Abstract
Turning to social media as a means to broaden students’ perspectives, this chapter reminds us that our discipline is not impervious to social and technological developments. Maroun posits that embracing a multimodal approach to teaching has in fact the potential to enhance the overall student experience and can also play a crucial role in reaching our collective goals. The chapter guides educators on how to integrate Twitter into content-based culture courses. Surveying some of the major contemporary French culture or “civilization” textbooks used in various higher-education institutions in the U.S., and underscoring the tendency to explain contemporary culture historically, Maroun suggests that educators use Twitter to help students glean deeper culture knowledge from actual culture actors.
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Notes
- 1.
For the purpose of this chapter, “advanced” refers to any course after the fourth semester of language.
- 2.
Email to the author.
- 3.
See Alliages Culturels for a long “liste des anciennes colonies françaises” [list of former French colonies] that ultimately homogenizes all former colonies as “other” for the student’s reading consumption (2014, 237–239).
- 4.
- 5.
“White gaze” as defined by Flores and Rosa is “a perspective that privileges dominant white perspectives on the linguistic and cultural practices of racialized communities” (2015, 150–151).
- 6.
All translations provided in this chapter are my own.
- 7.
Culture courses are arguably the most popular courses across curricula in higher education . In fact, the top twenty national universities (as ranked by U.S. News and World Report) all have a culture course in either their bridge sequence or advanced sequences; ten of the top twelve liberal arts colleges have unique culture courses in the advanced level as well.
- 8.
For an extensive analysis of how the language classroom builds intercultural competency, see Sandra López-Rocha (2016, 106–108).
- 9.
See Edward Hall (1989).
- 10.
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Maroun, D.N. (2022). Decanonizing Contemporary Culture Courses: Teaching Culture with Twitter. In: Bouamer, S., Bourdeau, L. (eds) Diversity and Decolonization in French Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95357-7_13
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