In this presentation, Adi Raz will discuss the Seeds of Peace initiative that brings together students of Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, and Armenian languages to learn about shared dimensions of life in the Middle East. Students in courses in each of these languages explore a common weekly theme, shared across all sections, in their language of study. Once a week, students from all languages meet in a plenary class session to discuss the theme together in English. The Seeds of Peace initiative aims to produce a new pedagogy of language instruction that rethinks the insular manner in which the languages (and, through language, cultural knowledge) of the Middle East are taught, providing a blueprint for other language programs in the United States to develop collaborative models for shared learning across languages and cultures.
The initiative is funded by a New Initiatives/New Instruction grant from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan.
