Shalini Shankar gives talk on global intersections of language, caste and race revealed in study of Gen Z at the spelling bee
On Wednesday, April 6, 4:00-6:00 pm, Dr. Shalini Shankar from Northwestern University will be joining us at CU Boulder to present her work on language and race in the American Spelling Bee. Her lecture will take place in the Center for British and Irish Studies Room on the 5th floor of Norlin Library. The event is free and open to the public. Catered reception to follow!
Global Intersections of Language, Caste, and Race:
A Case Study of Generation Z at the Spelling Bee
Dr. Shalini Shankar, Northwestern University
Wednesday, April 6, 4:00-6:00 pm
Catered reception to follow
Abstract
Since 2009, an Indian American speller has won every Scripps National Spelling Bee, until 2021. This year, the Bee crowned its first Black American champion, Louisianan Zaila Avant-Garde. This is remarkable because this hallowed educational contest has largely been inaccessible to Black children due to generations of segregation, violence, and racism. How did Avant-Garde break through, and how does her win connect to Indian Americans? In this talk I juxtapose the significance of caste as a system of inequality in the United States with the way it functions in the Indian diaspora. Drawing on data collected at the National Spelling Bee, I explore how upper-caste Indian American elite spellers have developed extensive training and coaching networks that are impacting Gen Z youth beyond their ethnic communities, potentially presenting opportunities where none previously existed. Despite these successes, South Asian American participants and winners have been targets of racist and xenophobic sentiment for dominating an “American” contest, a dynamic that further complicates their perceived success in this educational contest and creates underexplored parallels with Black Americans.
About the author
Shalini Shankar is the Martin J. and Patricia Koldyke Outstanding Teaching Professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. She is a linguistic and sociocultural anthropologist whose ethnographic research focuses on race, youth, media, language use, and semiotics in Asian diasporas. She is the author of several books, including Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal about Generation Z’s New Path to Success (Basic Books, 2019); Advertising Diversity: Ad Agencies and the Creation of Asian American Consumers (Duke UP, 2015); Desi land: Teen Culture, Class, and Success in Silicon Valley (Duke UP, 2008), and with Jillian Cavanaugh, co-editor of Language and Materiality: Theoretical and Ethnographic Explorations (Cambridge UP, 2017). Shankar is a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow, the recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Spencer Foundation for Research Related to Education, and has appeared in numerous media, including NPR, BBC, MSNBC, CNN, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and the LA Times.
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