Lingua Franca

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17958520

The Politecnico di Milano is switching to English--much like last year's post about German universities offering courses in English.  I'm not sure how I feel about this trend.  As someone who loves foreign languages, I think it's very sad to see English become the lingua franca in business and higher ed--but obviously, as a native English speaker, I benefit personally from it.  Why did I bother taking all of those foreign language classes in high school & uni?  (p.s. this is why foreign language education in the US is suffering...some Americans don't feel there's a point anymore!)

The interesting part about this trend, though, is the element of competition that it's created for UK & US universities to continue attracting foreign students.  If they can get an English-language degree abroad where it costs less, then foreign students may stop being a 'cash cow' for US/UK universities.
I wonder how much the concept will catch on, though.  Immersion is an important part of language learning, and I can imagine it would be difficult to speak English during classes, Italian at shops and restaurants, and your native language with friends and family.  I just wonder how their language acquisition will be affected by the experience--will these international students gain fluency in 'international English' and limited Italian skills?   How will potential employers view these degrees?

And of course, there's the native English speaker audience to consider, as well. With the fees in the UK rising to £9,000 this year, and US tuition being as high as ever (a state university like University of Washington charges around £8,000 for state residents, and over £18,000 for out-of-state and international students), it's no wonder that some native English speakers are drawn to these programmes.  This article featured anecdotes from UK students who went to the continent for cheaper degrees and loved their time abroad.  For native English speakers, there's really no downside--their future employers will be impressed by a foreign degree and will assume that the student picked up a second language outside of the classroom.  It's a bit unfair, really, when you compare it to the reaction that non-native English speakers might encounter.

I'm interested in seeing where this goes--whether it's a blip or the way of the future, whether it will be limited to Europe or if it will become truly global, etc.

Jubilee Weekend

This weekend I tried Pimm's for the first time, in honour of the Diamond Jubilee.  It was ok--like a weak, slightly fizzy version of sangria--but more importantly, it's a traditional British summer drink (even if we did have to drink it indoors because the weather didn't cooperate).  We ate pub food and wore red, white & blue (might wear the same outfit for my 4th of July bbq next month...), and had a lovely time celebrating all things British.

During the Royal Wedding last year, I read a few pieces on how the Royal Wedding (and the monarchy more generally) played a role in Britain's public diplomacy.  This time around, I haven't seen much PD-related discussion about the Jubilee.  It certainly hasn't been the media event that the Royal Wedding was.  My family back in the States reported only seeing highlights and brief news clips (even on BBC America).   Compare that to last year, when my mom and other fans in the Pacific time zone woke up at 3 a.m. to catch Will & Kate's big day.  2 billion people tuned in--nearly 1 in 3 people on earth--and this year, the big screen in Leeds' Millennium Square wasn't even turned on to catch the Queen's balcony moment (pictured above).  Just in terms of its rarity, the Diamond Jubilee is a pretty big deal.  Britain hasn't had a monarch last for 60 years since Queen Victoria.  (by the way, the royal family's official website posted a great interactive 'scrapbook' recently about her Diamond Jubilee in 1897: http://www.queen-victorias-scrapbook.org/index.html).  It's a rarer than a once-in-a-lifetime event--my great-grandma lived to be 102 and missed it by a few years on either side.  So why aren't more people interested?

My guess is that the Jubilee is more significant for the Queen's subjects in the UK & Commonwealth--and even there, you have some republicans who are against the monarchy--where as the Royal Wedding had a broader appeal.  Seeing an 86-year-old celebrate the fact she's still alive (much like a birthday) isn't really as compelling as watching a beautiful young couple get married.  The Diamond Jubilee doesn't have the same 'fairytale' factor that the wedding did--but it certainly does have the same merchandising, as witnessed in a Skipton shop window:

Keep Calm and Buy More Bunting

Since its appeal is limited to the Queen's subjects (and not even all of them), the Diamond Jubilee may simply have less potential as a PD tool than the Royal Wedding did.  Foreign audiences just don't appreciate the rain-soaked flotilla on the Thames the way that British nationals do. 

