Modern Languages Newsletter Spring 2018 by SALC_Admissions

MODERN LANGUAGES NEWSLETTER Spring 2018

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Hello! I am delighted to share with you some of the exciting developments in our language-teaching provision, here at the University of Manchester. Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish: we teach them all across a vast range of courses, drawing on cuttingedge expertise and offering a broad spectrum of course units. Whether you study these languages from scratch or are already proficient, a language degree at Manchester will allow you to realise your potential, and will very likely represent the most fruitful and constructive four years you will ever spend. In our globalised world, the ability to speak languages is central to leading richer, more interconnected lives, and students here develop the communication and critical skills that not only enable them to understand others better, but also to grow into socially responsible and culturally attentive citizens. With flexibility of course options, native-speaker staff, superb facilities, round-theyear cultural events and numerous employment opportunities, we are confident that we deliver one of the best learning experiences for modern languages in the UK. Take a look through this magazine for highlights of our courses, events and partners. I really hope to see you next year! Dr Barbara Lebrun, Modern Languages Undergraduate Admissions Director.

1 CONTENTS Arabic

Chinese

French

German

Italian

Japanese

Russian

Spanish

Portuguese

Business and Management

Politics

Residence Abroad

Careers

Contacts

2 NEWS FROM OUR LANGUAGE SUBJECTS Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES) Our department has had another busy year, with numerous social and academic events bringing students of all levels together to learn and share ideas. These have ranged from all-expenses-paid evenings of Middle Eastern music and cuisine to Arabic cinema screenings to a packed schedule of guest lectures by world-class speakers and researchers. These lively discussions have ranged from the historical to the contemporary, and from the light-hearted to the serious: from the imperial politics of the Umayyad Caliphate to the experiences of Jewish minorities in modern Egypt, from the role of oaths and foul language in Islamic law to the ideological role of translation in the Syrian civil war. Meanwhile, our researchers have been taking time out from their cutting-edge work (on topics ranging from Arab women novelists in French-occupied Algeria to the rhetorics of the Arab Spring) to provide extra feedback and guidance sessions for all of our students. Mentoring and languagepractice schemes are also well underway, pairing students both with more-experienced coursemates and with some of the University’s many native Arabic speakers. Between this wide range of extra-curricular events and our challenging courses on Middle Eastern politics, history, religion, and literature – not to mention language! – our students have seldom been at a loss for something to do… To say nothing of our Arabists engrossed in exploring their year abroad in Morrocco and Jordan!

Chinese Our Chinese Studies department is experiencing an exciting period of growth with new staff joining us and exciting prospects across the University as a whole. At the end of 2017, we participated in the launch of the new Manchester China Institute (MCI), a research and cultural hub funded by a visionary gift of £5M from Dr Lee Kai Hung. The MCI pools together people and resources from across the University, and provides a centre for everyone working on different aspects of the study of China and the Chinese-speaking world. The Chinese Studies department is also involved in the collaborative planning of a new wing at the Manchester Museum. Opening in 2020, the ‘Lee Kai Hung Chinese Culture Gallery’ will house not only the University’s extensive holdings of Chinese antiquities, but also modern and contemporary pieces that illustrate and provide context for China’s rise in the 21st century. The Chinese Studies department also regularly teams up with the Confucius Institute, conveniently housed on the premises of The University of Manchester. Together, we run cultural events throughout the year, a highlight of which is the annual Dragon Boat Race, taking place in Salford Quays. Externally, we have an exciting project organized with the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Art, Salford University and Manchester 4

Metropolitan University, focusing on contemporary East Asian art. Metaphorically speaking, we are planting the seeds for the development of Greater Manchester as a centre of creative and engaged exploration of East Asian art, in all its forms. Of special interests to our many students on the Chinese and Business & Management degree is our ‘Study China’ programme, the UK’s largest student mobility initiative that fosters work opportunities abroad for graduates of Chinese at Manchester. The advantage of studying Chinese at Manchester goes beyond opportunities for business and internships however, as we equip students with fundamental knowledge about the fascinating culture and history of China and the Chinese-speaking world. We have course units that cover a range of themes, from culture, literature and the arts, to history, business and economics. You can read more about what we offer and watch videos featuring current Chinese Studies students on our subject page.

