All societies, and especially diverse ones like the US, are multilingual; translingual communication mediates life and professions and makes knowledge grow and work. Yet, myths about language set up barriers, inhibiting free exchange and application of knowledge. These myths include the ideas that knowledge must only be produced, can only be exchanged, and is applied best through dominant languages—damaging assumptions that adversely affect many domains, but particularly knowledge work by academics across the disciplines. Harm caused by this suppression of languages has been long documented in the literature in language, writing, and communication studies. Drawing on the research and his own efforts to counter language ideologies, Dr. Shyam Sharma will present a framework and share practical strategies, showing how transcending monolingual worldviews (and mobilizing all languages) helps academe and its scholars to magnify the impact of the knowledge they produce, both transnationally and within US academe and society. 

The event is free and open to the public. Campus visitors and members of the public must adhere to Cornell’s public health requirements for events, which include wearing masks while indoors and providing proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID-19 test.

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About the speaker

Dr. Shyam Sharma is Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at the State University of New York in Stony Brook. His scholarship and teaching focus on issues of language and language policy/politics, cross-cultural rhetoric, international students and education, and writing in the disciplines. His works have appeared in a variety of venues, including College Composition and Communication, JAC, Across the Disciplines, Composition Studies, NCTE, Series in Writing and Rhetoric, Hybrid Pedagogy, Kairos, and Professional and Academic English (IELTS SIG). His last book (Routledge, 2018), based on data gathered by visiting 20 US universities plus data collected distantly from 15 more, offers theoretical and practical pathways for the advancement of Writing Studies at the graduate level, using writing support for international graduate students as a major intervention in graduate education. His next book analyzes the foundations of international education in the US in the decades after the Second World War, showing fault lines and potential futures by analyzing trajectories in the past few decades.

Co-sponsored by the College of Arts & Sciences; the Graduate School Offices of Inclusion and Student Engagement, and Future Faculty and Academic Careers; the Office of Postdoctoral Studies; the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs; the English Language Support Office; the Language Resource Center; and the South Asia Program.