Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons^™

Imperialism Unawareness: The Case Of Citizenship Construction Among Mexican Transnational Students, David Martinez-Prieto

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This study analyzes the impact that U.S. curricula have on Mexican transnational returnees. Specifically, this article focuses on the ideological development of the army and imperialism promoted in U.S. schools among Mexican populations. Using a framework that combines critical literacies, transnationalism, and Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and doxa, this study draws on data from 24 interviews to Mexican transnational returnee students (n = 4), Mexican national professors (n = 4), and Mexican national students (n = 4) during their concurrence in a program of English language teaching in central Mexico. Findings suggest that, before returning to …

Sickly Saints: Religion As A Source Of Hope Through The Stages Of Grief, Erin Matheny

23rd Annual A. Paul and Carol C. Schaap Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (2024)

With the objective of understanding why some people turn to religion–specifically Christianity–in the face of hardship, mortality, and grief, I examined the writings and wrestlings of three Spanish Catholic mystics of the 15th and 16th centuries: Saint Teresa of Ávila, Saint John of the Cross, and Sister Teresa of Cartagena. Using the model of psychiatrist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, who proposed that most people follow a similar path through grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, the writings of the abovementioned mystics can be interpreted as their way of processing grief on the journey to acceptance. Through each stage of the model …

An Interdisciplinary Experience, Reyna Vergara, Michael Dodson

OUR Assignment Repository

This proposal showcases the success of an interdisciplinary approach. It provides an overview of a project titled: "Cacao and Chocolate: A Powerful Legacy." It took place during Hispanic Heritage Month in 2023. The project aimed to explore the rich and multifaceted legacy of cacao and chocolate in Latin America, incorporating perspectives from various academic disciplines, including public history, chemistry, Spanish language, graphic design, culinary arts, and family science. The interdisciplinary nature of the project highlights the power of collaboration in research and education, serving as a model for integrating diverse fields of study.

The project was divided into two main …

El Nacimiento Del Rock En Español: ¿Cómo Fue Que Este Género De Música Latina Tuvo Éxito?, Alejandro V. Martinez

World Languages and Cultures

This paper titled El nacimiento del rock en español: ¿Cómo fue que este género de música latina tuvo éxito? will cover information regarding the Spanish rock movement. This essay compares what is written in this paper to that of prior scholars to show that although they do bring valid points, there is a lot more than many of us realize. There are various articles and reports written about the movement, but many do not explain the creation of the movement, let alone its survival in the music industry as a new genre that some had never heard of or had …

Positioning As A Mediator Of Reader Self-Efficacy: A Case Study Of Literature Circles, Elena M. Venegas

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Literature circles are a socially supportive context in which students can cultivate their reader identities. This is especially promising for students with lower reader self-efficacies. This qualitative multiple case study explored the positioning practices of four Grades 5–6 students with comparatively low reader self-efficacy. In literature circles, the students responded to interactive positioning (i.e., positioning by others) and/or engaged in reflexive positioning (i.e., positioned themselves). Upon interpreting the data through positioning theory, two storylines emerged. In the first storyline, students reflexively positioned themselves in literature circles as strategic, engaged readers, thereby challenging initially lower reader self-efficacies. Yet the second storyline …

‘Kazakh Means Freedom’ - Kazakh Language Policy And National Identity Before And During The Ukraine War, Mclean T. Brown

Senior Theses

This thesis examines the link between language policy and national identity in Kazakhstan, tracing the relationship between the two across history and describing how they have been affected by the Ukraine War. The Kazakh government has put considerable effort into developing a national identity for contemporary Kazakhstan, but conflicting standards of production make it difficult for a cohesive, well-defined Kazakh national identity to be put forth. Through qualitative and quantitative analyses, phenomenological critical discourse analysis, and ethnographic research, this thesis strives to alleviate existing gaps in Central Asian studies research while arguing that language policy is a lens through which …

Notetaking As Validity Evidence: A Mixed-Methods Investigation Of Question Preview In Eap Listening Assessment, Rebecca Yeager, Gomee Park, Ray J. T. Liao

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Recent scholarship has questioned the cognitive validity of listening tests with preview, in which test-takers can see test questions before listening. This study mined student notes for evidence of cognitive processes in listening tests with and without preview, using a mixed-methods design that explored the effect of test format on notetaking behaviors. Qualitative analysis indicated that students who previewed items were more likely to systematically omit information, highlight previewed keywords, and engage in shallower structural representation. Conversely, Kruskal-Wallis tests revealed that students who listened without preview took more notes, especially of main ideas and details, and had better coverage of …

