OCAD U 2022 Academic Year Welcome | Keynote Panel
Decolonizing and Anti-Racist Practice through Linguistic Justice
Wednesday, August 31 | 11:00am - 12:30pm
Online via zoom
All OCAD U students, faculty and staff welcome!
Reflecting key objectives in OCAD U’s new Academic and Strategic Plan, this year's Academic Year Welcome (AYW) keynote panel Decolonizing and Anti-Racist Practice through Linguistic Justice explores resonances between conversations about respectfully integrating Indigenous languages and culture(s) into academic spaces and anti-racist and decolonizing pedagogies that center multilingual students, faculty and staff; speakers of non-privileged varieties of English; and multilingual students who are English Language Learners (ELLs). We will explore how our commitments to decolonize education necessitate linguistic justice and the implications this has for OCAD U as an institution and for all members of the community.
The panel brings together three diverse Ontario-based teachers and language scholars, Shirley Williams (Trent University), Sheila Batacharya (University of Toronto Mississauga), and Shahriar Mirshahidi (OCAD University), who share their lived experiences, explore strategies for incorporating linguistic justice into the process of decolonizing education and invite the university community to take these ideas up in their pedagogy for the new academic year. On the following day, Anishinaabemowin language teacher and Elder Liz Osawamick will lead an online language learning workshop for faculty and staff.
The keynote panel is open to the entire OCAD U community including students, faculty and staff. Outlook calendar invites have gone out to all faculty and staff from the Office of the VPAP. If you did not receive the invite and would like to attend the talk, please email fcdc@ocadu.ca.
ASL interpretation will be provided by Canadian Hearing Services.
Keynote Panelists:
Shirley Williams is a highly celebrated and cherished Elder who is deeply passionate about Indigenous knowledge and language revitalization. She is a member of the Bird Clan and is of the Ojibway and Odawa First Nations of Canada. Her Anishinaabe name is Migizi ow Kwe, meaning Eagle Woman. She was born and raised at Wikwemikong, Manitoulin Island and attended St. Joseph’s Residential School in Spanish, Ontario as a child. She received her BA in Native Studies at Trent University and her Native Language Instructors Program diploma from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay. In addition, Shirley received her Master’s Degree from York University in Environmental Studies. In June of 2004, Shirley retired from the Indigenous Studies Department at Trent University and now holds the title, Professor Emeritus.
Sheila Batacharya - Sheila has been teaching university and college courses since 2007, and this experience inspired her to specialize in English language learning and teaching. Sheila became a certified member of TESL Ontario in 2018 and completed a Master of Arts degree in Applied Linguistics at York University in 2020. She holds a Ph.D. in Adult Education and Community Development from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. As of July 1, 2022, Sheila has been a full-time Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream at the Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy (ISUP), University of Toronto Mississauga.
Sheila’s academic work in Women and Gender Studies, Sociology and Equity Studies, and Adult Education continues to provide her with an interdisciplinary foundation for her teaching and research. Her publications include two co-edited volumes, Reena Virk: Critical Perspectives on a Canadian Murder (2010) and Sharing Breath: Embodied Learning and Decolonization (2018), and she presented Watershed Memory, Drainpipe Story (2018) at The Work of Wind Air Land Sea, Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga. Recently, Sheila co-chaired ISUP Colloquium 2022: Race, Linguistic Justice, and Critical Approaces to Communicative Competence.
Shahriar Mirshahidi - As an applied linguist and language educator, Shahriar's research and pedagogy focus on translingual approaches to meaning-making and transcultural dispositions. He strives for decolonizing language education through pushing against regimes of normativity which have dominated our conceptualization of effective communication, particularly in academia. At OCAD University, Shahriar works with the English for Art & Design (EAD) Program where he and his colleagues support multilingual students in gaining their voice and agency to engage critically with their creative practice. Prior to joining OCAD U, he served as Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Pennsylvania State University where he researched English for Specific Purposes and Intercultural Communication. He holds a doctoral degree from Oklahoma State University in Applied Linguistics with a focus on international teaching assistants' education and assessment.