French The academic year of 2017-18 has already included a great number of activities in French Studies. French cinema featured high on the agenda in October and December with two trips to HOME to watch the biopic of French pop star Dalida, and Michael Haneke’s latest family drama, ‘Happy End’ (with sponsored tickets). Thanks to our partnership with the Alliance française de Manchester, students were treated to a concert by Lucy Hope a.k.a. The Chanteuse in October, who interpreted songs by the Nobel Prize-winning French novelist Patrick Modiano; a special workshop with translators for francophone refugees took place in December; and this season (February-March) we have an exhibition of plein air Normandy paintings by Jon Hensher –something for everyone, really! All this is in addition to our regular events, which include bringing students from all year groups together through grammar workshops, singing in French and cultural trips; the yearly ‘Working with French’ workshop where the application process and legislation for French stages are explained; a ‘sponsored dictée’ to raise funds for a West African charity; and intensive tuition and revision courses at the Institut de Touraine, our partner institution in the beautiful surroundings of the Loire Valley (grants available). Our Year Abroad options range far and wide, from studying to working in France and the French-speaking world, and you can read this interview of our current finalist Gina Wilson, who shares her experience of working as an English Language Assistant last year. In terms of teaching, we’re always making adjustments 5

to our curriculum while the basics of core language provision alongside a range of history, politics, literature and popular culture modules remain. For details of our curriculum, visit French Studies, and for regular updates on our cultural agenda, join our French Studies at Manchester Facebook page. Hopefully à l’année prochaine!

German Our programme of activities for students of German is fully packed this year again. Starting this November, there was a whole weekend of performance and film about Berlin at HOME, our theatre and cinema complex. Our colleague Dr Cathy Gelbin was recently interviewed about the figure of the Golem in German-Jewish mythology for a TV programme on the Franco -German TV channel Arte. The German Society will be hosting this year’s Great German BakeOff before Christmas, and this year’s German play is to be Bertolt Brecht’s Der gute Mensch von Sezuan. We continue to be an active part of the North West German Network (www.nwgn.co.uk), which is a joint initiative by local schools, businesses and universities to promote all things German in the North West of England. Up-to-date news about language courses, German films and markets, and about business and work opportunities in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, are available on the website. And like every year, we continue to offer specialist teaching covering the 18th century to the present, with particularly popular courses

Italian It’s another busy year for our Italian department, with undergraduate peer-mentors running a film night, speaking socials and a Facebook group, our third-year students currently undertaking their placements in Italy, and the finalists who were abroad last year helping the current second years choose their destinations. Among our visiting speakers this year, we are welcoming Dr Pierpaolo Antonello (Cambridge) and Dr Nicola Gardini (Oxford), while our own staff members are travelling abroad to give research papers in Paris, Nice, Odense (Denmark) and 6

Milan, and our colleague Dr Alessandra Diazzi even taking part in an Erasmus Staff Mobility Exchange with the University of Eastern Piedmont. We continue to work closely with the John Rylands Special Collections Library, and Dr Guyda Armstrong’s final-year ‘Book History’ students are now researching Dante manuscripts and early printed editions of the Divine Comedy, held in the library’s collections. On this subject, we’re very excited that the University’s Visiting Professor of Creative Writing, Jeannette Winterson, will be giving the John Rylands’ Research Institute’s Annual Lecture on ‘Reading the Future: Books, Power, People, Robots and Dante’ in March. Among other highlights, we have a new Residence Abroad agreement with the Regione Val D’Aosta, now allowing our students to apply for paid teaching assistantships in schools over there; this will prove of particular interest to Joint Honours students in French and Italian, as the Val d’Aosta is a bilingual region. Our colleague Dr Francesca Billiani, who was recently awarded an AHRC Leadership Fellowship award, is in the process of building new online digital resources for her project on the arts under the Fascist dictatorship, and we were thrilled to learn that Dr Antonio Bibbò’s exhibition on the Irish in Italy was mentioned by no less than the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, on the occasion of his State Visit to Dublin in February 2018! We are looking forward to more Italian adventures this year, and hope very much that you will join us.

