The Every Day Work of (Re) Claiming our Languages

How do we honor, validate, and sustain language identities? Join us for a conversation featuring Dr. April Baker-Bell (Associate Professor, Departments of African American and African Studies and English at Michigan State University), author of Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy (2020), in conversation with Chico State's Dr. Sara Trechter (Professor of English) who studies the Lakhota, as well as language revitalization with the Nu'eta, and Dr. Aydé Enríquez-Loya (Associate Professor of English), who studies cultural rhetorics and femicides of Mexican/Mestiza women on the US/Mexican border.  Together, they will discuss the contention of language, the violence of language, and the work needed for language recovery, reclamations, and celebration of language and language identities. Facilitated by Dr. Kim Jaxon (Professor of English).

Dr. Aydé Enríquez-Loya (JPG)is an associate professor of rhetoric and composition specializing in Chicanx rhetorics in the Department of English at California State University in Chico. Her research follows two trajectories, including the femicide of Mexican/ Indigenous women on the US/Mexico border and decolonial pedagogical practices of composition, rhetoric and technical writing. Her recent publications have appeared in journals and collections such as College English, Composition Studies, Latinx Writing & Rhetoric Studies, and in Bordered Writers: Latinx Identities and Literacy Practices at Hispanic Serving Institutions. 

Dr. April Baker-Bell (JPG) is a transdisciplinary teacher-researcher-activist and Associate Professor of Language, Literacy, and English Education in the Department of English and Department of African American and African Studies. A national leader in conversations on Black Language education, her research interrogates the intersections of Black language and literacies, anti-Black racism, and antiracist pedagogies, and is concerned with antiracist writing, critical media literacies, Black feminist-womanist storytelling, and self-preservation for Black women in academia, with an emphasis on early career Black women. Baker-Bell’s recently published book, Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, brings together theory, research, and practice to dismantle Anti-Black Linguistic Racism and white linguistic supremacy. Baker-Bell is also co-founder of the Black Language Magazine and #BlackLanguageSyllabus with Dr. Carmen Kynard.

Dr. Sara Trechter (JPG) is a linguist, specializing in language and gender and the description, maintenance and revitalization of languages threatened by colonial English. She has primarily worked with native people of the northern plains in the United States, documenting and describing Lakhota in South Dakota, and translating and documenting folktales, prayers, legends, histories, and autobiography with the last fluent speaker of Nu’eta, Edwin Benson, who died in 2017.  She has served as an associate dean of graduate studies and as the associate vice president of International Education and Global Engagement at CSU, Chico. In 2021 she returned to her preferred role as an educator and researcher in the California State University English department.

Dr. Kim Jaxon (JPG) is a Professor of English (Composition & Literacy) at California State University, Chico and Director of the Northern California Writing Project. She received her Ph.D. at UC, Berkeley in the Language & Literacy, Society & Culture program in the Graduate School of Education. Her research interests focus on theories of literacy, particularly digital literacies, the teaching of writing, course design, and teacher education. She was awarded the Outstanding Teacher at Chico State for 2019-2020 and the California Teachers of English (CATE) Teacher of Excellence-College Award in 2014.