132015 UE Minority languages and literatures in school (2025W)

This interdisciplinary course focuses on the role of minority languages in the education systems of selected European countries, with a particular emphasis on Finno-Ugric minority languages, either official languages (Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian) in diaspora or minority positions, or languages of stateless Finno-Ugric minorities (such as Sami). It is aimed at all interested students of Finno-Ugric studies, but also at students of all related disciplines—language skills in the minority languages covered are not a prerequisite for attending the course.

In the first half of the course, students learn about the political and sociolinguistic situation of various minority languages through interactive lectures given by the course instructors and invited experts from the fields of linguistics and literary studies. These lectures address the historical and contemporary context of minority policies as well as questions of institutional support, teaching in schools, and the status of literature and culture in this context. The discussion is supplemented by comparative perspectives, such as the situation of Burgenland Croatian in Austria.
In the second half of the course, students will work in groups and/or individually on topics of their own choosing within the subject area of the course and then present their findings to the class in the form of presentations or lectures or, depending on the topic and availability, expert interviews moderated by them. Topics such as the training of teachers for minority languages, the analysis and comparison of teaching materials, and the differences between state education and extracurricular offerings such as afternoon schools will be covered. The detailed list of topics will be discussed with the registered students in the first session of the course in order to distribute the topics among the students according to their respective interests and possible prior knowledge.

The aim of the course is to develop a deeper understanding of the sociolinguistic and educational policy conditions of minority languages and to critically reflect on the role of minority languages, cultures, and literatures in public education.
The course combines (interactive) lectures, joint and independent text reading, discussion, group work, short presentations, and comparative case analyses, which also requires students to acquire selected content independently (= through self-study and outside of the classroom hours) in preparation for the course.