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The Language Curricula and Gender Working Group Continues its Research

February 6, 2023

In the Spring of 2022, the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs awarded a two-year grant to the Language Curricula and Gender Working Group.  The group’s goal is to research how the language curriculum reinforces, exacerbates, or disrupts cultural assumptions and stereotypes about gender and to develop resources – both actual materials and community connections – that will enable language instructors to think critically and teach dynamically about the ongoing social phenomenon of language, social justice, and gender equity.  Read more about the many aspects of the research on the working group's website.    

The group is comprised of Northwestern faculty who are experts in language and language teaching and learning, including three members of the MENA Languages Program, Professors Franziska Lys, Ragy Mikhaeel, and Rana Raddawi. The working group proposes research that will substantially contribute to the discussion of whether language and gender in the language curriculum play a significant role in contributing to or reifying stereotypes and discrimination, and how language pedagogy might be marshalled to help advance gender equity in language education and beyond.  

The working group has already hosted several dynamic workshops, with another scheduled for April 28, 2023.  The upcoming Workshop on Language Textbooks is offered in conjunction with the CLI sponsored 25th Annual Chicago Language Symposium on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the World Language Classroom.