“Un-patriotic” knowledge: Diplomacy in modern language education in France and in the United States, 1900-1939

Dorothee Marie Bouquet, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation reveals the close relationship between education and foreign relations by analyzing the different ways that modern language teachers in France and the United States reconciled their professional identities and their patriotism during the critical period of 1900 to 1939. Based on a thorough study of professional educational publications, university archives, and diplomatic correspondence, this dissertation argues that French and American modern language educators deployed different strategies to cope with the repercussions of foreign relations in education: as American teachers endeavored to prove their loyalty to the United States by endorsing the process of Americanization at the cost of the growth of their own discipline, French teachers embraced the objective of "seducing America" by developing curricula on American English along with the traditional teaching of British English. Furthermore, this dissertation challenges the scholarship that paints the (pre-World War II) French-American relationships as unidirectional in as much as historians focus on the exportation of American cultural values to Europe. By underlining the role of French scholars touring America between the two wars as unofficial diplomats, this dissertation provides a transnational perspective on the, often overlooked, connection between education and foreign affairs. The propagandistic efforts of French scholars were, in fact, met by American instructors of French who endeavored to establish meaningful cultural relations with French universities as a way to revitalize modern language education in the United States. The analysis of the teaching of French at Harvard University and Smith College illustrates the extent to which foreign affairs shaped the teaching of modern languages in elite schools. As young men were encouraged in their learning of French to think about the meaning of foreign affairs in their life, young women were limited to a classical, even static view of foreign cultures. Moreover, this work contributes to the scholarship on Americanness and Frenchness in the first half of the twentieth century. By examining the way in which American teachers conceived their contribution to the nation, this dissertation unveiled how modern language teachers in the United States shared popular mistrust of German as an `enemy' language from 1917 to 1919, and how they endeavored to promote French as consistent with American values. Likewise, the meaning of Frenchness shifted with the democratization of modern language education in public instruction. While Frenchness was found in the perfect command of the French language and literature before the war, French teachers of modern language education marketed their discipline as a crucial part of French national safety, and therefore made it the guardian of Frenchness. In other terms words, in both countries, teachers of modern language education enriched national identity with carefully chosen elements of foreignness.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Walton, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American studies|European Studies|Foreign Language|Education history|Modern history|International Relations|International law|Sociolinguistics

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