An additional language? 

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Our Language Centre offers evening classes in Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu and TESOL (English for foreign speakers). You can study any of these for a certificate, starting from beginners’ level, intermediate or proficient. When studying Spanish, you can choose to learn Portuguese or Catalan; when studying Russian, you can choose to learn Polish.

Japanese We are excited that the BA East Asian Studies is now part of our offering, and our East Asian Studies seminar series, run in partnership with Chinese Studies, kicked off Semester Two with talks by Dr Levi McLaughlin (North Carolina State University) on how Japan’s Soka Gakkai new religion is in some ways imitating a modern nation-state, and Dr Helen McNaughton (SOAS) on the gender divide in employment in Japan. Further talks this semester will explore early European translation of Chinese science and technology, crossdressing in Japan’s pop culture and Maoist material culture in contemporary Shanghai public spaces. This year again, our long-term friend and part-time colleague, Mr Takayasu Takemoto, a.k.a. ‘Taka-san’, hosted a sushi demonstration event with a final-year student gallantly (and excellently!) serving as his interpreter. On the cultural side, there have been recent visits to Manchester by the Japanese drum group Kodo and the Japan Foundation touring film programme which brings films old and new to Manchester’s excellent art cinema HOME. We have also taken students to Leeds for a tour of the Japanese collection in the Local Armouries and are about to head to Sheffield to take part in a week of cultural and film events there. Our students in Year Two are preparing their applications for study abroad and have been meeting with the Japanese exchange students for our regular ‘visitor sessions’. Our Student Peer-Mentors have already held Japanese movie sessions, a tea party and study skills sessions for first-year students before their exams. In March is the Language XP scheme, which offers language teaching experience in local schools for final-year students, and this year, two of our finalists (plus one from the MA Translation course) have been preparing for their Japanese teaching sessions in sixth-forms or secondary schools. Please keep checking our Japanese at Manchester Facebook page for regular notices on forthcoming events and opportunities. We look forward to meeting you, or catching up with you soon.

Russian Throughout 2017, Russian and East European Studies was busy with all kinds of events marking the centenary of the Russian Revolution—roundtable discussions, film screenings, study days and more. The activity looks set to continue well into 2018, with guest lectures and workshops on the Russian Revolution and its aftermath scheduled for the coming months. Professors Vera Tolz and Stephen Hutchings have contributed to these events, discussing their current research on the Russian media and the ‘mediatisation’ of the history through RT’s interactive Twitter project #1917Live. Our staff and students have also been involved in a range of outreach events with schools from across the North West. In January, Dr Rachel Platonov gave a talk at Jodrell Bank Observatory—for nearly a hundred visitors from area sixth-forms— on the Soviet view of the Cold War and the ‘Space Race’. The huge Lovell Telescope, which helped to track Soviet satellites in the late 1950s-1960s, made a very impressive backdrop for the event! Building on the success of a ‘Rushing Through Manchester’ quiz night, held in October, our Russian Student Society and Peer-Assisted Study Scheme (PASS) Leaders are planning a borsch party this semester. Dr Liza Langley and Dr Elena Simms, our intrepid language tutors, are also organising a Russian food event, at which our students will learn to prepare the famous Russian salad oliv’ie, a hearty mix of diced potatoes, carrots, sausage, pickles and peas in a mayonnaise dressing that is an indispensable part of any Russian celebration. They will also have the opportunity to try kvas, a traditional fermented rye beverage that is popular across Eastern Europe. This is just a small taste of the Russian-related offerings and events going on here in Manchester. We hope you will join us in September and find out more in person!

