26th Annual English Symposium at UA will Focus on English and Ethnicity

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The 26th Annual English Department Symposium at The University of Alabama will focus on English and Ethnicity. The program will begin on Oct. 31 and end on Saturday, Nov. 2.

“Our focus in this symposium will be the use of English as a resource for the representation of ethnicity as an aspect of sociocultural identity,” said Dr. Catherine Evans Davies, professor of linguistics, who is co-organizer with fellow linguists Dr. Janina Brutt-Griffler, assistant professor of English, and Dr. Lucy Pickering, assistant professor in UA’s Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages master’s program. “Our theoretical position is that ethnicity is potentially an aspect of the identity of every person, and that English can be used to signal a wide range of ethnicities in a wide range of contexts,” she said.

The symposium includes papers that address regional, national and international contexts in the exploration of the relationship between English and ethnicity. Organizers are interested in attracting a diverse audience including linguists, literary scholars, creative writers, students, educators, psychologists, journalists and community leaders.

Of particular note with this year’s symposium is that K-12 educators, with approval from their school districts, may receive one continuing education unit (CEU) for the combination of the opening lecture on Thursday evening and the Saturday sessions. They also may receive professional development hours for more limited participation.

Dr. Alamin Mazrui, African-American sociolinguist, playwright, poet and public intellectual, will deliver the Oct. 31 keynote address at 7 p.m. in Morgan Hall Auditorium. Mazrui teaches in the Department of African-American and African Studies at the Ohio State University.

His lecture is entitled “English in the Black Experience: A Sociolinguistics of ‘Double-Consciousness.’” Supported by a grant from the Alabama Humanities Foundation, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, this lecture is free and open to the public.

On Friday, Nov. 1, Dr. Yunte Huang, of the Department of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University, will deliver a lecture on “The Chinese Experience of Basic English.” He received his master’s from The University of Alabama.

Huang’s lecture is both a historical study of the promotion of Basic English in modern China and a philosophical investigation. He will describe the efforts made by I. A. Richards, arguably the “father” of Anglo-American academic literary criticism, to market Basic English in 1930s China as an indispensable tool for the nation’s modernization.

On Saturday, Nov. 2, Simon J. Ortiz, a member of the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, who teaches in the English department at the University of Toronto, Canada, will deliver a paper “Speaking for Ourselves; Maintaining Native Cultural Integrity Despite Speaking English.”

“I’ve been a poet for 30 years,” Ortiz said, “mainly trying to demystify language and enhance its meaning for me and readers and listeners.” He is the author of 19 books of poetry and prose, and he says that most of his work “focuses on issues, concerns and responsibilities we, as Native Americans, must have for our land, culture and community.” His most recent book of poems is “From Sand Creek: Rising in This Heart Which is Our America.”

Students may attend the symposium free of change. All other registrants are asked to pay a $10 fee. For complete program details, including speakers, times and locations, go to http://www.as.ua.edu/english/.