Articulating the Curriculum through Cultural Themes: A Literacy and Genre Approach to Teaching Protest, Rebellion, and the Reevaluation of the Past N. Jeff Rogers University of Kentucky Laurie LeCompte University of Louisville Vanessa Plumly University of Cincinnati Context: A Curricular Response to the 2007 MLA Report In recent years there has been a noticeable shift toward literacy and genre approaches among some college-level German programs as they ad- dress issues of articulation, particularly between the second and third years of instruction, and rede- fine their programs in terms of linguistic and cul- tural competencies, beyond a narrow focus on the literary canon (Byrnes, 1998; Byrnes & Sprang, 2004; Maxim, 2008). The project described here builds upon many of these efforts and was devel- oped in response to the national discussion about the need for substantive reform of second-lan- guage (L2) programs that has intensified over the last decade 1 and, in particular, the 2007 MLA re- port “Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World.” It takes as its point of departure the overarching recommenda- tion of the report that “the language major should be structured to produce a specific outcome: edu- cated speakers who have deep translingual and transcultural competence” (MLA, 2007, p. 3). The report goes on to more narrowly define this out- come as “the ability to comprehend and analyze the cultural narratives that appear in every kind of expressive form—from essay, fiction, poetry, dra- ma, journalism, humor, advertising, political rheto- ric and legal documents to performance, visual forms, and music” (p. 4). We aim to put this broad- er recommendation of the MLA report into practice by developing the idea that the transcultural competence needed to read the aforementioned cultural narratives derives in part from “a solid command as well as an analytic knowledge of spe- cific metaphors and key terms that inform culture” (p. 4). By focusing on this aspect of the larger recommendation regarding the restructuring of language majors, the discussion and unit that fol- low can serve as a model and example for curricu- lar reform. Our challenge was to develop curricular units that would move German L2 students toward the specific transcultural competency goals mentioned above, while establishing curricular links between the second and third year of language instruction, which is a perennial and widely discussed problem of college-level language programs (Byrnes, 1998; James, 1989; Maxim, 2006; MLA, 2007; Swaffar & Arens, 2006). This means that the ongoing de- velopment of language competency should remain a central focus and that the linkage between lan- guage and content be made explicit throughout. Students should improve their speaking, reading, and writing skills as they engage with the cultural 40 1 See, for example, Swaffar and Arens (2006), and Byrnes (1998).