Stephanie Vandrick

Exploring Gender: Questions and Implications for English Language Education

Resena de libro: Jane Sunderland (Editora) Exploring Gender. Questions and implications for English Language Education Lancaster: Prentice Hall International, U.K Ltd.l994, 232 paginas

Women Faculty of Color in TESOL: Theorizing Our Lived Experiences

Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist. (Lorde, 1984a, p. 112)

Privileged ESL University Students

The TESOL Quarterly invites commentary on current trends or practices in the TESOL profession. It also welcomes responses or rebuttals to articles or reviews published in the Quarterly. Unfortunately, we are not able to publish responses to previous Forum exchanges.

The Role of Social Class in English Language Education

English language educators are often advocates for social justice and often focus on learners’ identities, such as their race, gender, and ethnicity; however, they tend not to employ a social class lens in analyzing students, teachers, classrooms, and institutions. Yet social class plays a significant, if unacknowledged, role in the field. Scholars do not often examine the whole range of social class (high to low) or ways in which English language teaching (ELT) reproduces and reinforces privilege, or lack thereof. This article briefly looks at existing literature and relevant theory on social class; explores ways in which power and privilege play out in English-language education; queries the roles of coloniality and neoliberalism in exacerbating social stratification; notes intersections of social class with other identities; and recommends increased attention to social class in English language education research, teacher education, and language classrooms.

The Role of Hidden Identities in the Postsecondary ESL Classroom

* The ESL classroom is composed of a mixture of people with various backgrounds and identities. This mixture of identities is a given and a large part of the identity of the ESL class itself. But besides the obvious identities-ethnic and language backgrounds, gender, teacher versus student-many identities can be or are hidden, invisible. For example, lesbian and gay students or teachers may be invisible because it is assumed that everyone is heterosexual. People of certain ethnic or religious minorities, such as Jewish or Native American students or teachers, may remain invisible as such. Other possibly hidden identities include having disabilities such as dyslexia or clinical depression; suffering from illnesses such as AIDS, diabetes, cancer, or anorexia/bulimia; coming from various class backgrounds; and living with or surviving incest, rape, or domestic violence. How might these identities and their hidden aspect affect the ESL classroom and its participants? What might ESL administrators and faculty members do in response to the identities and their ramifications in the classroom?

Issues in Using Multicultural Literature in College ESL Writing Classes.

Abstract Multicultural literature, and multicultural textbooks, are increasingly used in college ESL writing classes. This is an appropriate and welcome development, but it is essential that such literature and texts be chosen and taught carefully and thoughtfully. ESL professionals need to define multiculturalism, and multicultural literature, as those terms apply in ESL education and particularly in the context of the writing class, and understand and prepare for the fact that some students as well as fellow academics find such concepts controversial. This article discusses the following related issues in the ESL context: the “canon wars,” the purposes and benefits of teaching multicultural literature, possible pitfalls in emphasizing such literature with ESL students, the selection of textbooks with appropriate reading selections and editorial apparatus, and possible problems arising during such teaching.

No “Knapsack of Invisible Privilege” for ESL University Students

This essay is inspired by Peggy McIntosh’s (2003, originally 1988) well-known essay containing a list of items in the knapsack of privilege, meaning unearned and invisible privilege that White people unconsciously carry. Because of the power of such concretization of types of privilege, here I have created a similar list based on the (also unearned and invisible) privilege that non–English as a second language (generally English monolingual) students in universities in the United States often carry. This list thus illustrates, in contrast, both overt and subtle types of disadvantage and discrimination that many English as a second language (ESL) students, both international and immigrant, experience in classrooms, advising, housing, services, and encounters with nearby communities. Of course ESL students are not all the same, and some students experience more or less of such disadvantage, depending at least partly on their other identities such as social class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, and religion.

In memory of Audre Lorde 1934–1992

The life and work of Audre Lorde epitomize the theme of this issue: creating peace culture—the interconnectedness of art and work for social change. For Lorde there was no separation between her roles as poet, essayist, African‐American, woman, mother, lesbian, feminist, and activist. She always pointed out the relationships among these various kinds of “outsiderness.” She refused to be categorized or to let one part of her identity be split off from the others. Even in her writing, she would not be limited by arbitrary categories or genres; thus, her prose is poetic and she labeled her Zamia. “biomythography.” Lorde always spoke out against the fear that divides people—the fear of difference, which is at the root of sexism, racism, homophobia, and all the other “‐isms” and “phobias.” In her poetry, essays, and speeches, Lorde showed us the connections among these forms of oppression and called upon us all to fight that oppression and to celebrate those differences. She was truly joyful in her own celebra...

Feminist fiction for social change

Hundreds of books on womens issues have been published in the past twenty‐five years. Topics include feminist theory, women and education, women and the family, women in the workplace, and women and religion. But except for a few well‐known bestsellers, from Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique (Norton, 1963) to Susan Faludis Backlash (Crown, 1991), these books are read mainly by a few academics and dedicated feminists. Much more widely read are the many recent novels by women writers that deal with womens lives and womens issues. Some of these are explicitly feminist in content, attacking specific problems or showing the results of the oppression of women, thus in effect arguing for social change. Other novels are indirectly feminist in that they simply portray the conditions under which women live in the world, from womens points of view. This may not sound revolutionary, but with some notable exceptions, until the past twenty‐five years, novels by women with women as the focus were in the minorit...