Thursday, May 13th, 4:00 PM – 5:20 PM EST
Panel organizer: Diego Pascual y Cabo (University of Florida)
Diego Pascual y Cabo, Assistant Professor of Hispanic Linguistics, Director of Spanish Heritage Language Program & Research Lab, University of Florida
Diego Pascual y Cabo is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Linguistics and Director of the Spanish Heritage Language Program at the University of Florida.
His primary research interest is heritage speaker bilingualism, which he studies from a variety of perspectives: formal linguistic, socio-affective, and pedagogical. Over the past few years, his work on this topic has appeared in several edited volumes and scholarly journals, such as Applied Linguistics, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Heritage Language Journal, Hispania, and Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics (among others). Diego is the editor of “Advances in Spanish as a Heritage Language” (published in 2016), and coeditor–along with Dr. Julio Torres–of “Aproximaciones al español como lengua de herencia”, which will be published in 2021.
As testimony of his professional commitment to our field, in 2014, he founded the Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language, which has since become an annual event bringing together researchers, scholars, and practitioners (K-12 and higher education) from all over North America. Since 2019, he has been Editor-in-Chief of the Spanish Heritage Language Journal.
Maria M. Carreira, Professor of Spanish, California State University, Long Beach;
Co-Director, National Heritage Language Resource Center
Maria Carreira is a professor of Spanish linguistics at California State University, Long Beach and Co-director of the National Heritage Language Resource Center, at UCLA. Her recent book-length publications include a co-edited Routledge Handbook on heritage language education around the world (2018); four co-authored college-level Spanish textbooks; Voces: Latino Students on Life in the United States, a book about the experiences of U.S. Latino youth; and co-author of Teacher training for the 21st century: Teaching heritage languages [Online course for language teachers, created through a grant from STARTALK]. Dr. Carreira has been a keynote speaker at many conferences and has lectured extensively on language teaching at many venues. She is also contributing to the America’s Language Initiative, as a Language Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she is the representative for higher education on the ACTFL Board for 2021.
Kim Potowski, Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago
Dr. Kim Potowski is Professor of Spanish linguistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with courtesy appointments in Latin American and Latino Studies and in Curriculum and Instruction. Her research focuses on Spanish in the U.S., including factors that influence language maintenance as well as connections between language, education, and identity. She began directing her campus’ Spanish Heritage Language Program in 2002 and is the founding director of its summer study abroad program in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her advocacy for the value of dual language education in promoting bilingualism and biliteracy was the focus of her 2013 TEDx talk “No child left monolingual.” She has authored and edited over 12 books including El español de los Estados Unidos, Heritage language teaching: Research and practice, Language diversity in the USA and Language and identity in a dual immersion school, as well as the Spanish textbooks Gramática y variación social and Conversaciones escritas. She is currently co-authoring a methods book for Spanish heritage language teachers in Spanish with veteran high school teacher Alfredo Varela.
Damián Vergara Wilson, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of New Mexico
Damián Vergara Wilson is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Spanish as a Heritage Language program at the University of New Mexico’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese. His research areas include sociolinguistics, usage-based analysis of language, and SHL. His recent work covers topics such as Perceptual Dialectology in New Mexico, Critical Language Awareness, and Ideologies in the SHL instructional context.
Moderator: Diego Pascual y Cabo, University of Florida
Chat monitor: Lorena Paz López, The Graduate Center, CUNY
