Department of English

As a rhetoric and composition scholar who has taught and studied English language writing in a variety of institutional contexts in the U.S., China, and Nepal, I understand multilingualism and the plurality of Englishes in writing to be the norm across the globe and not the exception. With such an understanding, it makes sense to ask what the plurality of Englishes worldwide means for the teaching, reading, and writing of texts in the U.S. What role does language difference play in our different classrooms, fields of study, and everyday lives? How might we – teachers and students – in English studies work together to leverage our diverse language and literacy histories and experiences to create linguistically and culturally inclusive spaces of practice? How might these new spaces of practice help to foster collaborative inquiry around multilingualism, while also working to support the adaptive transfer of English language writing knowledge across contexts? With formal training in rhetoric, composition, and the teaching of English as well as second language acquisition and teaching, I seek to do the kind of pedagogic and programmatic work that will enable people to encounter diverse language backgrounds and repertoires as productive resources for reading, writing, teaching, and learning in and across contexts.

In a related effort, I am currently at work on an ethnographic project that traces the transnational connections, historical language investments and present-day critical ambivalences around English among Bhutanese refugees in the U.S. and Nepal. Throughout the course of the research, I have found what other studies confirm to be the case of people’s linguistic repertoires as they move across transnational spaces, namely that they are shaped by larger contingencies and dislocations. Yet, my research has also revealed key insights about the everyday, cultural practice of language learning in migration, including its relationship to family and community literacies, creative performance, spiritual activity, and social change. Such work has led me to examine a fuller range of factors – both local and global – contributing to what we know about people’s language investments and the plurality of Englishes in and across diverse, global contexts.