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Tiers of Joy

Harvard Library Bulletin New Series Vol. 6, no. 3 , 1995
"In this essay I wish to celebrate Widener Library for being anything but an English-only library-for being a library of international scope serving a local community of internationally-oriented students, teachers, and scholars. In glorifying this dimension of the library I admit to motives both broadly political and narrowly personal. The political motivation relates to the current debates about cultures in the United States. In a paradox, many of us profess to be more interested than ever in diversity, when in fact the diverse cultures to which we seem to turn are almost solely subcultures within American culture (hyphenated American cultures); and very seldom do the debates entail any attention to languages other than English, with the possible exception of Spanish. While proclaiming a commitment to difference, students in the United States are gaining mastery of other languages at the lowest rate since before Sputnik. Had the country not in the past few decades absorbed vast numbers of immigrants who were not native English speakers and their children who often achieve bilingualism, the ability of our citizenry to engage with diverse cultures in other languages-and I for one assume that full engagement with other cultures is impossible without knowing their languages-would be even more shamefully limited. The drop in the study of languages and the turning of our eyes inward to a narrowly domestic diversity have coincided with developments in international politics that have disrupted forever priorities and polarities that for decades guided the study of foreign cultures and languages. During the Cold War, Russian commanded paramount attention among the Slavic languages. Now its importance has diminished, while that of languages such as Polish and Czech (to say nothing of the South Slavic languages spoken in the Balkans) has risen. Similarly, whole areas of the world about whose cultures and politics we had no reason to be concerned have suddenly arrested our attention, perhaps especially the former Soviet Socialist Republics of central Asia. This phenomenon has replicated itself elsewhere as well, and consequently we should be alert to far more cultures and languages than ever before; but as a nation we are not doing so..."...Read more
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Used by leading Academics
Daniel Hershenzon
University of Connecticut
Maria Grever
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Alejandra B Osorio
Wellesley College
Fátima Sá
ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL)