Middlebury Language Schools Centennial Conference: The Local App: Language & Culture in a “Flat World”

6:00-7:15 AM
Panel: Working Without Subtitles—Alumni & Kathryn Davis Fellows
Former students of the Middlebury Language Schools reflect on how having studied language and culture impacts their work and professional trajectory. This panel will include Kathryn Davis Fellows who are working around the world in a variety of professions.

7:30-9:00 AM
Panel: Language & Identity—Putting Your Self on the Line
How does the “New Tribalism” affect the languages we are born with and the languages we want to learn, or need to learn, or are expected to learn? Is the Wittgenstein conundrum (“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”) still valid? How do linguists and linguistics negotiate tensions between global convergence and national identities?

10:30 AM- 12:00 PM
Panel: Language Schools 2.0—The Next Century
What are the emergent trends and best practices in teaching in the new millennium while understanding the reality of diverse communities and particularities? Will area studies make a comeback? How do faculty and administrators triangulate the push and pull of international cross-cultural education, multiculturalism, and globalism? What will be the role of technology (translation software, social media online/hybrid forms of curriculum delivery) in mediating these divergent interests? What might a path-breaking concept like the Language Schools’ intensive immersion look like a hundred years from now as we move from 1.0 to 2.0?

12:30-2:00 PM
Closing Speaker - Frank Sesno, Emmy award-winning journalist, Middlebury ‘77