In general, WR 112 instructors should feel free to use as many of the following texts as they would like to build up their course, supplementing as they see fit with other texts (“texts” is broadly construed, including advertisements, videos, podcasts, TED talks, etc.). Please share any additional texts you are using beyond this list so that we may add them to our common pool.
WR 112 and the BU Hub
The BU Hub (general education requirements for all undergraduates across BU’s many schools and colleges) contains six essential capacities that students need to take courses in, including Diversity, Civic Engagement, and Global Citizenship.
WR 112 satisfies the Hub requirement of “Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy” (GCIL) in this area. For GCIL courses, students must “critically reflect on how [their] position as a global citizen informs [their] choices and performance as a writer, reader, and speaker.” That sentence informs our framing of WR 112 as an antiracist course focused on linguistic justice.
Common Pool of WR 112 Readings
Faculty should use the readings below to populate their syllabus, while considering possible connections students might make in a synthesis. As a reminder, there should not be a longer work (memoir, novel, etc.) in WR 112 any longer.
- Nairobi’s street names reveal what those in power want to remember, or forget. https://theconversation.com/nairobis-street-names-reveal-what-those-in-power-want-to-remember-or-forget-141378
- You Sound Like ChatGPT. https://www.theverge.com/openai/686748/chatgpt-linguistic-impact-common-word-usage
- Altfeld, Heather. “Sweetness and strangeness. In our image-saturated, over-sped world, we are losing the imaginative power to create and find meaning through metaphor.” Aeon, 1 July 2019. https://aeon.co/essays/metaphors-grow-the-mind-and-feed-the-soul-dont-lose-them?
- Bellos, David. Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything. New York: Faber & Faber, 2011. [Excerpts, especially chapter 3!] https://www.tarjomano.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Is-that-a-Fish-in-your-Ear.pdf
- Carolyn McCusker and Rhaina Cohen, Tower Of Babble: Nonnative Speakers Navigate The World Of ‘Good’ And ‘Bad’ English
- Borodisky, Lera. “How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think?” TED talk, plus transcription. https://irl.umsl.edu/oer/13/
- Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives. https://www.thedaln.org/#/home
- Fridland, Valerie. Like, literally, dude: arguing for the good in bad English. [Excerpts; BU has online access here]
- Green, Lane. “Who decides what words mean? Bound by rules, yet constantly changing, language might be the ultimate self-regulating system, with nobody in charge.” Aeon, 6 December 2018. https://aeon.co/essays/why-language-might-be-the-optimal-self-regulating-system?fbclid=IwAR0I8lo8ziwmSXs5C31jsBKemA6fZOkY8KZayalglwANK2Fiepn-NZ_AFWA
- Hansen, Heather. “How to Speak Bad English Perfectly.” TEDx Talk (2018, about 20 minutes long, includes closed captioning but not an actual transcript): https://www.ted.com/talks/heather_hansen_2_billion_voices_how_to_speak_bad_english_perfectly
- Kent, Debbie. “The 24-Hour Language Experiment: Timothy Maxymenko’s US2. What would happen if two people who do not have a common language tried to communicate with each other for twenty-four hours?.” Asymptote, 27 May 2019. https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2019/05/27/the-24-hour-language-experiment-timothy-maxymenkos-us2/?fbclid=IwAR0dOV5qxlvn4yFGFLDjQclMh-REL_n0ooY8m4M4Qq9s5sic2wMDioZFc0Q
- Kim, Christine Sun. “The Enchanting Music of Sign Language.” (TED Talk) August 2015. https://www.ted.com/talks/christine_sun_kim_the_enchanting_music_of_sign_language?language=en#t-884158
- Language and Life Project (LLP), from NC State Univ., documenting and celebrating diverse “dialects, languages, and cultures” of the US: https://languageandlife.org/
- Lin, Chia-Chia. “One Word: Understand.” The Paris Review, 7 May 2019. https://aeon.co/essays/why-language-might-be-the-optimal-self-regulating-system?fbclid=IwAR0I8lo8ziwmSXs5C31jsBKemA6fZOkY8KZayalglwANK2Fiepn-NZ_AFWA