Translanguaging In Mandarin Instruction, Xiaodi Zhou, Xiaochen Du

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Mandarin has become a growing focus of language instruction in recent decades, and there have been many different approaches, from foreign language education to bilingual education, to dual-language immersion. In many such Mandarin instructional spaces, teachers adhere to the prescribed monolingual policy. In recent years, some have even experimented with creative pedagogy like skits and interactive boardgames, often relying on gestures in order to make their instruction comprehensible. Even with these multimodal approaches, students are still confined to leverage only the limited social and linguistic resources of the curriculum. Given current classroom necessities, there has been a shift to translanguaging …

Similes Mini Lesson Plan, Kristen S. Addessi

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Latina Voice In Dialogue With Literacy, Xiaodi Zhou

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This study follows the literacy experiences of four Latina middle schoolers as they read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and compose home language narratives in their heritage voices. Both their vibrant ethnic cultures and other intersecting rays of identities are analyzed in the vein of their literate identities. Through analysis of their writing and speech, the girls present hybridized identities on the border between cultures and languages. Their position and identities in the social world of middle school are discussed and how transactions with literacy can dialogically influence those identities to enact critically conscious pedagogy.

A Planning Tool For Improving Interactive Read-Alouds: Why And How, Elena M. Venegas, Angelica Guanzon

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Interactive read-alouds are versatile in that teachers can teach an array of literacy skills through this instructional strategy. However, our observations of six primary grade teachers and prior research revealed that teachers' implementation of interactive read-alouds varies. Without the necessary planning and preparation for interactive read-alouds, the richness of this instructional strategy is limited. In this article, we present a planning tool for interactive read-alouds that teachers can readily adapt for use in their classrooms. We also offer three recommendations. Together the planning tool and recommendations are specific enough to provide guidance yet flexible enough for teachers to modify to …

Opening Up Research On The Teaching Of Reading By Looking Beyond Us Borders: What We Might Learn From Early Literacy Instruction In China, Danling Fu, Xiaodi Zhou

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This article discusses early literacy instruction in China, including the impact of biliteracy education on Chinese society. This presentation is based on interviews with over two dozen scholars of Chinese literacy instruction, as well as primary early grades language arts classroom teachers from four different regions across China. The purpose of this examination of literacy education in China is to open our views of literacy instruction beyond US borders, especially in those countries with different language/literacy systems. Because of the rapid increase of emergent bilingual students in our schools, we need to gain a better understanding of literacy and biliteracy …

Language And The Mind: How Language Shapes Our Thinking, Xiaodi Zhou

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes languages and their connections to thinking and culture using an autoethnographic lens. This autoethnography utilized personal examples and those from the author’s students’ compositions as evidence of the link between languages and cultures. Both named languages and dialects of those languages are contemplated for the basis of how their traits influence perceptions. A neuroscientific rationale is also made between human languages and human cultures. The link between culture and language, including dialects, is made, positioning the act of translanguaging as real time dialogue between cultures. Finally, classroom implications are presented with actual student writing and multimodal performances …

Citizens Of The English Language: Sociolinguistic Perspectives On Postcolonial India, Prateek Shankar

Masters Theses

This paper introduces the concept of "extralingual citizenship," which I define as an expansion of translingualism to include the ethnoracial logic of the nation-state and demonstrates the entanglement of language, governance, and education in the policing of knowledge infrastructures and discursive practices. I am interested in the codification of postcolonial disparity into the teaching, social performance, and material assessment of English language users, and the infrastructural disqualification of World Englishes (and their amalgams) in favor of a standardized English. I frame extralingualism as a kind of citizenship, shifting the focus of English pedagogy/practice from the syntactical/etymological concerns of language …

Other Oceans, Other Skies, Sharlene Lee

MFA in Visual Art

I create immersive installations, performances, and time-based media artworks that delve into stories of belonging, feminism, and language as power. These stories offer a potential for transformation from viewer to participant and a shift in how our world is seen and experienced. Through an exploration of perception and affect, I challenge dominant narratives, prompting a contemplation of contemporary power struggles for control.

In this text, I examine the impact of historical borders and migration on my life while also investigating questions of home, shared values, and rituals that contribute to one’s sense of belonging. I also highlight my commitment to …

Ideologías Y Políticas De Perpetua Ilegitimidad: El Caso De La Enseñanza De Lenguas En México, David Martinez-Prieto

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Based on data collected in central and southern Mexico, this article examines ideologies embedded in the language learning policies of this country. By qualitatively analyzing 72 interviews to 24 participants, field notes, and the author’s reflective journal, this research investigates the impact of language policies amongst teachers from three different states: Puebla (2017, 2019, 2021), Oaxaca (2018), and Tlaxcala (2020-2021). After comparing the situations of participants, I suggest that nativist, (neo)colonial and neoliberal ideologies—which are prevalent in language policies in Mexico—foster the perpetual delegitimization of language teachers.

