Language Resource Center Speaker Series - Claudia Holguín Mendoza

"Antiracist Critical Literacy: Methodologies of the Oppressed for Language Education"
Claudia Holguín Mendoza
Associate Professor of Spanish Linguistics, University of California, Riverside

In this presentation, Dr. Holguín Mendoza  describes the design and implementation of a comprehensive critical literacy and Critical Language Awareness (CLA)-oriented Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) program that deconstructs and questions sociopolitical hierarchies, challenges the subordination of SHL students' linguistic practices, and elevates students' voices and agency. She underscores the importance of building critical SHL programs on three interrelated foundations: stakeholder engagement, curriculum, and assessment. A truly comprehensive critical literacy and CLA-oriented program must integrate critical teacher training with a wide stakeholder engagement that serves to build on strengths from across the institution and to position the SHL program as a promoter of Latinx student success. Sociolinguistic justice and antiracist transformation through literacy occur when we critically understand how language and sociocultural access and expertise are socially constructed. Finally, Dr. Holguín Mendoza describes assessment tools that have demonstrated how comprehensive critical literacy programs have proven to be a valuable model for language education and student empowerment.

Bio: Dr. Claudia Holguín Mendoza is an Associate Professor of Spanish linguistics at the University of California, Riverside. She specializes in the sociolinguistics of race in the Mexican borderlands and Greater Mexico as well as critical pedagogies for the teaching of Spanish as a heritage language. She publishes in both English and Spanish and her work has appeared in journals such as International Multilingual Research Journal, Hispania, Studies in Hispanic & Lusophone Linguistics, Identities, and Frontera Norte.

This event will be held in person on campus (Goldwin Smith Hall G76) and will also be streamed live over Zoom (see link for registration details). 

The talk is part of the 2022 Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning Fall Workshop titled Connecting Language Teaching and Social Justice: A Call for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The event is free and open to the public. Registration is required. Campus visitors and members of the public must adhere to Cornell's public health requirements for events.