Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun by Joseph Baillio

One can assume that their immersion experience at the foreign art museum would result in the expansion of their knowledge about French language, cultures, and discourses, but is that really all there is to such an experience? In immersion in Paris and at the Louvre, the participants encounter issues of identity (including race, gender, and religion). Immersed in such settings, the participants are expected to learn about French visual culture, about the museum discourse, and about ways of looking at cultural artifacts. During their apprenticeship at the Louvre, the participants are socialized into the fine arts' museum discourse and methods, and they discover the museum's collections through thematic visits, roundtables, and workshops. Every summer, about ten US teachers of French enroll in the LCL program and travel to Paris for two weeks. The LCL program is a 3-credit class to be applied towards a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degree.

The Language and Culture at the Louvre program (LCL) is an in-service teacher professional development course, co-created by the Louvre Museum educational services and the Department of French of a large public university in the US in 2005. The present paper reports on a study of the experiences of world language educators enrolled in a short-term study abroad program, at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. I then suggest ways of using the Louvre Museum's collections to discuss race and gender issues, using the lesson plans created by one participant at the end of the program. In this qualitative report, I selected a representative case study to locate and analyze the embodied narratives of one participant. The central purpose of this communication is to make this embodied curriculum visible and to suggest ways of integrating the surfacing issues of race and gender into the program, and into the intercultural classroom. Recent scholarship has acknowledged the emergence of such a hidden and embodied curriculum in study abroad (Kinginger, 2009 2010 Talburt & Stewart, 1995 Twombly, 1998). In parallel, the participants also encounter issues of race and gender while abroad.

Every summer, about ten US teachers of French enroll in a two-week training program at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun by Joseph Baillio