- Luu, Chi. “How Language and Climate Connect. While we’re losing biological diversity, we’re also losing linguistic and cultural diversity at the same time. This is no coincidence.” JSTOR Daily, 10 July 2019. https://daily.jstor.org/how-language-and-climate-connect/?fbclid=IwAR2Pzrlw5Q5VK-JF4oma86gbi32iaPQSK5bkygcSBr4FbTvEI-OxIdN4IsA
- Lysicott, Jamila. “Three Ways to Speak English” (4-minute TEDTalk from 2014 on what it means to be “articulate”). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9fmJ5xQ_mc&t=266s
- Lysicott, Jamila. “Why English Is Silencing Students of Color” (22-min TEDTalk from 2018 on the intersections of language, race, and power and honoring all language varieties). https://www.ted.com/talks/jamila_lyiscott_why_english_class_is_silencing_students_of_color
- The “From Sea to Shining Sea” section has some great discussion & linked resources re: language varieties (particularly, dialects and varieties of American English)
- The “What Speech Do We Like Best?” section discusses linguistic prejudice and sociolinguistics
- The “What Lies Ahead?” section talks about mass media, technology, and globalization of language (specifically American Englishes)
- There’s also a specific section “For Educators”PBS.org. Excerpts from “Do You Speak American?” https://www.pbs.org/speak/
- Rojas Contreras, Ingrid. ” Translation as an Arithmetic of Loss.” The Paris Review, 18 June 2019. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/06/18/translation-as-an-arithmetic-of-loss/?fbclid=IwAR1llDelWPUN_hhU-R3P3QRHrPB0PHXLKqozrojfKSEv37BYvVGi7bT7joA
- Stefanik, Ana. “Malaphors: The Art of Mixing Up Your Idioms. To all intensive purposes, you might have another think coming about how idioms work.” Aeon. 2 July 2019. https://aeon.co/videos/to-all-intensive-purposes-you-might-have-another-think-coming-about-how-idioms-work?fbclid=IwAR3DBXVUYCf-uZ BlVkMlJyGxHwUrShFzsIsIcoKKycHozkYH4pWbDbCwJs
- “In Praise of Dialect: A Celebration of Non-Standard English” (2018) by Ray French: https://www.rlf.org.uk/showcase/in-praise-of-dialect/
- 22-minute video from Al Jazeera: “Linguistic Imperialism?” https://www.aljazeera.com/program/riz-khan/2010/10/21/linguistic-imperialism
- 26-minute segment from 2018 on NPR’s CodeSwitch series called “Talk American” (includes transcript): https://www.npr.org/2018/08/08/636442508/talk-american
- “Why Do Cartoon Villains Speak in Foreign Accents?” by Isabel Fattal for the Atlantic (2018): https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/01/why-do-cartoon-villains-speak-in-foreign-accents/549527/#
- Excerpt from this piece on language ideologies: https://www.languageonthemove.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Piller_Language-ideologies.pdf
- Excerpts from Asao Inoue’s book on his own experiences and the habits of white language
- Brown, Joel. “Indigenous Voices Speak Out at BU.” BU Today, 13 October, 2021. https://www.bu.edu/articles/2021/indigenous-voices-speak-out-at-bu/
- BU Today Staff. “Why Did BU Rename Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples Day?” BU Today, 6 October, 2021. https://www.bu.edu/articles/2021/rename-columbus-day-indigenous-peoples-day/
- Gurvis, Jacob. “COM Student Pens YA Novel about Identity, Cultural Conflict, and Malaysian Culture.” BU Today, 31 July, 2020. https://www.bu.edu/articles/2020/com-student-pens-ya-novel-about-identity-cultural-conflict-malaysian-culture/
- Richards, Lauren. “BU Students Launch New Magazine Celebrating the Various Nuances of the Asian American Experience.” BU Today, 21 January, 2022. https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/bu-students-launch-magazine-celebrating-asian-american-experience/
- Rimer, Sara. “Ibram Kendi, BU Center for Antiracist Research Founding Director, Wins 2021 MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant.” BU Today, 28 September, 2021. https://www.bu.edu/articles/2021/ibram-x-kendi-macarthur-fellows-genius-grant-winner/
