"The Matter with Words", a talk with Tim Parks

If you're near Kenmore Square in Boston tomorrow, the ASLCW invites you to claim at seat in library conference room of the BU Editorial Institute at 5:15 for a talk with novelist and translator Tim Parks.

Born in Manchester in 1954, Tim Parks studied at Cambridge and Harvard before moving permanently to Italy in 1981. Author of three bestselling books on Italy, plus a dozen novels, including the Booker short-listed Europa, he has translated works by Moravia, Calvino, Calasso and, most recently, Machiavelli. While running a post-graduate degree course in translation at IULM University, Milan, he writes regularly for the LRB and the NYRB. His non-fiction works include Translating Style, a literary approach to translation problems; Medici Money, an account of the relation between banking, the Church and art in the 15th century; and, most recently, Teach Us to Sit Still.

That's 5:15 p.m., The Editorial Institute, 143 Bay State Road, Boston University.

Crisis for foreign languages on US campuses

Inside Higher Education has a column by ALSCW member and MLA President Russell Berman has a column  in response to what we must fear is becoming a popular notion among bureaucrats and budget whittlers: that of demoting foreign language instruction to the status of merely instrumental education, with the entailment, as at SUNY Albany, of dismantling the degree programs.

Berman's provocation was a keynote address by Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fixture of the foreign policy establishment, delivered to the 2010 convention of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in Boston on November 19. In an email to ASLCW members, Susan Wolfson, immediate past president of the Association, writes: "[such] entailment is the dismantling of the professoriate, and using part-time, low-paid, benefit-impoverished, transient adjuncts to manage this merely instrumental instruction."

Wolfson urges us, as I urge you, to read the column, add a comment in support of foreign language education and scholarship, and to forward the link. Inside Higher Education is a highly visible venue for policy-makers and pundits, and a good opportunity for readers and writers from all areas to add their voices to this urgent public discussion.

So, please, read and respond | lirez et répondrez | читать и отвечать | leer y responder | lesen und beantworten |  pročitati i odgovoriti | without delay.

[Cross-posted from The Wonder Reflex; many thanks to Susan Wolfson for sending out an alert about the Berman article.]