Diversity and Decolonization in German Studies

In this introduction to the volume, we provide a critical overview of postsecondary diversity and decolonization discourses. Our aim is to show how these discourses have come to be integrated in discussions and debates on curriculum formation and the state of the field of German Studies over the course of the discipline’s recent history.

Accommodating both decolonization and diversity in reshaping German Studies brings together two potentially incommensurable discourses. A chasm opens up when decolonization is first, repeatedly taken up metaphorically as a “decolonization of the mind,” and second, made commensurate with diversity frameworks. Both impulses in the decolonization of German Studies appear to be at odds with Decolonial Studies. In this essay, we first map out the conflict between decolonization as “decolonization of the mind” and decolonization as theorized by Indigenous Decolonial scholars. We then engage with challenges Decolonial Studies pose to German Studies specifically. Finally, we examine practices in our field that contribute to the continued erasure of Indigenous life.

This article outlines the stakes and practical considerations for initiatives to diversify and decolonize German Studies curricula. Despite educators’ increasing awareness of the field’s complicity in reifying systems of injustice and their efforts to reflect the diversity within the German-speaking world, German curricula often still project a monolithic and exclusionary image of “Germanness.” To diversify topics and texts without interrogating the social stratification implied in the ways that “Others” of the German-speaking world are presented (or not) is not enough; German Studies must be concomitantly decolonized. That is, where diversifying curricula entails recognizing and engaging the internal diversity and complexity of German-speaking societies, decolonizing entails recognizing, questioning, and destabilizing the hegemonies implicated in the construction of cultures, canons, and curricula.

This chapter suggests ways of rethinking the language curriculum at the collegiate level in ways that are more inclusive and expansive than outlined in the World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages and connecting it to the sociopolitical realities facing us today. Such curriculum is based on a more nuanced understanding of the 5 Cs and adds new dimensions to the existing model: (1) criticality and civil courage to communication, (2) complexity to cultures, (3) context to comparisons, (4) connectedness to connections, and (5) concern, care, and compassion to communities. Tarnawska Senel argues that language instruction must include social justice initiatives related to both broader global contexts and specifically local issues and advocates engaging in a deliberately political teaching that is informed by cultural studies and critical pedagogy.

In this chapter, I will offer examples from my course Germany and the Black Diaspora to explain how I have used the format of a first-year seminar as a site of decolonization where I can recover marginalized narratives, decenter whiteness, and offer students multiple perspectives on Germany and on Black cultures. In my first-year seminar, students learn that a lot of common-sense ideas held about Black people (held both by themselves and the authors of the texts) are not objective truths, but subjective impressions. By reading texts by white German, Black German, African American, and African authors, I encourage them not only to challenge cross-racial understandings, but also to consider questions of intersectionality.

This chapter deals with unstated white supremacist assumptions of German Studies and proposes critical race theory approaches toward the German invention of “race.” After contextualizing the contemporary situation, the chapter describes a particular instance of German Studies instruction in critical genealogies of race, namely, a seminar called “Race Theory and the Modern German State.” The curriculum and pedagogical methods focus on unpacking racial discourse found in primary sources over the course of German intellectual and cultural history. However, the author discovered that this focus on primary sources may backfire, and provides a case study of such a situation. The chapter concludes with pedagogy and curriculum recommendations, should a German instructor choose to teach such a critical race theory seminar in their own institution. Without combating white supremacy and staring unflinchingly at its racial assumptions, German Studies runs the risk of supporting the very systems of oppression it purports to denounce.

What does it mean to teach German as a foreign language in a US classroom? What is foreign and what is not, who is foreign and who is not, who is an insider and who is an outsider? This essay serves to decolonize German Studies by bringing a Critical Whiteness Studies perspective to the field of second language acquisition and into the German classroom. The two parts of this essay address theoretical considerations drawn from critical pedagogy and critical theory, in particular Critical Whiteness Studies and offer concrete activities for an intermediate or advanced German classroom that highlights the importance of reflectivity and positionality. In a multi-class lesson focused on the concepts of Ausländer, Heimat, Leitkultur, and Repräsentation as seen through the films Yes I Am! (Sven Halfar, 2007) and Ausländer raus! Schlingensiefs Container (Paul Poet, 2002) students will explore competing discourses about foreignness in diverse German-language contexts.

The iterative and reflective process of intercultural learning, for both instructors and students, is key to questioning our own assumptions and underlying values as well as those of our discipline. We propose a framework for the longitudinal integration of intercultural competence (IC) throughout the curriculum and share how we are beginning to implement this framework across language curricula in the context of a diverse modern language department. This framework foregrounds attention to the constructedness of identities and to the revision of mental models of different cultures, while nurturing an openness to change within oneself. It challenges learners through experiential learning to develop their self-awareness, tolerance for ambiguity, strategies for dealing with discomfort, and understanding of cultural value orientations.

In this chapter, I argue that German language educators and learners often reelect monolingualism (Gramling 2019) despite the lived multilingual realities of language learners in study abroad (SA). By bringing together analyses of a number of interactions and oral reflections collected across two SA contexts—a short-term summer program and yearlong program—I show that the participants harness three ideological structures (i.e., of nativespeakerism, raciolinguicism, and neoliberalism) when negotiating talk about language choice abroad and being addressed in English vs. German in SA. The results demonstrate that talk about German language learning in SA is steeped in these ideological structures, something that allows participants to reproduce structural monolingualism even though they themselves are plurilingual subjects. This project lends strong support to scholarship that examines the ways in which foreign language education and German Studies are steeped in the recirculation of Whiteness, “or the ‘oneness’ without which otherness could not exist” (Reagan and Osborn 2019, p. 94; Weber 2016) and proposes that we reorient to German language education and SA as an experience that disturbs and unsettles prevailing discourses about language, culture, and race.

