Contact
ABOUT
Teaching/Research Interests:
My central interest is literacy socialization as a cultural model, with a particular focus on how scriptal and calligraphic traditions inform modern literacy and orthographic practices in Iranian communities across time and space. I have done ethnographic research on one of these communities in Los Angeles. My research identifies an intrinsic linkage both ideological and pedagogical between khoshnevisi, “elegant writing” calligraphic traditions and modern literacy practices in a Persian heritage school. This research views mashq or “the practice of copying” with its emphasis on the form of writing as one of the central sites for the socialization of Iranian American children into the aesthetics of Persio-Arabic orthography and its associated ethics. I bring this interest in the intersection of language, education and culture to the courses I teach. I am also keenly interested in linguistic and cultural diversity and rights. Because of my extensive experience and involvement in applied linguistics, I teach a variety of courses dealing with different aspects of linguistics.
Discipline
Linguistics
Sub Areas
Ethnography
Education
Folklore/Folklife
Diaspora/Refugee Studies
Language Acquisition
Translation
Geographic Areas of Interest
Kurdistan
Iran
Specialties
Language And Literacy Socialization, Language Iden
Languages
Kurdish (native)
Persian (native)
English (advanced)
Education
PhD
| 2006
| Applied Linguistics
| UCLA
MA Cantab.
| 1997
| Linguistics
| California State University, Long Beach
Abstracts
The role of heritage language in identity construction among Diasporic Kurds in the United States
Kobani, Literary Hermeneutics of Kurdish Resistance Literature
The City of Kermanshan, the Site of Cultural Rebellion and Rebirth