Spanish In Spanish and Latin American Studies, we have had a lively start of the year. The latest version of El periódico de español has come out – a great collaboration between students and staff; the Café en Español – our regular Spanish-language get-together – is up and running; SPLASSS (the student society) are preparing for their annual trip to Spain and have many new events planned. Our Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies Cine Club screened También la lluvia (Spain 2010), the horror film Rec (Spain 2007) and the Catalan documentary Ignasi M (Spain 2013) in Semester 1. In Semester 2 students and staff will get together to watch and discuss Memorias del subdesarrollo (Cuba 1968) and Tierra y Libertad (UK/Spain/Germany/Italy/France 1995). Academic colleagues will be involved in the 24th ¡VIVA! Spanish and Latin American Festival in April-May at HOME, with theatre, art and film from across the Hispanic world. Our Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies continues to run its programme of events with forthcoming talks on the representation of indigenous peoples in recent Chilean cinema, on the use of the Spanish Reconquista in creating family narratives in colonial Mexico, on colonial poetry and on the Spanish Civil War. As part of their commitment to explore and develop cutting edge teaching approaches, our team of language tutors are hosting a one-day conference on the role of extracurricular activities in language acquisition. ¡Es que hay MUCHÍSIMO! And in the meantime, our various Semester 2 courses are now in full swing, exploring different aspects of modern Spanish culture and history, the significance of revolution in modern Latin American culture, the collapse of the Aztec and Inca empires, and the politics of business in 20th century Latin America, to mention but a few. One exciting innovation in the Spanish language course is to give our second-year students access to, and expert training in, audiodescription (an accessible translation mode), allowing them to build it into culture modules as an extracurricular practice. We hope you will become part of it all, and we can look forward to welcoming you here in September!

Portuguese In Portuguese Studies here at Manchester, we are entering a busy and exciting period. We have a number of students currently in their year abroad in Brazil, studying at our partner universities in São Paulo and Florianópolis, and in a variety of work placements: teaching 10

English, working in a Pousada, or doing subtitling work, amongst other exciting activities. Meanwhile, other students are studying at our three ERASMUS partner universities in Portugal: Coimbra, Porto and Lisbon. Our Portuguese language tutor, José de Souza, continues to host our very popular Café Lusófono, a series of regular, informal gatherings for coffee, cake and Portuguese-language conversation, open to all Portuguese-language speakers on campus. Also, a group of our final-year students are participating in the Languages XP programme which sees them deliver Portuguese language tasters in state schools across Greater Manchester to pupils who have no previous experience of the language. Professor Lucia Sá has received an AHRC Network grant which will allow her, in partnership with Dr Felipe Milanez from Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia, and with Ailton Krenak from Núcleo de Cultura Indígena, to organise a series of events in Bahia, Brasília and Manchester about racism against indigenous populations in Brazil. As always, we maintain a keen interest in the Lusophone world beyond Portugal and Brazil, paying particular attention to Portuguese-speaking Africa. With this in mind, as part of our Spanish and Portuguese research seminars, we will have a talk on the Angolan origins of Capoeira later this semester. Watch out for some of these events here in Manchester!

For all languages 

Please check out our 2017 Modern Languages Brochure where a selection of current course units is listed. Beyond the core language modules, and some core Year 1 culture modules, a general principle of choice among optional units applies.

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Each new student is paired up with an ‘Academic Advisor’ upon arrival, an individual academic staff member who gets to know the students best and remains their point of contact throughout their studies. This colleague is best placed to support students if personal matters affect their academic progress.

