On March 25, Carnegie Mellon announced that it would be renaming the Department of Modern Languages to the Department of Languages, Cultures, and Applied Linguistics (LCAL). This reflects a changing attitude in the department and its curriculum.
While language remains a primary focus of LCAL, the new name represents a growing focus from the department toward other subjects, as more classes in topics ranging from history to psycholinguistics to literature are taught.
This is not the first move from the department towards a more culture-oriented academic mission. Last year, the university launched the Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic (CBESA). That same year, LCAL expanded its study abroad programs to include Jordan. In 2022, it began offering online language courses and in 2018 it created the Askwith Kenner Global Languages and Cultures Room.
In a statement on Carnegie Mellon’s website, LCAL department head Anne Lambright said that the new department name captures the “diversity and complexity of our academic mission,” and the “rich and varied teaching and scholarship that our department encompasses.”
It would seem that LCAL’s name change reflects a growing desire to examine the humanities from more multi-faceted and multicultural angles. Robert D. Newman, director of the National Humanities Center, stated in 2022 at a Brigham Young University colloquium that “the humanities are at their most transformative when they help us realize how we fit into a community.”
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