“I Too Am America:” An Anti-Racist Linguistics with Sonja Lanehart

Langston Hughes’ “I, Too” recognizes that Black Americans are intentionally erased or omitted from the stories America wants to remember. This strategy is rampant in scholarship. In this presentation, Lanehart analyzes race, ethnicity, and gender as articulated in the feature articles published in several linguistics journals from their inception until 2018. She will employ a Critical Race Theory framework and Intersectionality to reveal a lack of research that is inclusive of people of color or that is by scholars of color. This is part of a large-scale project whose aim is to expose racism in scholarship and propose an anti-racist Language and Linguistics research agenda.

SONJA LANEHART is a professor of linguistics and teaching, learning, and sociocultural studies at the University of Arizona. Her scholarship focuses on language, literacy, and education in African American communities; language and identity; sociolinguistics; and Black education from Black feminist, Critical Race Theory, and Intersectionality perspectives. She is particularly interested in African American Women’s Languages and pushing the boundaries of research in sociolinguistics and language variation to be.

When

Noon to 1 p.m. April 16, 2021

Attachments