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All languages have excellent support mechanisms in place for both academic and personal issues, ranging from our efficient Mitigating Circumstances Policy to Disability Support, Counselling Services, peer-support sessions, academic writing sessions, student reps, and more. 11

Business and Management Modern Language and Business & Management (MLBM) is fast becoming our most popular programme across all languages, and for very good reasons. With as many as 28 different second-year and 24 final-year course units to choose from, across Business, Management and Economics, the Business & Management side of the degree is unique in its breadth, and delivered by world-leading experts. To illustrate, Prof. Leo McCann, who lectures on a core course at Level 2, recently published a book on International and Comparative Business that is fast becoming a leading textbook for students the world over. In their second year, students can also choose the Manchester Leadership Programme, an optional course unit that offers hands-on training in Management, with leaders from all sections of society, including academia, business, charities and the public sector, giving master classes. On the Language side, students not only receive dedicated business language classes but also, and importantly, specialist knowledge in many aspects of foreign culture, including history, politics, literature, film, popular culture, linguistics or translation. This ensures that a Manchester graduate on the MLBM programme is not just a competent linguist, but also, and perhaps above all, a well-rounded, adaptable professional whose cultural knowledge gives them the edge when â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;doing businessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

Politics and a Modern Language Replacing the ‘European Studies’ programme, the Politics and a Modern Language degree is now more international in scope with the possibility to combine Politics with any of our 9 languages. As an innovative collaboration between the School of Social Sciences and the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, this degree offers great flexibility through its combination of core and optional politics modules, in addition to the study of Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish. After Year 1 core units on comparative political theory, you can choose to study modules such as ‘The Politics of (In)Security’, ‘The Politics of Development’, ‘Chinese Politics Today’, ‘What is Europe?’, ‘Gender, Sex and Politics’, ‘Africa and Global Politics’… from a list of 20+ choices. From Year 2, you may even include another language for 20 credits as part of your Degree. Some highly prestigious study placements, such as Sciences Po in Paris, are also available to students on their Year Abroad.

RESIDENCE ABROAD All students spend Year 3 abroad. Depending on your proficiency in a given language, and which languages you combine together, you will spend between 2 and 8 months in a single country, or much more time abroad overall, across at least two destinations. Not only do you have a choice in where you go, but also in what you do. For most destinations, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be able to study, teach English or get an internship, and usually mix and match these possibilities. Example 1: a Single Honours French student may study for a semester in La Martinique (French Caribbean), then do an internship in Paris for 6 months. Example 2: a Joint Honours German & Chinese student may work in Berlin for 3 months, then study in Shanghai for 6 months. Example 3: a Joint Honours MLBM-Italian student may work in Rome for 8 months, then follow an Italian language course in the summer. If you choose to work, our superb Careers Service provides a database of reliable foreign companies where our students have already had positive experiences. If you are interested in studying abroad, see the full list of our current university partners.

And rememberâ&#x20AC;Ś French, Spanish and Portuguese are not just spoken in Europe: you can immerse yourself in these languages much further afield.

Careers in Languages Modern Foreign Languages graduates from our University have gone on to a huge variety of careers. Recent job titles include: Culture and Development Manager at the British Council, Production Coordinator at the BBC, Translator at The Big Word , Editor at MacMillan Education, Analyst at Goldman Sachs, Graduate Buying Trainee at Lidl. Every year, the Careers Service runs special events for Language students, such as the popular â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Meet the Language Graduatesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; where students can network and talk to University of Manchester graduates about the jobs they do and how they use their languages.

Languages in Manchester – it’s not just for the Degree! 

Being the large urban centre that it is, Manchester is particularly multilingual, multicultural and student-friendly, and the ideal place to learn languages given its long-established partnerships with cultural institutes, chief among which are the Confucius Institute, the Alliance française de Manchester and the Instituto Cervantes.

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Manchester is itself a highly popular destination for foreign students, and the University’s links with European and world-wide institutions means that the campus is always abuzz with foreign visitors. It couldn’t be easier meeting up with students whose native language you’re hoping to learn!

CONTACT US ug-languages@manchester.ac.uk Undergraduate Admissions Office School of Arts, Languages and Cultures Room A19, Samuel Alexander Building The University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PT United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)161 275 311