Decolonising the ‘Modern’ in ‘Modern Languages’

In this video, Dr Ruth Bush explores the teaching and decolonising of modern foreign languages. Some of the topics which this video covers include:

• the relationship between modern languages and and decolonising the curriculum (0:05)

• the question of which languages we teach and the predominant focus on Western European languages in modern language teaching (1:39)

• current initiatives around community languages such as Mulilingual Manchester (3:26)

• the ways in which we can decentre and challenge methodological nationalisms in how we teach modern languages (4:04)

• the extent to which ‘modern’ is a useful term to describe the teaching of language and culture and the importance of multilingualism and translation (5:27)

• the need for strategies that avoid tokenism as we attempt to decolonise and diversify (7:07)

Ruth Bush is Senior Lecturer in French and Comparative Literature at the University of Bristol. Her research concerns African and Diasporic literary and cultural production, with a particular interest in material print cultures, translation, and decolonial practice. Her first book was Publishing Africa in French: Literary Institutions and Decolonization 1945–67 (LUP, 2016) and her next, Translation Imperatives, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.