Engaged Humanities and the Future of Spanish Programs

Response to "Apologia No More: On Strong Foundations and the Future of Hispanism"

More than just finally articulating the value of what we do in Spanish programs, we must actually change a significant portion of what we do—and how we do it—in order to offer the kind of value the authors wisely propose. To provide solutions to "the possibility of non-Hispanic American cultural resistance to the growth of Hispanic communities" (Bayliss and Rossomondo 2017) we need to focus much of our curricula on US Latinos, commit to social justice education and engage with our local Latino communities. Few departments do this, though, because few departments have truly seen this as their mission. To prepare students to be civically-engaged, savvy cultural critics who are equipped to combat highly-charged, racialized discourses will require integrating into our curriculum topics such as human migrations (historical and global), economics, policy studies, communication, media studies and more. Yet the vast majority of departments continue to mostly teach students how to analyze cultural products (literary studies, predominantly) and language (linguistics). To bridge what Spanish programs actually do and what the authors claim we are preparing students to do requires a more radical—and uncomfortable—shift than just finding the right words.

This curricular shift must occur swiftly. A decade has already passed since the MLA's special report on foreign languages (cited by the authors) as well as Carlos Alonso's declaration in Profession that Spanish is now "a second national language and culture in this country" (220). Yet most Spanish departments in the United States still operate as foreign language programs, perennially privileging Spain and reproducing value systems and power structures the authors suggest we can dismantle in the United States. They astutely propose that Spanish departments embrace the local and transnational nature of Spanish, but our current approach of scattered heritage speaker sections and service learning courses is insufficient. Departments that adopt the engaged humanities model and a mission to see and seek connections among traditional scholarly projects of inquiry and the issues surrounding them imbue their programs with an urgency and relevance that our profession as a whole currently lacks but that students and other stakeholders seek.

The demographic trends listed by the authors will consolidate by 2067, but we can change today. Take the concrete example of campuses located in new-growth communities—places where immigrants have not traditionally settled and which lack infrastructure to build linguistic and transcultural competencies. Cultural studies scholars and students can work with the community to analyze depictions of these new encounters and suggest more accurate, helpful representations of the challenges and opportunities within their changing communities. Second language acquisition experts and schools can partner to create positive responses to multilingualism, inside and outside the K–12 classrooms. Literary scholars and libraries can collaborate to build collections, attract Latino patrons and design relevant programming. Language program directors can integrate service learning across the curriculum to provide targeted assistance that meets community-identified needs. Conceived as the department's mission, these activities can be integrated into regular research, teaching and service obligations, not heaped upon them. Nonetheless, a quick look at the dissertations produced in Spanish departments ("Open Access Dissertation Lists") reveals that our focus on literary analysis and linguistics has barely budged, constantly reproducing frameworks that do not actually address the societal needs the authors foreground.

Lastly, our profession should embrace both civic and career connections to Spanish studies. After all, the important civic project the authors outline plays out in workplaces and among colleagues and clients, not just in voting booths and neighborhoods. We perpetuate our own reductionism by presenting a focus on careers as a caricature of vocational training. Instead, it is an opportunity to engage with the complexities and creative challenges of professionals who must not just develop but also deploy translingual and transcultural competence in real time, with real people, not...