Big Hominid made an image for this blog, and I really like it. I think it captures the spirit of the blog well:) 
It also reminds me of my, uh, dissertation. I’m working on bilingualism/bilingual subjects in Asian American literature and Latino literature in the postwar era, 1960s-1990s to be more precise. I first got interested in the topic because of the way bilingualism has been medicalized and pathologized in the U.S. People thought that bilingualism induced retardation (i.e. it messes up your cognitive development) and speech pathologies. It has to do mostly with the immigration history and the racialization of certain immigrant groups, because bilingualism, although it is not qualified, refers to immigrant bilingualism (as opposed to elite bilingualism).
So I’m interested in all aspects of language and psychology: language loyalties, language maintenance, language disavowal, loss of language, language “families”, the racialization and medicalization of bilingualism, translation, cultural brokering, etc.
Word on the street has that the noted scholar on Hemispheric studies, Kirsten Silva-Gruez is working on an exciting new book on the history of the Spanish language in the U.S. I think my interest in postwar bilingual education overlaps with part of what she’s doing. Another noted scholar on Asian American studies and comparative ethnic studies, Mae Ngai is also working on language, education, and assimilation in a somewhat different context. She came for a workshop today (paper available here: it is a draft and she asks that it not be circulated or cited). The title of the papers is “Brokering Inclusion,” and she looks at this one particular Chinese family in the late nineteenth century in California who were civil rights advocates and also engaged in some shady brokering business that made them take advantage of Chinese immigrants less acculturated than themselves. I love the way she challenges the standardized narrative of ethnic succession, which argues for greater inclusion for successive generations of immigrants, and tries to look at how exclusion and inclusion work together in this case. The implications of her argument, I think, go well beyond this paper.
The day didn’t start out so well, though. I broke a cup that I really like:(
Friends have told me that this happens when you embark on your dissertation, but I’ve been feeling pretty lonely lately. I don’t know why. So I end up hanging out with people more than I ever used to. While being bugged by the thought that I should be working . . . . And yes, I’m going to see the movie 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days tomorrow.