This chapter focuses on the question of inclusion for Students of Color in the US German Classroom and the impact that the intercultural method may have upon marginalized students when German culture is essentialized and portrayed in a stereotypical fashion. It also engages with a critical analysis of culture and the division between culture and language, as well as the racialization that occurs for Students of Color at American colleges and universities. My central argument outlines how the emphasis should be placed upon the educator rather than the student and that, despite the popularity of buzz words such as “inclusion,” “diversity,” and the “inclusive classroom,” German curriculum objectives are not meeting the needs of marginalized students.

This chapter reviews research on the psychological effects, such as marginalization, racial microaggressions, and stereotype threat, that impede success for graduate students of color. These effects are compounded in predominantly white fields, like German Studies, and can prevent graduate students of color from thriving in these fields. By explaining and identifying key factors that can contribute to either an inclusive or hostile learning environment, this chapter offers concrete suggestions on how best to support minoritized graduate students as they navigate the complex waters of academia.

This chapter looks at the process of merging literary research on the Romantic idea of symphilosophy with a pedagogical approach oriented toward classroom inclusivity that attends to the learning needs of all students regardless of their gender, age, race, disability, and sexual orientation through a peer-like environment including the instructor. The use of this core concept of the European literary tradition lends itself to a decolonialization of literature and language courses in conjunction with feminist ideas because they prioritized post-colonialism and postmodernism and brought into focus theories of intersectionality. I believe that German Romantic philosophy—with its openness to dialogue, emancipation of women, and acculturation of Jews in the Romantic salon—and its extension, the letter, are relevant to these pedagogical objectives regarding diversity and can be successfully applied in digital and social media projects. The Romantic salon can be then perceived as a decolonizing space albeit as a different type of decolonization.

This chapter proposes an intervention into traditional language pedagogy by examining the ways in which communicative language teaching frequently fails to take the spectra of ability statuses among learners and educators into account. Specifically focusing on the postsecondary German language classroom, I consider the detrimental impact of pedagogy training and teaching materials that perpetuate a narrowly defined ideal of normalcy. Drawing on core concepts of disability studies, the chapter contextualizes the intervention into German language pedagogy through an examination of the general barriers to inclusion and equity that exist in higher education. I conclude with a discussion of the rethinking that will be necessary, in order to create meaningful changes toward the inclusion of students and faculty of varying abilities in a productive learning community.

Michael Rothberg defines “multidirectional memory” as a social phenomenon that connects disparate cultural memory narratives. According to Rothberg, rather than viewing discourses related to slavery and decolonization as competing with the unique place of the Holocaust in modern Western history, these discourses developed concomitantly and can foster solidarity for a more just future. This chapter argues that multidirectional memory has, at its core, a decolonialist mission and facilitates a decolonizing pedagogy. I examine how multidirectional discourse relies on the exploration of different positionalities. This approach positions student self-assessment of personal narratives in the context of national, international, and multidirectional narratives, fostering deep criticality conducive to decolonized thinking. I will elucidate my theoretical ideas on the basis of a course entitled “Transnational Perspectives on Holocaust Memory.”

Foreign language instructors increasingly face challenges in the classroom due to highly gendered structures inherent in many languages. Teaching grammatically gendered foreign languages such as German in its normative language patterns without consideration of how it affects gender nonconforming students, not only creates an exclusionary classroom environment, but also neglects to teach students authentic conceptions of new sociocultural developments in the target language. The question arises whether and if so how such gendered notions can be addressed successfully to create an inclusive environment for all students in a language classroom. While we cannot change language patterns or dismiss textbooks altogether, we need to develop strategies that can be incorporated in language classrooms to create safe spaces for students while still allowing for effective pedagogical instruction.

This chapter proposes broad-based approaches to decolonialization and diversity in German Studies. I suggest pedagogical strategies for language instructors, which focus on the intersections in students’ identity and discuss how these can be applied in a teaching environment for foreign language instruction that has been profoundly transformed through the internationalization of student cohorts by the so-called Melbourne Model of curriculum reform. The first section of this chapter discusses the impact of this model on the student cohort at the University of Melbourne. In the second section, I develop a model for assessing different diversity dimensions and their intersectionalities. In the third section, I discuss specific teaching strategies, which address diversity-related challenges in the foreign language classroom and help to provide meaningful experiences for students with heterogeneous backgrounds and experiences.

Composed in the form of a letter, this chapter is a fictional exploration of the thinking that tends to animate graduate advising in German graduate programs. Addressed to an unnamed “incoming graduate student colleague,” the letter expresses a composite of hopes, experiences, caveats, and uncertainties that the author has gathered, as a seven-year Director of Graduate Studies for a department with both MA and PhD programs. In this, the piece intends neither to be reassuring, nor dissuasive. Neither does the letter seek to reflect the author’s own department or university setting, so much as a general sketch of graduate mentoring as a holistic intergenerational experience that blends one’s own memories of graduate training with the current challenges of the post-Great-Recession academic labor market and the general call to decolonize educational endeavors in this age.