A humanities initiative engages language lovers and learners
The winners of the student video and essay contests joined their faculty mentors for an event celebrating The Year of Languages
With cups of horchata and agua de Jamaica raised high, a group of Rutgers University faculty, staff, and students called out “cheers” in multiple languages recently while gathered under a tent on Voorhees Mall.
Preetha ManiTheir celebratory words—which included salud, l’chaim, santé and prost—made for a fitting toast to the Year of Languages, a School of Arts and Sciences initiative that over the last two semesters has shined a light on language diversity on the New Brunswick campus and created new learning experiences for scores of students.
Created by the Division of Humanities, the Year of Languages included seminars, special courses, open houses, events and student essay and video contests. The program, which was supported by The Language Center in SAS, will continue through the fall 2023 semester.
“There was a real feeling of community building,” says Preetha Mani, one of the organizers and a professor in the Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures. “There was a spirit of people coming together in their intellectual and social lives to share this love of language.”
Helen Hopersky, a junior majoring in Chinese and Russian, agreed. She particularly liked the idea of the open houses, which gave any student the ability to “drop in” and check out a language class for a two-week period.
Helen Hopersky“Students are saturated with science and technology but not languages,” Hopersksy said. “I think this helps the general population of Rutgers know more about languages.”
The idea for the Year of Languages arose from discussions among humanities faculty and chairs about how to highlight and harness the multilingual energy that has long existed on campus. A 2020 survey showed 68 percent of students identify as heritage language speakers, having been raised in a home where a non-English language was spoken. At the same time, students at Rutgers enroll in an expansive range of language courses as electives or as part of their major, everything from Persian to Polish to Portuguese.
“Language and language education have a major impact across the New Brunswick campus, but many people are unaware of it,” says Humanities Dean Rebecca Walkowitz, who oversaw the project. “The idea was to create an opportunity for students to help tell the story about the lived experience of multilingualism on campus, and also about the language education and research that is going on at Rutgers and why it is important to them.
“Why, for example, is someone who is majoring in finance or molecular biology or psychology also choosing to study languages?”
Rebecca Walkowitz
Students attending the year-end celebration on Voorhees Mall offered many answers to that question.
Julia Sorkin, a senior majoring in genetics and minoring in Russian, said her studies in Russian added depth to her undergraduate experience.
“It was nice to have something on the side that I am passionate about and that has a different perspective on the world,” she said.
Learning Russian also helped her connect to the life experiences of her parents, who had fled Latvia and Belarus to escape anti-Jewish persecution. Sorkin grew up speaking Russian but never had the opportunity to learn how to read and write the language until she came to Rutgers.
For the essay contest, Sorkin conjured childhood memories of her mother reading to her from gold-rimmed Russian books.
Julia Sorkin“My fingers brush against the pages, wishing that, I too, will be able to share the wealth of these Russian stories with my own children one day,” she wrote in the essay, which she translated into Russian.
Another student, Noor Rasheed, a biology and neuroscience major, wrote of how learning Korean rekindled her interest in her parents’ native Urdu.
Both Sorkin and Rasheed are planning to attend medical school. Learning a language, they say, will help them become an empathic physician able to work with diverse patient communities.
“As a doctor, it is my responsibility to understand things from everyone’s viewpoint, and learning a new language propels me toward that,” Rasheed wrote.
Hopersky, meanwhile, is planning to become a language teacher. She is fluent in Russian, has advanced knowledge of Ukrainian and Chinese, and has recently begun learning French. Each language, she says, has a beauty all its own.
“The more I learn Mandarin, the more I appreciate how even the few characters in four-letter chengyu (idioms) contain much wisdom about the world,” she wrote. “The more I learn Ukrainian, the more I appreciate the melodious sounds of words and phrases.”
Doaa RashedThe year end celebration gave everyone across myriad departments and programs a chance to get together and converse over global cuisine—fried plantains, chicken and vegetable mandu, and gulab jamun.
Doaa Rashed, one of the organizers of the Year of Languages, and Director of the Language Engagement Project, said the project had a lasting impact one everyone involved. "It was inspiring to see our faculty and students celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity at Rutgers, and to engage in conversations about the academic and personal value of language education," she said.
One parent, Bindu Balaji, said she was impressed by how many languages students were absorbing. Balaji herself speaks three Indian languages plus English. Her son, Deshik Iyengar, is a sophomore majoring in French and linguistics.
“To come and see all the different languages here, all the tables and activities, it made you feel like you were part of a broader community rather than just your own little space that you normally inhabit,” Balaji said.
To learn more about the Year of Languages, including student essays and videos, visit the website.