A Multilingual Turn in German Studies: Premises, Provisos, and Prospects

Abstract

In fall 2016, a group of scholars gathered at the 40th German Studies Association convention in San Diego, CA, in a space called the Eaton Room, for a seminar on multilingualism in German Studies. After three days sharing this space of dialogue, members returned home to their various teaching and research settings and, reflecting further on insights developed out of the group's collaborative work in the GSA seminar space, each formulated the maxims on multilingualism in German Studies presented in this article. Though the 10 subsections derive inevitably from the work and insights of these individual scholars and their programs of research, the entirety of the manuscript was counter‐read, commented, and emended by each member of the authorial collective, at several stages of the composition process, before and after blind peer‐review. Thus, in the spirit of collaborative inquiry – and indeed of multilingual practice itself – the members consider The Eaton Group to be the singular though multiple author of this piece. As such, The Eaton Group offer this collaboratively developed constellation of premises, provisos, and prospects for the future of multilingualism in German Studies teaching and research, not as a consistent and sequential protocol of directives but as a set of aspirations and provocations with which language, literature, and culture teachers may engage as they make their own curricular and pedagogical decisions.