- Rimer, Sara. “Message from Antiracism Symposium: Move from Awareness to Action.” BU Today, 3 October, 2021. https://www.bu.edu/articles/2021/antiracism-symposium-racial-health-and-economic-inequities-during-the-pandemic/
- Warner, Gregory, Rhaina Cohen, and Luis Trelles. “How to Speak English.” (33-minute segment from 2021 on NPR’s Rough Translation series, with transcript): https://www.npr.org/2021/04/21/989477444/how-to-speak-bad-english
- 18-minute TEDx Talk from John Baugh (2019): “The Significance of Linguistic Profiling”: https://www.ted.com/talks/john_baugh_the_significance_of_linguistic_profiling
- Ziadeh, Rafeef. (Note how she meshes languages and pronounces Arabic words in Arabic) https://youtu.be/ySeqgyCxRxY
- Abdullahi, Hafsat. https://youtu.be/qIrN4I1qX20
- Brave New Voices: https://youtu.be/OadZpUJv8Eg
- Zeina Hashem Beck. “Correcting My Mother’s Essay.” https://muse.jhu.edu/article/562760/pdf
- “We Write English on a Continuum” by Laura Aull
- “African-American English: From the Hood to the Amen Corner” by Geneva Smitherman
- Sociolinguistic Superdiversity and Asylum, https://repository.usfca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=coms#:~:text=To%20summarize%2C%20sociolinguistic%20superdiversity%E2%80%94that,within%20diversity%2C%20produced%20by%20the
- Cole, Teju. “When the Camera was a weapon of Imperialism (and still is).” New York Times 6 Feb 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/magazine/when-the-camera-was-a-weapon-of-imperialism-and-when-it-still-is.html
- Contrera, Jessica. “This photographer wanted to humanize Ellis Island’s immigrants. His images are still powerful.” The Washington Post, 26 November 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/11/23/this-photographer-set-out-humanize-immigrants-century-before-build-that-wall/
- Pitre, Jake. “Do Memes Change How We Remember History? ‘Some memes may actually dissolve the original significance of iconic photographs and potentially degrade, rather than enhance, public culture.” Catapult, 22 April 2019. https://catapult.co/stories/jake-pitre-digital-hope-memes-history-television-heritage-memory
- Press, Michael. “Who really owns the past? Cultural heritage is an ideal imposed from above [by the wealthy and powerful]. It’s time to listen to what communities value about their own histories.” Aeon, 27 May 2019. https://aeon.co/essays/why-cultural-heritage-benefits-the-rich-and-powerful-above-all
- Wang, Yanan. “Artists who’ve dared to broach Tiananmen pushed into shadows.” AP News, 2 June 2019.https://apnews.com/article/media-music-li-zhi-ap-top-news-tiananmen-square-f850f5db726b4b948b7431a6d158a453?fbclid=IwAR0RyudtLqVUnE7cRJwa4GXRlWYLGSki5qLkmldIztNKwmg8Q9eFcorTsY4
- “Want a Lesson in How People Judge Women’s Voices? Start a Podcast” – Huffington Post (2015): https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-people-judge-womens-voices-podcasts_n_55a01ae9e4b0a47ac15c893c
- From Me Too to Rice Bunny: How Social Media Users are Campaigning in China. https://theconversation.com/from-metoo-to-ricebunny-how-social-media-users-are-campaigning-in-china-90860
- Green, Duncan. “An antidote to futility: Why academics (and students) should take blogging / social media seriously.” Blogs.lse.ac.uk, 26 October, 2015. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/10/26/why-academics-and-students-should-take-blogging-social-media-seriously/
- Houck, Brenna. “Farmers Are Using Twitter to Document the Disastrous Effects of Climate Change on Crops.” Eater.com, 29 May, 2019. https://www.eater.com/2019/5/29/18644596/farmers-are-using-noplant19-to-document-climate-change
- Lei, Cecilia. “Majority of Black Americans Value Social Media for Amplifying Lesser-Known Issues.” NPR.org, 5 August, 2018. https://www.npr.org/2018/08/05/635127389/majority-of-black-americans-value-social-media-for-amplifying-lesser-known-issue
- Piper, Kelsey. “Hyped-up science is a problem. One clever Twitter account is pushing back.” Vox.com, 15 June, 2019. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/15/18679138/nutrition-health-science-mice-news