Curricular and Cultural Intersections: Teaching France and the Arab World

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

Notes

1. See Brière for a discussion of understanding self as culturally determined, or marked.

2. Telmissany cautions against identifying nation with language because no people, she argues, owns a language: “Le français d’aujourd’hui n’est plus principe de domination imposé à l’Europe par la France impériale (napoléonienne) ou bien à l’Afrique et en Asie par la France impéraliste (coloniale). La langue n’est ni centrifuge ni centripète, elle ne rayonne pas, et ne fait pas converger vers elle les regards des Autres, fussent-ils francophones Elle s’éclate en mille centres et mille plateaux, en se libérant de toute centralité, nationale ou nationaliste, impériale ou impéraliste. Le français d’aujourd’hui est en train de se libérer, même du concept de la francophonie, forgé à l’image de la centralité nationale qui domine, contrôle et standardise” (21, my emphasis).

3. Gaasch's Anthologie de la nouvelle maghrébine: Paroles d’auteurs contains short stories and interviews with these authors and others.

4. See Furstenberg and Cultura web site (http://web.mit.edu/french/culturaNEH). Online Intercultural Exchange offers further information about telecollaboration and e-mail exchanges. Another resource is the Connect Program (http://www.soliya.net), which facilitates on-line dialogue in English between university classrooms in the U.S. and the Middle East.

5. I would like to thank Bill Granara, Diana Abouali, Jonathan Smolin, Majida Bargach, and Btissam El Hassar for their kindness in helping me find my way in Morocco, and Debbie Mann, whose help and sharing of ideas via e-mail exchange were of great value to me as I developed the course. I am also most grateful for the financial support of my institution for travel to Morocco, curriculum development, and purchase of pedagogical materials.