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Portuguese
Studies at the University of Wisconsin
Ellen
W. Sapega
[email protected]
University
of Wisconsin, Madison
In its most recent newsletter (Spring 2004), the Modern Language Association
of America (MLA) reported a record high number of post-secondary students
in the U.S. who are studying a foreign language. According to the findings
of the MLAs fall 2002 survey of foreign language enrollments in
U.S. colleges and universities, overall enrollments in foreign languages
have risen by 17% since 1998, with enrollments in Portuguese increasing
21.1%, from 6,926 in 1998 to 8,385 in 2002. This is a heartening statistic
that corroborates anecdotal evidence regarding the growth of Portuguese
and Brazilian Studies in the United States, but it must be taken with
a grain of salt. While the percentage increase of students enrolled in
Portuguese classes is certainly noteworthy, the total number of students
in these programs continues to be significantly less than those who opted
to study such mainstream European languages as Spanish, French,
German or Italian. In comparison to these languages, Portuguese remains
in the category of a less commonly taught language within the U.S. academy
and, like our colleagues who specialize in other areas where less commonly
taught languages are spoken, researchers and teachers who concentrate
on the Lusophone world must spend a good deal of their time and energy
seeking ways to attract more students to their field of study.
The relatively low overall number of students enrolled in Portuguese is
due in part to the fact that many colleges and universities do not even
offer courses in the Portuguese language. It should also be noted that
Portuguese is not a language that is commonly taught in U.S. high schools.
Undergraduate students who wish to study Portuguese at the college level
first must choose to attend an institution where it is offered and then,
after finding their way to the Portuguese program, generally must start
their study of the language at the elementary level. Likewise, graduate
students who need the language for their research in fields such as history,
sociology, political science or anthropology must also usually begin with
the very basics.
This is the case, at least, at the University of WisconsinMadison,
where most students who choose Portuguese have had little first-hand exposure
to the cultures of the Lusophone world. As Wisconsin and the upper mid-west
in general cannot draw upon a heritage community of Portuguese speakers,
the great majority of our students start out as true beginners in the
language. The program at Madison is large, however, and has enjoyed a
national reputation for more than five decades. Its standing regularly
helps to attract undergraduate students with some high school study-abroad
experience in either Portugal or Brazil, and the M.A. and Ph.D. programs
in Portuguese draw students from throughout the U.S., as well as from
Europe and Latin America. At the U.W., Portuguese is housed in the same
department as Spanish, with whom it shares administrative responsibilities,
office space and other resources. Unlike Spanish, however, the Portuguese
program faces a never-ending struggle to maintain high enrollments in
its advanced classes. At a time when the American academy is being racked
by budget cuts, it often seems that we are constantly looking over our
shoulder, trying to protect our terrain. This has led the
four full-time members of the Portuguese faculty to continue to invest
actively in the language program (our bread and butter, if you will),
while developing new course offerings designed to attract a wider base
of students, and strengthening and expanding existing links within the
university community and beyond.
In general terms, the Portuguese program at the University of WisconsinMadison
is structured to serve three distinct yet interrelated communities: students
enrolled in the undergraduate language program, those who have chosen
Portuguese as their undergraduate major, and graduate students who are
working toward an M.A. or Ph.D. in Portuguese or in other related fields.
The students who make up each of these communities have different needs
and expectations that to a large extent determine the courses that must
be offered on a regular basis. They do, however, mix quite freely and
it is possible to identify a community that is structured around a common
interest in Portuguese and Brazilian studies. As many of our undergraduate
majors begin their study of Portuguese in a language class, they study
under the supervision of the programs graduate students, who are
responsible for the teaching of first- and second-year Portuguese. Moreover,
many upper division courses in literature and culture often include both
advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students.
While we have succeeded in maintaining a dynamic program informed by a
shared sense of community, the U.W. Portuguese faculty is aware that the
boundaries of this community can and must be expanded. For this reason,
we have recently embarked on a project of creating new courses that incorporate
the latest technologies and draw on current, interdisciplinary approaches
to teaching about the cultures and the history of the Portuguese-speaking
world. In order to attract a greater number of students, most of these
classes will be offered in English, with additional weekly class meetings
in Portuguese scheduled for our undergraduate majors. To date, the experience
of teaching literature classes in translation has proved successful in
bringing more undergraduates to the study of the language. After a taste
of what the Lusophone world has to offer, several students have chosen
to enroll in Portuguese language classes. At the same time, students in
our beginning language classes who have not and most likely will not develop
the advanced skills that would enable them to read complex and sophisticated
texts in Portuguese have also taken advantage of these new courses. As
we expand our course offerings to include classes in film and civilization,
an even larger number of cross-over students is expected. At the graduate
level, we continue to offer classes taught exclusively in Portuguese,
but have also expanded our seminar offerings to include topics taught
in English whenever appropriate.
In our language program, we have begun collaborating with the University
of Wisconsin campus at Green Bay, to whom we now send a first-year language
class via Interactive Video Technology (ITV). We have also worked with
the CIC (Committee on Institutional Cooperation) and Michigan State University
on the development of an on-line course for second-year Portuguese. While
such a course will not substitute traditional face-to-face instruction
at Madison, it is expected that other CIC institutions may find it a helpful
way to free up resources and expand their Portuguese offerings. Finally,
beginning in the spring of 2005, we will offer a special second-year class
in Business Portuguese, thereby serving the needs of another distinct
constituency on the U.W. campus.
These new projects have been directly sponsored or supported by various
offices of the universitys administration and by the Latin American,
Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program (LACIS). Members of the Portuguese
faculty at the university are all affiliated with LACIS, an area studies
program that receives federal Title VI funding. In addition to providing
financial support for graduate students from other programs in the humanities
and social sciences to study Portuguese, the Title VI program also funds
our bi-annual summer institute in Intensive Brazilian Portuguese. LACIS
is but one of several federally-funded Title VI programs on campus that
provides financial assistance for research and teaching about the Portuguese-speaking
world. In addition, the universitys African and European area studies
programs have also supported faculty research and teaching in the field
of Lusophone studies, as has the Womens Studies Program, with whom
we have recently established a cross-listed class on Brazilian Women Writers.
It is clear that Portuguese can no longer be considered marginal to the
major questions that inform research into the cultures, history and politics
of Europe, Latin America, Africa and, to a lesser extent, Asia. In a world
that has become increasingly, yet unevenly, globalized and transnational,
we are being asked to rethink traditional boundaries and ties. At the
University of WisconsinMadison, this combination of forces has led
the Portuguese faculty to seek out new ways of collaborating with colleagues
in other disciplines, both in the U.S. and abroad. We actively encourage
our undergraduate majors to acquire experience through study abroad and,
every year, more and more of this population has taken advantage of the
universitys annual and semester-long programs in Coimbra, Portugal
and in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. These and other exchange programs have
also led to greater interaction between the Madison faculty and graduate
students and our colleagues in Brazil and Portugal.
In the coming years, key critical concepts emerging from the practices
of cultural studies and postcolonial studies will provide us with fresh
approaches to the study of the diverse cultures that make up the Portuguese-speaking
world. At the same time, we strongly believe that students and professors
working in areas outside of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies can gain
important insights as to the workings of their disciplines when confronted
with theories developed on the Lusophone world. At the University of WisconsinMadison
we are, therefore, committed to expanding the boundaries of our teaching
and research so that both the faculty and the students may take advantage
of and contribute to these new dialogues that promise to shape the future
of our shared academic enterprise.
Copyright
2004, ISSN 1645-6432
e-JPH, Vol.2, number 1, Summer 2004
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