(The Daily Show was particularly harsh about it (mostly harsh about CNN's coverage): The Queen Who Stares at Boats - The Daily Show)

Academic Culture and International Relations

I got home from Munich last night, and I've been doing a lot of thinking about how to sum up my very first proper conference experience.  It was the first time that I was presenting instead of organizing, like with the PhD and Phil Taylor conferences.  I was extremely nervous and didn't know quite what to expect.  It was going to be my first time in Germany, too.  Despite having a BA in European Studies and being the German II student of the year in 2004, I really didn't know that much about Germany (apart from the cliches of WWI and WWII, efficiency and order, bratwurst and beer).  The night before the conference, I walked around the city centre and saw the Rathaus, and looked around a grocery store for an hour or so (always one of my favorite things to do as a tourist).  Back in the room, I went over my presentation notes and watched 'South Park' in German.  By dubbing his voice, they've managed to make the character Butters creepy rather than adorable...

I didn't sleep well and was really nervous, but calmed down once I actually arrived at the conference.  Everyone was friendly and interested in my project--and surprised that I was American, since they had seen that I was at Leeds on the programme.  "It's usually the other way around, with Europeans going to the States."  The conference was smaller than I'd expected--just 20-some people and half of them were presenting.  After chatting with some of the other presenters about their conference experiences, though, I think a small crowd was probably the best environment for my first presentation.

They were all historians, and most of the other presentations were WWI-era.  It was great to have feedback from a non-communications perspective--I've always felt that my research doesn't fit with communications, but now I know that it doesn't quite fit with history either.  They were interested in the ICT angle that I had just briefly mentioned at the end of my talk, when discussing future research directions--the idea that the student experience is different now in the modern communications environment (the ability to communicate with friends/family back home and transmit culture learning back home more rapidly--even concurrently!), and that students' study abroad blogs could be used as texts to learn about their experiences. They sparked a lot of ideas and gave me useful advice, and I have a long list of recommended reading now.

The main thing I got from the whole experience, though, was confidence.  I often feel like my research isn't worthy of a PhD, that I need to write something amazingly original and groundbreaking in order to prove myself.  The thirst to prove myself has always been a thing for me--from a psych perspective, I was much younger than my siblings (7 yrs and 12 yrs) and I always wanted to catch-up to them.  But it also has to do with defying people's expectations.  As an American, they don't expect me to be interested in international affairs, to be living abroad--or to even hold a passport.  As a woman, they don't expect me to be doing a PhD, and they don't expect me to actually use it to work in academia (or if I do, then I must be single and childless for life).  

(the Google search, my favourite way of measuring commonly held attitudes:  worrying about how the PhD will impact one's chances of getting married is a more popular search than scholarships for women are...ugh.)

But now, after chatting with professors about my work and being treated as an equal, I'm feeling much more confident and my research seems much more PhD-worthy now.  I'm more confident in my presenting skills, too--the powerpoint was a good balance of images and minimal text, and they laughed at the right bits, which is so encouraging.  I'm feeling better about my writing, too--after months of struggling, I actually wrote some sentences that I loved in this conference paper.  I haven't had that feeling in ages, and it's reassuring.  It makes me feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing with my life, and that feeling is seriously underrated.

Kazakhstan and Borat

This morning I read about how the movie 'Borat' boosted tourism to Kazakhstan (posted on John Brown's blog) and had to share it on Facebook--my friends and I loved 'Borat', and it's a great twist in the story.

Back when the film came out in 2006, Kazakh officials were famously upset about the film's depiction of Kazakhstan as antisemitic, sexist, impoverished, technologically backwards, etc.  I actually took a Central Asian Studies class the following year and on the first day of class our professor mentioned 'Borat'...it was the only thing that most people in the room knew about Kazakhstan, for better or worse.

Now, apparently, the government is grateful that 'Borat' has sparked an interest in Kazakhstan.  Tourism has increased tenfold (the article doesn't give actual figures, but even if it meant 2 visas/year has become 20, that's a significant jump).  You can even take a 'Borat-themed tour':

"One travel company even boasts that a Borat-themed tour to Kazakhstan is 'coming soon' on its website. 'Who is the real Borat from Kazakhstan? What is Borat Sagdiyev's country really like?? There are different opinions. Join us and we will discover together!!!' the Oriental Express Central Asia company promises."

