Events

On March 13, alumna Dr. Christine Kampen Robinson (former UWaterloo PhD-student in Germanic & Slavic Studies) will come back to campus to present on her dissertation research in our graduate course “Language, Identity and Mobility” and to participate in the graduate seminar. Her research on Low German-speaking Mennonites from Mexico with a focus on identity, literacy, and language learning in this migration context encompasses several aspects of the course.

Career Booster - Global Experience Day

Lecture poster in pdf format

Timothy Snyder, the Housum Professor of History at Yale University, will be visiting the University of Waterloo to give the 2017 Grimm Lecture at the Waterloo Centre for German Studies. Snyder is best known for his 2010 book Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, and his recent Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. 

For more information on the lecture, go to the WCGS website.

Luther’s German translation of the Bible has remained influential to this day; his hymns are still sung; and many still use his proverbs. But does all this make him the inventor of High German?

The Embassies of Austria, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Switzerland, in cooperation with the Waterloo Centre for German Studies and Princess Cinemas, are happy to present the German Language Film Festival. 

The Embassies of Austria, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Switzerland, in cooperation with the Waterloo Centre for German Studies and Princess Cinemas, are happy to present the German Language Film Festival. 

The Embassies of Austria, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Switzerland, in cooperation with the Waterloo Centre for German Studies and Princess Cinemas, are happy to present the German Language Film Festival. 

What exactly is a native speaker? What beliefs and assumptions underlie the educational aim of native speaker competence? And are native speakers better language teachers? To what extent can alternative notions such as the “intercultural speaker” (Byram), “symbolic competence” (Kramsch), or “transcultural and translingual competence” (MLA) help address the problem of native-speakerism? And what implications do these discussions have for classroom language teaching?

These and other questions will be discussed at the Native Speaker Colloquium.