On the Future of Hispania

Reflections on Disciplinary Specialization

Bibliographic Data

ID9866906
AuthorsB Fraser (0000-0003-1341-4758, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume101
Issue3
Pages347-352
Publication date2018-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHispania (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2133 • E-ISSN: 2153-6414
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/hpn.2018.0142
OpenAlexW2889737231
LanguageEN
References cited74

On the Future of Hispania:Reflections on Disciplinary Specialization Benjamin Fraser It is with great enthusiasm that I join Hispania's esteemed editorial team of Managing Editor Jennifer Brady, Assistant Managing Editor Conxita Domènech, and Book/Media Review Editor Domnita Dumitrescu. This is an exciting time for the journal and for the AATSP in general. I confirmed this when I attended the "Celebrating One Hundred Years of Hispania" session at the 2018 MLA Convention in New York. With Shannon M. Polchow presiding, Frank Nuessel as respondent, and presentations by Brady, Dumitrescu, and Luis Álvarez Castro, this AATSP-allied session showcased the value that comes from continually rethinking our past and present as a way of engaging the future of our flagship journal. As is clear from the content of the ambitious and inspiring Centenary Issue of Hispania (100.5, note that this issue is available to members and non-members alike as a free download at www.hispaniajournal.com), teachers of Spanish and Portuguese continue to respond to the challenges of our time with innovative solutions. The visionary essays and responses included in that issue, edited by Sheri Spaine Long with Guest Editor Frank Nuessel, have sparked important conversations about the future directions of research and education by members of the AATSP. In this brief message, I would like to address some of the concerns implicit in our collective discussion of these future directions. I offer the following brief remarks as a way of identifying topics that members of the association are likely thinking through at this cultural moment. Yet I also want to reaffirm the commitment of Hispania to the mission and primary strength of the AATSP. As the child of parents who taught at the K-12 and college levels, I believe that the intellectual diversity of the membership of the AATSP is its primary strength. As indicated in the mission statement approved by the Executive Council on October 6, 2010, the AATSP is dedicated to promoting the teaching of languages, literatures, and cultures "at all levels of education" and to encouraging "the exchange of pedagogical and scholarly information" (available at www.aatsp.org). I believe that this diversity sets us apart from other professional associations or organizations that might be perceived as having a similar focus. In addition to our capacious approach, our collective insistence on the significance of Spanish and Portuguese in the twenty-first century is unique. By this I mean the recognition that specialized scholarship of all kinds—whether it is packaged and labeled as pertaining to pedagogy, heritage learners, second/third language acquisition, linguistics, sociolinguistics, language for professions/specific purposes, literature, film, cultural studies, or any other (sub-)disciplinary formation, for example—contributes to our mission and our broader sense of community. What unites us all is our understanding that these specialized areas of inquiry are interdependent. It is instructive to view Spanish and Portuguese with a lens borrowed from Jane Jacobs, who saw the modern city as a problem in organized complexity. Similar to the heterogeneity that characterizes the city, Hispania is a meeting ground for specialized discourse, just as it is a gathering space for the intellectual diversity of the AATSP. It is neither a specialized journal nor a general journal, at least in the way these terms are commonly used; but rather, it is both at once. Its primary strength stems from an implicit assumption about our readership that could [End Page 347] be phrased as an interdisciplinary optimism. If one accepts this premise, Hispania's readers are interested in the movement from the specialized paper to the general concern, and back again. Our readers are likely grounded in one area, but interested in at least one other, or perhaps two or three others. We understand that our broader community is forged through specific contexts, but predicated on the balance between depth and breadth. It may be evident that I do not ascribe much weight to the binaries that tend to be implicit when we talk about the needs of K-16 teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. To continue with terms from the AATSP mission statement: pedagogical information informs scholarly information, and scholarly information informs pedagogical information; nor do

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