Where the arts, sciences, and life meet for refugees

The Yale Center for Language Study invites you to a lecture by Professor Shirley Brice Heath (Stanford University) on “Where the arts, sciences, and life meet for refugees,” on May 12, 2017, at 4:00 pm in SSS 114. Details about the talk and the speaker are listed below.

This lecture is the opening keynote for the annual symposium of the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning, which this year is organized around the theme of “Community-based language education.” Following the talk, there will be a reception at the Yale Peabody Museum, 1st Floor, starting at 5:30 pm.

The lecture and reception are open to the public.

 For further information, please contact Anthony Hannon at the Center for Language Study (Anthony.hannon@yale.edu).

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 Lecture: Where the arts, sciences, and life meet for refugees

Classroom contexts have been the focal point for teaching the language(s) of host nations for migrants and refugees around the world.  In classrooms, trained teachers, generally with knowledge of several languages, undertake not only conversational discourse, but also grammar and vocabulary insights. However, quietly and generally off the radar in any host nation, including the United States, is the work of arts and science organizations that take migrants and refugees into their productions. As illustration, this talk covers several theater projects that bring newcomers into huge productions in major theaters as actors, singers, and dancers, while also opening up the types of work behind stage that make such productions possible.  Language learning explodes in these contexts where young and old, different ethnicities, language and literacy backgrounds, and prior experience in the arts come together.  The premises of the work lie deep within second language linguistic theory and practice surrounding the accelerating power to language learners of acting, singing, and moving within new language(s). What it takes to make arts, sciences, and life come together successfully for language learning will be the primary basis of this talk.

About the Speaker

Shirley Brice Heath, Margery Bailey Professor of English and Dramatic Literature and Linguistics, Emerita, Stanford University has centered her research and activist career in understanding the character of highly effective learning environment for disenfranchised populations.  She has done so among indigenous groups in Mexico, with African language(s) speakers in South African townships, child soldiers and refugees in Great Britain, and, most recently, in theaters of the United States and European cities.  She has written books, articles, and created documentary films reflecting her research on language learning.  See her website for her blog, what’s new? column, and articles that cover her latest work with theaters, youth orchestras, and museums. http://www.shirleybriceheath.net.