Name
Resisting English Language Hegemony at PWI’s: Creating a sustainable workflow to support multilingual learners of color (😷)
Date & Time
Tuesday, July 16, 2024, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
IDEAL Locations
Willow
Session Type
General
Description

At the University of Pennsylvania, like many other institutions of higher learning, we have students, faculty, and staff from all over the world who represent a variety of different languages and dialects, as well as nationalities and ethnicities. In an effort to support this diverse community a former intern/current staff member conducted a review of the library & information science literature that revealed the negative impacts of English language hegemony and white supremacy – and the way that these forces can exponentially marginalize along the dual axes of language and race. In an effort to support these multilingual learners of color (MLOCs), we are planning an internal campaign for the 2023-2024 (SY) to encourage our colleagues to share the languages in which they’re prepared to support reference. We will do this by hosting informational sessions/webinars describing our goals and outcomes, offering templates for email signatures, collaborating with our website team to update staff profiles, as well as creating community amongst those who plan to partake by maintaining a Teams channel. We hope that this will create a sustainable workflow that resists English language hegemony by encouraging the creation of resources for the global communities on campus. Our presentation will be a chance to share the successes and possible failures of this project that will occur over two semesters, with an opportunity for participants to begin to craft their own efforts.

Mask Requirements
Masks Expected
Track
Antioppression
Keywords
English language hegemony, linguistic diversity, race, racism, white supremacy
Resources