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Congratulations to our newest PhD graduate, Dr. Chitra Karki! Chitra's dissertation is titled "A Decentering Other of the Academy: Disrupting the Ordinariness of Racism and English Native Speakerism in Canadian University Education, and in the Study and Teaching of Writing in Canadian Writing Classrooms." His supervisor was Dr. Frankie Condon and readers were Dr. Jay Dolmage and Dr. Barbara Schmenk. His external examiner was Dr. Tika Lamsal, and the internal/external examiner was Dr. Kim Nguyen. His defence was chaired by Dr. Henry Shum.

Abstract

This study is a part of my decentering/decolonial journey—the journey intended to identify, unravel/unsettle, and challenge the nexus of politics and poetics of whiteness, white supremacy, racism, linguistic imperialism, and other forms of injustices in Canadian University education writ large, and in particular, in the study of writing and the teaching of writing in Canada. It has become increasingly evident that the nexus of the discriminatory practices has negatively affected upon students/teachers/staff and other people of colour. Historically, the nexus is under theorized, under-researched and under-addressed in Canadian writing studies and writing instructional practices because of the continuing legacy of colonial ideology, systemic racism, and white supremacist thinking among mainstream writing scholars. Majority of mainstream Canadian scholars’ works reveal that there is a sustained tendency to maintain and perform silence, touristic gaze or lip-service when it comes to dealing with some of the central issues such as the politics of whiteness, racism, white supremacy, Eurocentrism, and linguistic imperialism and their toxic effects upon the Othered citizenry in the field in Canada.

While mainstream Canadian writing scholars have widely discussed about the marginalization of writing studies as a field and have collectively advocated for enhancing and uplifting the emerging disciplinary identity of the field, they have however not demonstrated the similar interest and willingness in addressing problems of ordinariness of racism, linguistic imperialism, white supremacy, native speakerist ideology which have historically undergirded the epistemic foundations of the field and the institutions they have been housed in. In other words, within the mainstream discourse community of scholars in writing field, there is a ‘western’/native speakerist/Eurocentric tendency to tell a single story or a single narrative that befits and benefits their own discourse community. The onus, then, is left upon the everyday marginalized students, professors, researchers, and their white allies to theorize the nexus through decentering practices.

Nevertheless, studying and addressing the nexus of intersecting discriminations underpinning Canadian (university) education in general and the teaching and learning of writing studies practices in Canada, needs intersectional approach consisting of but not limited to stories of the racialized experiences, language, and history. Combining multiple areas of investigation would give a unique perspective to view the systemic and invisibilized discriminations in the discipline. So, in the effort to decenter or decolonize, I have taken up Aja Martinez’s hybridizing approach with which to mesh (Vershawn Young) stories with other discursive approaches including postcolonial theory, and other analytical measures. Moving on, forging our stories of lived experiences or our hybridizing methods also have limitations and challenges to face in academia when forms of discriminations take more sophisticated or cryptic turn as artificial intelligence of whiteness hold a firm grip in academia or elsewhere. Our collective efforts should not be exhausted but should be unending….to face those old and emerging challenges.