Talking about race without using the r-word (but wishing we were): Part I

This week’s post is brought to you by BILD member Dr. Alison Crump and two guest bloggers Dr. Kristine Sudbeck and Korrine Byrnes.

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Over the past year, I (Alison) have had the rather surprising and humbling experience of being contacted by people I have never met, who have in common that they read my LangCrit article and have found it useful for their own work on language, race, and identity. This has started many interesting conversations with scholars, both emerging and more seasoned, about how a LangCrit (Critical Language and Race Theory) lens is informing their research. It is so exciting to welcome some of this conversation to the BILD blog. First, some background on this co-blogging team.

“De Pays de Galles à Montréal”

The BILD Research Community is very pleased to welcome this week’s guest blogger, Sara Orwig. She is currently a PhD student at the School of Welsh in Cardiff, thanks to a scholarship from y Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol. Her PhD work bridges the study of literature and linguistics, and she is examining code switching in Welsh, French-Canadian and English literature. She recently visited Montreal as part of her research, thanks to a scholarship from the International Council for Canadian studies. Find out more about Sara on her LinkedIn profile or follow her on Twitter (@20fachgoch).

If you can’t be bothered to read my thesis, read this instead (by Michaela Salmon)

A few weeks ago, Lauren Godfrey-Smith wrote about her experience with 3MT. As Lauren describes, getting your PhD dissertation across to a broad audience in only three minutes is no mean feat but the challenge ultimately helps to clarify the content. Distilling a complex document into a small digestible chunk is the best and most viable way to sharing it with an audience beyond our cohort of students and academics.

Hello! My name is… (by Sumanthra Govender)

In a recent conversation with a family friend about first names, she made a very poignant comment about hers; if she hadn’t changed her first name to what she currently goes by, she would have a very different view of herself. She was teased by other kids for her given name and she also really didn’t like it. It didn’t suit her; it wasn’t her. When she was old enough, she legally changed her name to a shortened version of her given name, and that’s who she is.