil for this article in News Medical that states that "monolinguals living in a linguistically diverse environment may be reaping some rewards just by being in the vicinity of multiple languages." If you're monolingual overhearing languages you don't understand, your use of language is still shaped by these encounters. Here's a link to the research if you want to drink from the source.
On Screen
Liu Liu is a film about skateboarding shot in Shenzhen.
These Ukrainian grandmothers are helping preserve the long history of Ukraine’s folk music. Directed and Produced by Frederick Bernas
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