Image Jia Xin Gu
Please join us for the first UBC Symposium on Linguaphobia, Linguistic Indifference, and the Monolingual University. This symposium is a day-long exploration as part of Arts Multilingual Week, including workshops, discussions, talks and lovely food from Salishan catering.
We will explore students experiences of linguaphobia, the prevalence of linguistic indifference in many of our research disciplines and institutional spaces, and the looming prospect of an (Anglo-)monolingual university of the future. We will finish the day with a policy brainstorm that might lead us into a “Strategic Plan for/with Languages” to begin to effectively counteract these phenomena.
Open to Faculty, Staff, Students, and the Public. Teachers, please bring your classes, and encourage them to participate!
This event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Strategic Equity and Anti-Racism Enhancement Fund, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council #LLIMU Insight Grant.
Featured Lectures and Speakers
“Layers of Fear: Arabic in a Monolingual University”
Dr. Nesrine Basheer, UBC Asian Studies, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Arabic: Nesrine Basheer is an applied linguist and a specialist in teaching Arabic as a foreign language (TAFL). Her research interests include the teaching and assessment of writing and the multidialectal approach to teaching Arabic.
“Linguistic In/Justice in our Classrooms”
Dr. Moberley Luger, UBC English, Associate Professor of Teaching and Chair of the Coordinated Arts Program: Her research has generally focused on contemporary American poetry and its relation to crisis and memory; more recently, her scholarship has turned toward pedagogy and she is exploring pedagogies of poetry, considering methods for incorporating cultural studies of poetry into the classroom.
“”Ah, Your Accent is Cute!” How Listeners Produce Linguistic Insecurity”
Dr. Marie-Eve Bouchard, UBC French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Assistant Professor of French: Dr. Bouchard holds a PhD degree in linguistics from New York University, where she specialized in both sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. She is an anthropologically oriented sociolinguist, and enjoys the blurred space between these two fields.
How to Attend
This event will be held in-person on October 29, 2025 in the Peña Room (room 302), located in Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. This event begins at 9:00am, and ends at 3:30pm.
For food and ordering purposes, please RSVP here. For those interested in listening in remotely via Zoom, please indicate so in your RSVP.
