Toward systematic diversification of collegiate U.S. Arabic language curricula

Abstract

Growing recognition of the importance of instruction in colloquial Arabic has led to increased incorporation of colloquials into collegiate Arabic programs, whether taught separately from Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), or in an integrated fashion. Nevertheless, collegiate U.S. Arabic programs have, overall, not yet succeeded in foregrounding the Arab world’s tremendously rich linguistic and cultural diversity. In many programs, both those that teach MSA and colloquial Arabic separately and those that follow an integrated approach, the lived experience of a great number of communities in the Arab world remains invisible. This report examines how the push for colloquial instruction has inadvertently sustained the practices of erasure that increased instruction in informal Arabic had sought to address, and calls into question existing center-versus-periphery schemata that inform the work of Arabic curriculum designers. Instead, it proposes an approach to Arabic curriculum design that centralizes the Arab world’s diversity and heterogeneity, rather than presenting it as a “tokenized side note” (Randall, 2017). This means offering alternatives to dominant narratives about Arab culture in the classroom and diversifying the Arabic colloquials taught. The report concludes with steps that Arabic program leaders, and curriculum and material designers, might take toward profound diversification of our Arabic curricula.