ABSTRACT
Grounded in scholarship on diversity and decolonialization in higher education broadly, and critical pedagogy and language/culture advocacy more specifically, this chapter has two goals: 1) to advocate for the creation of access points to German Studies for learners traditionally underrepresented in German Studies’ classrooms but statistically significant at institutions at which a large number of small German programs are housed: regional comprehensive universities and colleges; 2) to present a number of outreach programming initiatives, which were devised strategically and implemented successfully to increase visibility for German Studies as a course of study not only welcoming of diverse perspectives and lived experiences but also as a discipline well-suited to help underrepresented learners thrive intellectually. In this chapter, diversity programming and outreach will be discussed, not as marginal recruitment strategies – one approach of many – but as centrally implemented maneuvers devised to dismantle still-extant myths about the presumed insurmountable difficulty of the German language and legacies of violence affiliated with German Studies. Both are factors that drastically impact nonprivileged learners’ interest and sustained motivation for German Studies.
