EVENTS: 090303/Transfronterizo Talk by Ana Celia Zentella

Ana Celia Zentella: Tuesday March 3, 2009 at UNC Chapel Hill

Tuesday March 3, 2009 Ana Celia Zentella, anthro-political linguist and Professor Emerita in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego, will give a presentation, free and open to everyone, entitled "Transfronterizo Talk: Policentric Identities and Conflicting Constructions of Bilingualism along the Tijuana-San Diego Border." The talk will start at 6 PM in the University Room of Hyde Hall, Institute for the Arts & Humanities, UNC – Chapel Hill campus. A Q & A and a book-signing will follow the presentation.

Hyde Hall: http://www.planroom.unc.edu/gis/Mapbody/index.asp?path=detail.asp/q/page=978840/a/bldg=055

Biography:

Ana Celia Zentella, Professor Emerita in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego, identifies herself as an anthro-political linguist. She is a central figure in the study of US Latino varieties of Spanish and English, language socialization, bilingualism, “Spanglish,” and “English-only” laws. Her ethnography Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican children in New York (Blackwell, 1997) won the 1998 Book Award of the British Association of Applied Linguistics and the 1999 Book Prize of the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists (US). Her edited collection Building on Strength: Language and Literacy in Latino Families and Communities (Teachers College Press, 2005) has been acclaimed by leading scholars and is widely used as a text in the United States and Europe. She is currently editing Multilingual San Diego: Portraits in Language Loss and Revitalization.

In 1997, Prof. Zentella was inducted into the Hunter College Hall of Fame, and in the same year she was honored by the Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger for her “leading role in building appreciation for language diversity and respect for language rights.” Her latest research with “transfronterizos,” students who live and study in Tijuana and San Diego, breaks new anthro-political linguistic ground by documenting bilingual practices and ideologies that challenge “immigrant alien” discourses.