Auto-ethnographic Narratives of
Traveling through Languages and Cultures

Co-sponsored by the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and FAHSS
Date: Wednesday, February 26th, 2020, 12:00-1:00 PM
Location: Wang Center, Lecture Hall 1

Watch: Auto-ethnographic Narratives of Traveling through Languages and Cultures

Lecture Abstract

Through a series of vignettes, this presentation examines autoethnography as a method of inquiry to locate the intersections of travel, language learning, power, and identity (re)construction. Drawing on personal experiences and narratives from her book, Language Crossings: Negotiating the Self in a Multicultural World, Karen Ogulnick identifies how language learners travel through different personas as they move in and out of linguistic exchanges and culturally imposed perceptions of self. The author explores the potential of autoethnographic approaches of sociolinguistic research to transcend boundaries and arrive at new understandings of the transformative nature of travel and language learning.

About the Speaker: Karen Ogulnick

Dr. Karen Ogulnick has been directing and teaching in the TESOL/Bilingual Education program at Long Island University for over 25 years. Her areas of expertise include TESOL, Bilingual and Multicultural Education, Second Language and Literacy acquisition. She is the author of Onna Rashiku (Like a Woman): The Diary of a Language Learner in Japan, and editor of Language Crossing: Negotiating the Self in a Multicultural World, and has published a number of scholarly articles on topics dealing language acquisition and identity in multicultural contexts. As a Fulbright Scholar and Specialist TEFL, she has conducted teacher training in Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Burma. In addition, she has taught English in secondary school and universities in Japan for 4 years.