Identity Negotiations Of A Mexican Transnational In The Rio Grande Valley: Crossing The Border Daily, Xiaodi Zhou, David Martinez-Prieto

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This narrative case study examines the cultural affiliations of one transnational US-born Mexican American college student, and her various intersecting veins of identity. The aim was to capture the bordered existence in the many criteria of her being. Her linguistic identity, pop culture identity, spiritual identity, as well as her general cultural affiliations are examined as intersecting rays of influence. Utilizing Anzaldúa’s (2012) bordered identity as theoretical grounding for her partitioned selves, along with Bakhtin’s (1986) notion of cultural and linguistic dialogue, we analyzed the complexities in this one bicultural, bilingual young woman venturing into adulthood. This study sheds light …

Chapter 1 “A Veces Encuentro Más Palabras En Español”: Taking A Stance Towards Translanguaging As A Socially Just Pedagogy For Bilingual Teacher Preparation, Sandra I. Musanti

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Informed by recent explorations on translanguaging practices in higher education and teacher education, this self-case study explores how a bilingual teacher educator, teaching bilingual teacher preparation courses in Spanish at a Hispanic-serving institution on the US-Mexico border embraces a translanguaging stance to leverage teacher candidates’ bilingualism while preparing them to produce and use academic and professional forms of Spanish discourse for teaching. Findings illustrate how a bilingual teacher educator purposefully embeds translanguaging moves to leverage bilingual teacher candidates’ bilingualism to develop a linguistically inclusive bilingual teacher candidates’ repertoire of practice. In addition, the study shows how candidates’ evolving understanding of …

Instructional Framework For Integrating Cross-Cultural Content Using Culturally Responsive And Linguistically Affirming Pedagogies, J. Joy Esquierdo, Maritza De La Trinidad

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This chapter describes an instructional framework for culturally relevant and affirming teaching and curricula that addresses effective ways to interconnect cross-cultural content to expand cultural and content literacy in K-12. The Culturally and Linguistically Affirming Pedagogies for Local Context (CLAP-LC) Framework was developed to create culturally and linguistically affirming content, promote equitable education, and nurture student engagement. The framework centers on the intersection of cultural knowledge and lived experiences of students, families, and communities in content and curriculum to promote student achievement, especially students from minoritized and marginalized groups.

Unchoreographed Dance: Trust And Venture Into Vulnerability—Building A Plural, Organic, And Recursive Collective, Miryam Espinosa-Dulanto, Eunice Lerma, Karin A. Lewis, Vejoya Viren

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

In this autoethnography, we—four Hispanic Serving Institution colleagues at the USA–Mexican frontera—share our process of building a collective where a plural, organic, vulnerable, and recursive space was created. In this space, through readings, conversations, feedings, discussions, and memories, un/anticipated stories emerge…in our unchoreographed writings, we whirl, twirl, collide, and craft our collective space, which was at once chaotic, cathartic, and sustaining.

Threshold For Learning: The Case For Prioritizing The In-Between Spaces In Education, Xiaodi Zhou

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

In this paper, the author analyses learning as a function of the threshold between parties and ideas. Using Bakhtinian dialogic theory, literacy learning in particular is envisioned as a dialogue of the threshold. This instructional threshold is viewed both in pedagogical and biological terms. The physiological process of learning is described, making a biological case for instructional scaffolding and the gradual release of responsibility in the classroom. The dialogue of different disciplines serves as integration of several thresholds and further strengthening of learning. Curriculum integration is then promoted as a means to lasting learning.

Voces Y Relatos De La Violencia En Jóvenes Universitarias: Coahuila–Texas, Iris Rubi Monroy Velasco, Miryam Espinosa-Dulanto, Karla Patricia Valdés-García, Leilani Flores Valdés

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

La violencia es una problemática social que compromete la salud pública en el mundo. Podemos encontrar violencia en todos los ámbitos, desde la violencia íntima, en el espacio doméstico con la familia, hasta en espacios de trabajo, estudio o diversión, causada por conocidos o desconocidos y generada por una diversidad de razones. Este capítulo tiene por objetivo entrever los tipos de violencia que experimentan estudiantes universitarias en la frontera Noroeste de México del estado de Coahuila y en la frontera sur de los Estados Unidos en el estado de Texas.

