Check it out! Click here for a link to my free, open-access book chapter on "Community College Linguistics for Educational Justice" and list of digital teaching resources. 

About Me. Kuhusu Mimi.

I love the Swahili language! I love science fiction! I'm an inclusion advocate! And ​​I'm always learning.

📌 One of the ways I continue to work on new challenges is through my current appointments as Dean of Social Sciences, Cypress College; Adjunct Lecturer in Linguistics, California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). I teach linguistics as an introduction to language, communication, and meaning. Through my courses, students consider how they can use language as a tool of building community and dismantling structural oppression.
  • During 2021-2022, I was a Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellow for my educational research on closing racial equity gaps in the online teaching of introductory linguistics. You're welcome to check out insights from this open-access research in Inclusion in Linguistics (Oxford University Press). 
  
  • I also contribute as an advisory coach to the grant-funded statewide online pedagogy program, Open For Antiracism, now in its fifth year!
📌 Previously, during 2022-2023, I was a FUSE Executive Fellow, and Workplace Climate and Culture Lead, for the Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office (CEO), and its Anti-Racism, Diversity, and Inclusion (ARDI) Initiative. 
  • Through that project, I developed partnerships with Los Angeles County Human Resources (HR) to implement surveys informed by insights from the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE).
  • In addition, I collaborated with County executives to design and deliver interactive and tailored training on (1) how to diagnose workplace diversity issues, and (2) organize transformational interventions, including equity action plans grounded in policy analysis, disaggregated data, and community engagement.  
Books. ​Vitabu.
My research addresses identity formation and representations of these identities in classrooms, popular media (including Internet memes), and public space. I'm greatly fascinated by the zombie as a metaphor for miscommunication, cultural anxiety, and racialized disempowerment. 

Further drawing upon my own experiences, I also examine the learning of Swahili and Arabic, and the speaking of African American English (also, African American Language - AAL). This touches upon language learning by multilingual adults on study abroad in Tanzania and Jordan, people of African descent in Mexico, and the intersecting politics of identity formation, historical inequity, and language policy in the U.S. and around the world. 

📚 My forthcoming anthropological study is entitled, Zombies Speak Swahili: Race, Sci-fi, and Horror from Mexico to Tanzania and Hollywood (Oxford University Press). Making reference to the uses of Swahili in the survival horror videogame Resident Evil and Hollywood blockbuster film Get Out, I explore zombies and dystopia as metaphors for historical and contemporary experiences of racism, linguistic oppression, (neo)colonialism, and globalization. The book is an ode to viral Black language and global flows in the learning of Swahili.
The Source Magazine: New story on my research in zombie studies and linguistics. Click photo for more.
Click for more on my interview with The Source about tracking inequality through the language of the undead. Photo: Jennifer Weisbord.
 📚 Zombies Speak Swahili centers on the appropriation of Swahili by both African and Western interests, from Disney to Resident Evil and Get Out.

  • In the book, I also introduce numerous examples of Swahili as spoken by non-Tanzanians, Africanists, and learners on study abroad, with the goal of complicating our ideas of who speaks Swahili and why.
  • These narratives become a way of interrogating inequality as it surfaces in race, ethnicity, color, gender, masculinity, and diaspora among transnational speakers and learners of Swahili in Mexico, Tanzania, and the U.S. 
📚 In 2019, I also co-edited the book, Embodied Difference: Divergent Bodies in Public Discourse (Lexington Press), available now in paperback and digital.
Book cover of Embodied Difference (2019).
A deliberate feminist response to the Trump era, Embodied Difference brings the body politics of everyday life into focus through 10 unique studies of dance and popular culture, speculative fiction, grassroots organizing, mass shootings, and ethical flash points in healthcare policy, technology, and biomedicine. The volume features contributions by humanistic scholars I brought together through the 'Morality, Race, and Body' research network in Philadelphia, beginning in 2016.
Instagram
Educational Background. Maelezo ya Elimu Wangu.
I completed my PhD in Second Language Studies (Applied Linguistics) at Michigan State University in 2013 with specialized training in ethnographic research, statistical analysis, and educational technology. In 2006, I received my BA in Anthropology and Swahili Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. I also hold a certificate, completed in 2008, in Second Language Acquisition and African-Language Pedagogy from the National African Language Resource Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. In February 2020, I completed training in online pedagogy, on Equity and Culturally Responsive Teaching. 
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Muhtasari Kwa Kiswahili (Summary in Swahili).
Katika Chuo cha Santa Monica, mimi ni profesa msaidizi kuzuru wa isimu, ambapo ninafundisha kozi zinahusiana na muundo wa lugha, isimujamii, utamaduni, na utambulisho. Nilikamilisha shahada yangu ya PhD kuhusu masomo ya lugha za kipili (isimu ya kielimu) katika Chuo Kikuu cha Jimbo la Michigan mwaka wa 2013, na nilipokea shahada yangu ya kwanza kutoka Chuo Kikuu cha Washington mjini St. Louis katika uwanja wa anthropolojia na masomo ya Kiswahili mwaka wa 2006. Pia mwaka wa 2008 nilikamilisha shahada kutoka Chuo Kikuu cha Jimbo la Wisconsin mjini Madison, Kituo cha Taifa cha Rasilimali za Lugha za Kiafrika, katika uwanja wa ujifunzaji wa lugha za kipili na ufundishaji wa lugha za Kiafrika. Katika Februari 2020, nilikamilisha fanyamazoezi kuhusu namna ya kufundisha kwa mtandao, hususani Usawa na Kiutamaduni ya Kiitikia.