Teaching at the beginning of the new millennium implies understanding and accepting the major shifts that have taken place within the traditional liberal arts disciplines in relation to the complex needs of today's variegated life in society; this process requires educators to redefine the relevance of specific disciplines for the multilayered world beyond the ivory tower. I have adopted the challenge raised by the International Conference on the Humanities in Southern Africa (June 2008): the challenge of deepening conversations "across academic disciplines ... for the betterment of the multicultural, multilingual world in which we live". Based on such a social and practical mission, we are all faced with major challenges concerning the appropriateness of the curricular design so as to bring skills to the values of a society struggling towards a just order. As a scholar of English Studies (who for more than two decades has had strong links with its cognate, Media and Cultural Studies), I identified what to me seemed a missing area in both disciplines: an area that could broaden the scope of both disciplines regarding students' responsible participation in a diverse, multilingual and multicultural society such as South Africa. I envisaged a study track that could apply the rhetorical, literary and analytical considerations of both disciplines to students' working-world imperatives. At the same time, and without diminishing the integrity of any disciplinary object of study, I wished to forge links across languages and cultures in the contemporary scene. (I shall comment on the specific study track--as offered at UKZN--in the second part of my article.)