Harnessing Cultural Epistemology In Literacy Studies: Take A Walk In My Shoes, Isela Almaguer

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

The influence of our increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse school age population is experienced throughout our educational system. Teachers diversify their pedagogical practices to best meet students’ needs in their classrooms, thereby amplifying the importance of valuing culturally and linguistically diverse learners’ rich and plentiful cultural knowledge. It is essential to expand our literacy lens to include multifaceted and multidimensional opportunities which acknowledge and respect the cultural and linguistic learner diversity that reverberates across cultures. Engaging students in culturally relevant pedagogy accelerates learning by helping students make connections to concepts and topics. The impact is twofold as culturally relevant pedagogy …

Violencia, Memoria Y Empatía Reflexiva En El Ruido De Las Cosas Al Caer De Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Carlos Gardeazábal Bravo

Global Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article, I show how Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s novel El ruido de las cosas al caer (The Sound of Things Falling, 2011) proposes an articulation of the works of memory and affects that can be ethically relevant within the context of the war on drugs in Colombia. I link this analysis with an interpretation of the novel that discusses the role of literature in debates about systemic violence in the global war on drugs. I propose that The noise of things falling, thanks to its affirmation of what I call reflexive empathy, questions the geopolitical designs that articulate that …

Composing Her Growing Identities As A Mexican American, Xiaodi Zhou

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This article studies the growing and changing cultural identifications of one early adolescent Mexican American girl as represented by her engagements with literacy. Her writing behaviors in particular manifested a changing cultural identity that reacted to and represented her response to a changing world. Her bilingualism and biculturalism manifested a dialogic innervation of distinct voices and truths, particularly set in the Trump-era United States. Through a theoretical framework of cultural hybridity and bordered identity, this study analyzes the complex linguistic, developmental, and cultural identities of a young Mexican American woman in the rural South.

Straddling Differences: Celebrating Contradictions And Confusion At The Frontera, Miryam Espinosa-Dulanto, Karin A. Lewis, Vejoya Viren

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

A yearlong collective auto-ethnographic stories of three colleagues at a Hispanic Serving Institution at the U.S.–Mexican frontera culminated in the realization that our disparate experiences, the multiple voices used in articulating these, and the diverse ways these manifested in classroom practices and interactions had crafted the only academic space where we-three felt to belong.

Humanitarismo Literario Y Migración Forzada: Un Estudio De Las Tierras Arrasadas De Emiliano Monge, Carlos Gardeazábal Bravo

Global Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Las tierras arrasadas (2015) de Emiliano Monge se encuentra entre el creciente corpus de novelas y películas sobre los migrantes centroamericanos y los diferentes tipos de violencia que afrontan. Monge aborda en esta obra los efectos de la militarización en la política migratoria de México, impulsada por la guerra contra el narco que comenzó en 2006. Esta novela lleva a cabo un desmonte crítico del humanitarismo literario al tiempo que enfatiza la vulnerabilidad de los migrantes y su agencia. En tal sentido, se explora la forma en la que, en cuanto ficción posthumanitaria, la novela encarna las diferentes formas en …

Testimonio At Work: The Power Of Malintzin Researchers, Freyca Calderon-Berumen, Miryam Espinosa-Dulanto, Karla O'Donald

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

We are three Latin American women, once travellers – now US dwellers, mujeres de color, Mestizas, Neplanteras – sometimes ‘Malintzin researchers’ struggling to make sense of all our pieces, identities and changing faces. We draw upon the disruption of apartheid of knowledge in academia, arguing for counter-narratives through the use of pláticas and testimonio as tools to theorize personal experiences that contribute to the decolonization of educational research. We are advancing pláticas and testimonios as epistemological and methodological approaches to challenge and disrupt widespread Westernized research approaches that continue colonizing the U.S. education research.

Translanguaging Practices Of Chinese/English Bilingual Engineers’ Communications In The Workplace, Juan Du, Xiaodi Zhou

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Existing literature argues for the urgent need to improve workplace and professional communication in the engineering field across the world. This paper reports on a study examining Chinese/English bilingual engineers’ translanguaging practices in their communications in English-speaking high-tech corporations in the United States. Evidence showed that bilingual engineers translanguaged extensively to construct meaning to meet the diverse communication needs at their workplace, which enables them to demonstrate their professional talents and skills. However, when English was the sole language for the interaction, they struggled to sound like English native speakers to convey their ideas and present their work, which disadvantaged …

Checking In: Learner Perceptions Of The Value Of Language Study In College, Julian Ledford, Tijá Odoms

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Access the online Pressbooks version of this article here.

An understanding of the products that Generation Z students value the most from their college-level language study is essential for instructors who must effectively unpack second language theories within the context of their classroom instruction. This preliminary study examines the value system regarding language study as revealed in the language-learning perceptions of a group of current language learners (n = 53) and recent college graduates (n = 49) at a small, private, liberal arts college in the southeast. Through qualitative analysis of student responses, the following emerged as language-learning …