Webinar: Writing for the public: Translating academics to activism

This webinar explores the ways in which applied linguists use their academic expertise to create scholarship for audiences beyond academia. Public scholarship can take the form of writing an op-ed, creating a video abstract, a blog, or creating content for distribution on social media. For academics who care deeply about the implications of language policies and practices for marginalized language speakers, this type of scholarship is essential, and at the same time we face challenges within the bounds of our institutions and our fields. Our invited speakers, Suzanne García-Mateus, Assistant Professor of Bilingual Education at California State University Monterey Bay, and Sabrina Fluegel, Doctoral Candidate at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, will explore the importance of public scholarship, how it is done, and how to overcome the challenges they may face in the process. Suzanne will share her role in writing for the public as a scholar, mother, and activist in community/solidarity with BIPOC communities. She has translated her academic publications for the general public via Op-eds, a brief and her blog, Interpretations of a Bilingual Life. As a former bilingual educator, she feels strongly about speaking with young children about social justice issues related to her research. One way she has done this is through a co-authored children’s book titled, Vitamina T for Tacos. In her presentation, she will share about her writing process for the general public and the importance of using her voice to continue to bring awareness about bilingualism and bilingual education in the U.S. Sabrina is an entrepreneurial-minded scholar, currently writing and piloting a small-business development internship for PhD students passionate about applying social justice research to industries beyond academia. Through her business, The Multicultural Media Company, she works to bring her research on the exploitative and marginalizing language of social media to the production of authentically inclusive multicultural media. By collaborating with other BIPOC-owned businesses and organizations, she creates media content to represent the diverse cultures, voices, and work of historically marginalized communities, such as her recent work with the BIPOC Foodways Alliance. In her presentation, Sabrina will speak about her process of promoting scholarship. She will demonstrate how she uses modern-day advertising approaches to translate academic articles into various digital media formats, such as her video abstract published on the homepage of Foreign Language Annals. Participants will have the opportunity to reflect on their own motivations for public scholarship, the audiences they want to reach, and how they can begin to engage in this work.