Keynote-speaker

Biography

Dr. Claudia Holguín Mendoza (Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) is an Associate Professor of Spanish linguistics at the University of California, Riverside. She specializes in the sociolinguistics of race in the Mexican borderlands and Greater Mexico as well as critical pedagogies for the teaching of Spanish as a heritage language. She publishes in both English and Spanish and her work has appeared in journals such as International Multilingual Research Journal, Hispania, Studies in Hispanic & Lusophone Linguistics, Identities, and Frontera Norte.

Education

Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (2011)

M.A. New Mexico State University (2004)

B.A. University of Texas (1998)

Abstract

In this presentation, Dr. Holguín Mendoza describes the design and implementation of a comprehensive critical literacy and Critical Language Awareness (CLA)- oriented Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) program that deconstructs and questions sociopolitical hierarchies, challenges the subordination of SHL students’ linguistic practices and elevates students’ voices and agency. She underscores the importance of building critical SHL programs on three interrelated foundations: stakeholder engagement, curriculum, and assessment. A truly comprehensive critical literacy and CLA oriented program must integrate critical teacher training with a wide stakeholder engagement that serves to build on strengths from across the institution and to position the SHL program as a promoter of Latinx student success. Sociolinguistic justice and antiracist transformation through literacy occur when we critically understand how language and sociocultural access and expertise are socially constructed. Finally, Dr. Holguín Mendoza describes assessment tools that have demonstrated how comprehensive critical literacy programs have proven to be a valuable model for language education and student empowerment.