Friday March 11 2022
12 pm – 1:30 pm
Postmemory, Affect, and Multilingual Identity in Language Teaching: A Duoethnography
Anwar Ahmed, Assistant Professor, DLLL, York University
Brian Morgan, Senior Scholar, Department of English, Glendon College
Attention to emotions and an ‘affective turn’ has become an area of growing research interest in language teaching. A key component of this affective turn is a recognition that emotions are socially constructed, semiotically mobilized, and deeply embedded in power relations (Anwaruddin 2016; Benesch 2012). In this presentation, we wish to extend this perspective by exploring the social and affective influences of postmemory on multilingual identity negotiation in schools and public spaces. Postmemory, the narrativized intergenerational transfer of often traumatic experiences, can be a complicating factor in students’ language learning motivation and their responses to innovative curricula utilizing heritage languages or translingual pedagogies. The presenters will also discuss how they came to understand their topic by way of duoethnography (Norris & Sawyer, 2012) a dialogic research methodology increasingly utilized in language teaching and language teacher education.
Zoom link: https://yorku.zoom.us/j/95547715709?pwd=SFRNOGtCMjNpZ0haNnc3c29rRHJzQT09