Given the decline in French majors and enrollments in French junior year study abroad programs, educators have increasingly turned to short‐term study abroad for first‐ and second‐year students. These programs can motivate students fulfilling the language requirement, while also internationalizing the curriculum through interdisciplinary and experiential learning in a foreign environment. This article examines a pilot program in which study abroad in Avignon, France, was an integral part of a third‐semester course. Student evaluations were overwhelmingly positive. Many students subsequently continued with French, applied for the junior year Paris program, and found innovative ways to integrate language and study in other disciplines. Drawing on this experience, this article addresses the value of such programs to foreign language curricular development and to the internationalization of the liberal arts curriculum generally.
A central challenge in short-term study abroad programs is making sure that students have meaningful interactions with people abroad, something that scholarship has shown to be tremendously beneficial, both for linguistic gains and for cross-cultural exchange. This article examines the potential benefits of collaborative mapping for encouraging student interaction with local residents, while also considering the value of spatial analysis to the interdisciplinary aims of a course centered on theatre and French Studies. One author is a cultural anthropologist and professor of French, and the other is a professor of theatre. The course explores theatre as a window into French society and culture in three distinct geographic settings (Avignon and the rural Vaucluse, Marseille, and Paris). Space is important to its study of theatrical literature, of theatrical form and site-specific performance, and of the varied meanings of theatre to people living in diverse social environments, including rural settings and neighborhoods in urban centers and peripheries. Written prior to implementing the project for the 2017 version of the course, this article examines a mapping project intended to fully exploit the opportunities of study abroad for student engagement with other perspectives abroad, and for inter-disciplinary dialogue and exchange.
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