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Welcome to the Department of European Languages and Literatures,
which offers instruction in the languages, literatures, and cultures of
the French-, German-, Greek-, Italian-, and Russian-speaking worlds. In
addition to elementary and intermediate courses that provide students
with the basic skills of the particular language, the Department also
offers a wide range of more specialized elective courses in advanced
language skills (including translation), literature, film, and other
cultural areas. The Department has also recently inaugurated of four
courses devoted to cross-cultural subjects in European studies.
The Department of European Languages and Literatures offers a
major and minor in French, German, Italian, and Russian, and a minor in
Modern Greek. The Graduate Programs in French and Italian offer Master
of Arts or a Master of Science in Education degrees in those two
languages. The Department also works closely with the Division of
Education to insure that those students interested in pursuing a career
teaching French, German and/or Italian at the secondary-education level will be
thoroughly prepared for their profession. The Department faculty
includes a staff of dedicated full-time teachers as well as a very
committed staff of Adjunct Lecturers. The European Languages staff is
thoroughly committed to scholarship, and has produced numerous books and
articles in a wide variety of areas. Members of our staff also
regularly participate in conferences and colloquia throughout the world.
Many of our faculty members also actively participate in various
doctoral programs at the City University of New York's Graduate Center
in Manhattan.
In addition to taking courses in the Department, students have the
opportunity to earn college credit by taking advantage of one of Queens
College's several study-abroad programs. Interested students may seek
tuition, scholarships, and internships from a variety of sources. The
Department also offers small annual awards to deserving students, along
with several graduation awards, among them the Robert W. Hartle Award
for Excellence in a Romance Language, the Sheila Endler-Landau Memorial
Prize and the Norman H. Paul Awards in French, the Literary Society
Foundation Prize in German, and the Italian Prize for students of that
language. Many of these prizes were made possible through the generosity
of alumni, friends, and former staff members, such as Robert Hartle and
Norman Paul, of the Department. The Department also has Honor Society
chapters in French, German, Italian, and Russian.
Mission Statement
The mission of Queens College is to prepare students to become
leaders in a global society. It is therefore important to teach them the
critical thinking skills necessary to understand a world that increasingly
provides for interaction between people of different languages and
cultures. The college achieves this mission by offering a rigorous
education under the guidance of faculty who excel in teaching and
research. Our graduates are trained to think critically and explore the
diverse cultures of Queens County as well as those of the world beyond.
The faculty members of the Department of European Languages and Literatures play
a key role in helping the college to meet its goals. Through training in
the literatures and cultures of Europe, we teach our students to better
understand some of the people they will come in contact with in a global
society. The languages we teach were spoken by generations of immigrants to
America, and they are all still spoken in Queens today—by families that have
maintained ties to the languages of their forebears and by recent immigrants.
The Department of European Languages and Literatures trains its students
in the acquisition of French, German, Italian, Modern Greek and Russian, from
elementary to advanced levels of proficiency. It provides students with
cultural literacy across some of the major European civilizations, through a
range of courses in culture, cinema, literature and linguistics. Our
courses foster critical thinking in our students that they apply to
civilizations they study. The Department offers baccalaureate degrees in
four languages and advanced degrees (MA/MS in Education) in French and Italian,
helping prepare those who go on to teach in secondary schools or pursue the
doctoral degree in those areas. Through our summer-, semester-, and
year-abroad programs, we offer students the opportunity to put the skills they
have learned in the classroom into practice in the real world. Our
programs provide students the training they need to excel in a world where
people of different cultures and languages interact with far more frequency and
ease than ever before.