AbstractForeign language departments are ideally situated to guide students to fully engage
with what it means to be an educated, socially responsible, and global citizen.
In particular, initiatives emanating from these departments can help answer
the call to foster transcultural and translingual competence. This article centers
on a jointly designed, team-taught, advanced course in French and German. Inspired
by the multiliteracies framework, the course aimed to teach critical awareness
and foster the development of graduates who are truly international in their
outlook. To achieve this goal and develop learners’ abilities to work collaboratively
with diversity, complexity, and ambiguity, we engaged learners on the terrain of
critical cultural studies, guiding them to ask (different) questions, form and test
new hypotheses, develop and explore new perspectives, and understand change
in France, Germany, and the United States. Learners examined various types of
documents and engaged with various modalities. After describing the theoretical
frameworks and methods of the course, this article critically discusses the successes
and challenges of our project based on class discussions, student work, and
student feedback.
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