You are invited to a virtual book launch for Dr. David Gramling’s latest book, “The Invention of Multilingualism” (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
There is one claim driving this book, though anyone can certainly read along well enough without endorsing it. That primary claim, which does not go without saying today in and beyond Applied Linguistics, is that “multilingualism” is a meaningful and capacious idea, one with a promising, tumultuous, and flawed present – and a future worth caring for vigilantly in research and public life. Despite its terminological vulnerabilities and its technological instrumentalizations, “multilingualism” is usefully able to encompass complex, divergent, and sometimes opposing experiences and ideas. It does so in a wide array of planetary contexts – fictitious and real, political and social, North and South, colonial and decolonial, individual and collective, oppressive and liberatory, embodied and prosthetic, present and past.
The event will feature Gramling’s introduction of the book, a conversation between the author and Dr. Ervin Malakaj about some of its key features, and will be concluded with a Q&A session. You can find out more about the book here: https://cup.org/3r7MPzl
This event will take place online via Zoom and requires registration. To register, follow this link: https://ubc.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5IscOqprDgtHtTm68j6752BgT3-FvdAqKas
The event is hosted by the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia.
Featured image: Cambridge University Press