The tour is sure to disappoint fans of Borat--the real Kazakhstan is not what was portrayed in the film.  Quite literally, it wasn't--the shots of Kazakhstan were actually filmed about 3,000 miles away in Romania (villagers there were offended by the film, too).  And it really goes without saying that the other aspects of Borat's village are not going to be found in the real Kazakhstan--the backwardness, the anti-semitism, etc.  Although, why would you want to go to the 'Borat' version of Kazakhstan, with all of those negative qualities?

At any rate, I think the tenfold increase in tourism is a brilliant unintended consequence, and it just reaffirms the idea that there's no such thing as bad publicity.

The trouble with working from home...

I think I need to write at Starbucks today.

Conference Paper

Last night I had my first PhD-related nightmare. I'm surprised it took 18 months, actually...I didn't have any nightmares during the upgrade process.

It was the day of next month's conference in Munich and I realised that I had missed my flight. I had so much going on, I had mixed up the days--and to make the situation even worse, I hadn't even written the paper yet. I panicked and tried to write something while Richard drove me to the airport where I could (hopefully) get on the next flight. Such a stressful dream, and it reveals a lot about my recent worries...I really do have too much going on (some placement work issues, but mostly personal stuff).

But at least the nightmare inspired me to finish up this conference paper asap!

Archival Research & Scope

The textual records room at Archives II, College Park, MD--my home-away-from-home for 3 days last week (image from)

On my last day at the Archives, I was really sorry to leave. I had a great time there--which I suppose means I'm doing the right thing with my life. I loved seeing the documents that I'd read about elsewhere, like the very first annual report to Congress from 1948. I loved finally finding the numbers I needed to fill in the gaps on my data tables (even though that sounds painfully nerdy...). The staff were helpful & the other researchers were friendly (my tiny Samsung netbook was a great icebreaker). I came away with 25,000+ words in 63 pages of notes, and a better understanding of what the archives have on the Fulbright Program.

The main thing I got out of this trip was a reminder about the importance of scope. When I left that last day, I thought "Oh, I forgot to look at that...I missed out on that...I wish I had more time!" But then it occurred to me that the National Archives are huge. It's simply not possible to compile a 100% comprehensive study of a 65-year old programme in 3 years of archival research, much less 3 days. I realised that for me, for now, the goal is not to do it all, but to do enough (and to do it well, too, of course). Phil Taylor made me think that the point of the PhD was to become the world's greatest expert on your topic, but the more I interact with people who have PhDs, the more I realise that it's not about being an expert at all. Someday you might become the world's greatest expert on your topic (especially if it's obscure enough. Case in point: my University of Washington Central Asian Studies professor, Dr. Scott Radnitz, a former Fulbrighter to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Brilliant guy, but would he have become an assistant professor by age 30 if he had specialised in Germany or France instead of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan?) but research interests and career aspirations can change, just like they do when you're a kid dreaming of what you want to be when you grow up.

The point of the PhD is not to do an exhaustive, expert-level study--it's to do an original piece of research that merits a PhD. But what, exactly, merits a PhD? I've had a look at some of the successful dissertations in our research room, and it really does vary--there are little concise ones and massive tomes, historical ones and contemporary ones, interview-filled qualitative approaches and number-crunching quantitative approaches. The only general conclusion I could make from them is that most are specialised, just like Dr. Radnitz above. They focus on a single case study, or just one narrow aspect of a larger phenomenon. I'm starting to realise that these successful students didn't specialise just to be obscure and original--they did it because they had to narrow their topic down to fit the scope of a PhD project.

On Wednesday we had an open day, and ICS was filled with prospective students and their parents. Some of the current MA students came into the PhD room to chat with us about their interest in doing a PhD here in the future. One asked me "how do you know if your topic is right for a PhD?" The 2 main bits of advice I gave to him: 1) It has to be something that interests you enough to keep you engaged for 3+ years, and 2) It needs to have the right scope. The scope bit is the part that I'm still working on, a year and a half into it.