History and Memory in Foreign Language Study: Your Stories

Today, we are attending the Berkeley Language Center’s conference on History and Memory in Foreign Language Study.

So, we’re asking you some questions:

How have you brought history into your foreign language classroom? Have you taught a language where you felt that a national memory or a historical period was off limits? Have you encountered an aspect of a national past that you could not teach? Does your language engage your students in historical controversies?

What about your experiences as a language learner? In your own language education did you confront questions of history and memory?  What texts were used to communicate to you the national narratives bound to the target language?

Give us your response in a blog post of about 250 words. (If you haven’t registered as a blog contributor, you may do this by simply following the link on the right.)

Right now, Prof. Bill Hanks is talking about the development of a new idiom of Mayan by Christian missionaries