Untold Autoethnographic Stories of (In)Justice, Teaching and Scholarship - (Encounters) by Ari Sherris & Joy Kreeft Peyton

About the Book

The voices in this book raise questions about the relationalities and entanglements of applied linguists in a troubled world. They are the personal stories that are sometimes hidden behind and within more conventional teaching, research and scholarship, however iconoclastic and unconventional the endeavors themselves.

Book Synopsis

The voices in this book raise questions about the relationalities and entanglements of applied linguists in a troubled world. They are the personal stories that are sometimes hidden behind and within more conventional teaching, research and scholarship, however iconoclastic and unconventional the endeavors themselves. Injustice runs through and across the chapters, connecting one with another but also highlighting differences. The stories in this book describe or picture anxieties, fears, veils, exclusion, erasures, microaggressions, racism and patriarchy, together with the painful double-binds and pitfalls experienced in applied linguistic fieldwork and teaching. By sharing their stories, the authors attempt to embody the changes called into being through their applied linguistics teaching and fieldwork.

Review Quotes

Autoethnography has been defined as a postcolonial genre that allows the powerless to talk back. Authors from wide ranging communities in this collection speak against diverse silencing forces in contemporary geopolitics. Beneath the deceptive simplicity of their stories is a complex theorization from new materialism, affect studies, and southern theories to amplify this genre as a heuristics of the heart.-- "Suresh Canagarajah, Pennsylvania State University, USA"

This volume presents a rich collection of autoethnographic stories that delve into the diverse experiences of language researchers and teachers. Highlighting the human side of their journeys, these narratives offer unique insights and profound reflections that push the field of applied linguistics in new and important directions.-- "Nelson Flores, University of Pennsylvania, USA"

We needed a book like this. The writing is stunning, the ideas transformative. Intensely personal and disarmingly honest, it will make you feel and think deeply. A must-read, it sets a new standard in autoethnographic research in applied linguistics.-- "Lourdes Ortega, Georgetown University, USA"

About the Author

Ari Sherris (he, him) is a Professor of Bilingual Education at Texas A&M University-Kingsville in the Tejas Borderlands, USA. He collaborates with Palestinian landowners and Bedouin shepherds on the West Bank of the Jordan river to free Palestine from the Israeli apartheid occupation, as well as with an Indigenous tribe in Ghana, the Safaliba, who are decolonizing their schools.

Joy Kreeft Peyton is President of the Coalition of Community-Based Heritage Language Schools in the United States, which connects and collaborates with thousands of schools teaching hundreds of languages, mostly on weekends. She has also worked in Ethiopia, Nepal and The Gambia to develop curriculum, materials and student pleasure reading books in students' mother tongues.