Rich Watts will launch an Exploration Seminar in early Fall Quarter 2018 that mixes intensive French-language study at Laval with a course on language and cultural identity in Québec. At Laval, Watts met with Rachel Sauvé, Director of the École de langues de l’Université Laval and her colleague, Nicolas Diotte. École de langues offers French at a variety of levels and boasts of a staff of animateurs (cultural guides) to help integrate UW students into school, cit, and provincial life. Québec City also provides a wealth of cultural opportunities relevant to the program focus. It is home to the Musée de l’Amérique francophone and the Musée de la civilization, where an exhibit titled C’est notre histoire: Premières Nations et Inuit du XXIe siècle (It’s Our History: First Nations and Inuit in the 21st Century) offered a compelling mix of anthropological objects and contemporary testimony in the form of text, video and visual art. This last exhibit speaks to the aim of Canadian Studies to offer the inflection of First Nations linguistic and cultural challenges in a context where the dominant language, French is itself understood to be a minority language. More details on the study abroad program in Québec – a joint offering between French and Italian Studies and Canadian Studies – will be forthcoming once it is approved, likely in Winter 2018.
Chair of French and Italian Studies, Rich Watts, makes a site visit to l’Université Laval
February 28, 2017