World Englishes (WEs) as a field challenges “native”/“nonnative” speaker distinctions and celebrates the multivariance of English around the world. It also acknowledges the legacies of British imperialism, ongoing linguistic and cultural colonization, and contemporary globalization in the spread of English. (Please click on the image to the right to download the full .pdf version of our call for submissions.)
This interdisciplinary field bridges postcolonial theory, applied linguistics, creative writing, composition pedagogy and more. As a committee, we are interested in how WEs approaches enrich the Writing and Communication Program’s commitment to student learning through its multimodal approach to communication. With a focus on how users negotiate or “shuttle between” multiple languages and cultures in specific contexts, WEs are deeply rhetorical, and knowledge of English varieties across communities, professions, regions, or countries is invaluable to the citizens of our increasingly global society.
We seek submissions to our website in the following content areas:
Reflections on Teaching Global Literature and General-Interest Articles
Reviews
Interviews
Reflections on Teaching Global Literature and General-Interest Articles
Topic: For the reflections, any text (book, film, video, podcast, etc.) that you have taught at Georgia Tech or elsewhere would work as the focus for a teaching reflection as long as it relates to global, transnational, multilingual or translingual literature, or World Englishes. We also publish short general-interest articles on topics related to World Englishes that include research and analysis.
Length: 600-1200 words
Title: Your choice. Academic or catchy is good.
Tone: These reflections and articles are for academics and teachers, but they should also be accessible to a broader audience as well, so please do not use many theoretical terms or jargon. You can even have a more casual narrative style if it fits your rhetorical goals.
Sources: If you would like to incorporate a little of the critical conversation about the texts you write about, feel free to do so, but remember this is primarily a reflective piece rather than a full-blown academic article. We encourage you to use passages from the text you are reflecting on. We also encourage, but do not require, you to think about making your reflections or articles multimodal.
Editorial Process: When you submit your piece to gtworldenglishgescommittee@gmail.com, we will read your submission, make some notes, ask some questions, and send it back to you for your review. Once we have gone through this process and the piece is complete to your and our satisfaction, we will publish the reflection on the World Englishes website. We encourage you to read some past reflections and articles to get an idea of what other people have written on.
Prompt (reflection): If your article focuses on a specific text that you have taught, the following questions will hopefully focus your thinking as you reflect on your chosen text and how you taught it. The way you structure your piece is up to you. Do not feel that you need to respond to all these questions, but at least touch on the ones you feel will benefit other teachers—and consequently students—the most.
- Which global or multicultural text will you be reflecting on? What is it about? Provide a brief synopsis. Do not assume that people have read it. When did you teach it?
- What is your favorite part or passage from the text? Why? How does it intersect with some of the text’s key themes? What are those themes?
- How did/do you teach this text? Be specific. How did/do your students respond? Have you had any specific interesting, exciting, or surprising experiences with teaching this text and its themes?
- What are some of the challenges you have experienced in teaching this text? How have you overcome these challenges? What would you do differently now?
- What do you see as the broader impact of studying this text? If students only take away one thing from reading and discussing it, what do you hope that is? Be specific.
- How can studying this text (and global literatures more generally) contribute to the professionalization and training of your students, even—or especially—students whose majors are not connected to the humanities?
Reviews
Do you still read for fun? We used to and still try to occasionally, and when we find something we like that intersects with our mission or contains relevant topics of interest, we publish reviews of those books on our website. We primarily review books, but we are also open to reviews of recent films as well, as long as the film and the review connect with the kinds of topics that the World Englishes Committee engages with.
Length: 600-1200 words
Requirements: Please include a full citation for the piece you are reviewing (at the top of the piece) and citations for any other text you quote in your review (in a works cited page).
Additionally, this is an academic genre, but please refrain from using a lot of theoretical language or jargon. We like accessibility and promote it whenever we can. Feel free to read some of our reviews to get a sense of our style and the range of works we have reviewed.
Interviews
If you know someone who does work, academic or otherwise, related to the field of World Englishes, linguistics, translation, global literature, ESL/TESOL, etc., let us know. We would love to contact them for an interview. Even better, we would love for you to interview them and then publish your interview on our site. While we primarily publish written transcripts of interviews and email interviews, we also encourage interviewers to provide an audio version or clips of their interviews along with a transcript.
How and When to Submit: We have a rolling deadline for everything we publish, so send a query to gtworldenglishescommittee@gmail.com or talk to a member of the World Englishes Committee if you are interested:
Alok Amatya [alok.amatya@lmc.gatech.edu]
Jeff Howard [jeffrey.howard@lmc.gatech.edu]
Eric Lewis [eric.lewis@lmc.gatech.edu]
Kendra Slayton [kslayton3@gatech.edu]