Keynote Speakers
Dr. Mike Mena
Assistant Professor
Brooklyn College, City University of New York
September 30, 2023 (In-person)
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Dr. Mike Mena is a Mexican American researcher and Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY. Mike focuses on the ideological perceptions of race and language in the context of American education and was awarded the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship (2021) to conduct his research. He has published in Language in Society and Educational Linguistics. As an educational technologist and public intellectual, Mike’s award-winning YouTube channel, The Social Life of Language, serves as a contemporary and activist pedagogical model to those interested in producing accessible and engaging educational content designed to engage wider publics, with special attention paid to reaching students of color as well as promoting the work of marginalized scholars. For his service and media expertise, he was awarded the Society for Linguistic Anthropology’s “Intellectually Informed Public Activism” Award (2019) and the Carnegie Educational Technologist Fellowship (2021).
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Dr. Carmen Tafolla
Professor Emeritus
The University of Texas at San Antonio
September 30, 2023 (In-person) and October 7, 2023 (Online)
Dr. Carmen Tafolla, a native of San Antonio's West-Side barrios, was told by her junior school principal that she might have the potential to make it all the way to high school. She did, and followed that with a BA, an MA, a Ph.D., and several degrees honoris causa. Tafolla was the 2015 State Poet Laureate of Texas and in 2018, became the first Latina to become President of the Texas Institute of Letters. A Professor Emerita of Bicultural Bilingual Studies at UTSA, she is a pioneer in Mexican-American Studies, Chicana Literature, and transformative bilingual children's literature. Her publications range from poetry to short stories, fiction to non-fiction, and scholarly works to children's picture books. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Americas Award, two Tomas Rivera awards, a Charlotte Zolotow, and six International Latino Book Awards.
This month, September 2023, Penguin Random House released her latest book, Warrior Girl, a middle-grade novel-in-verse set in San Antonio's West Side and told in the voice of a courageous young 12-year-old Chicana who survives racism, her father's deportation, economic difficulties, and a pandemic, in the process of reclaiming her name, her language, her culture, and her right to celebrate those things SHE considers sacred. It is Tafolla's 40th book. |
Presented by:
Teachers of English for Equity and Diversity (TEED)
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