Speaker
Description
In English language education (ELE) and literature education in outer and expanding circle (Kachru, 1986) contexts, modern/colonial legacies have initiated and sustained monolingual bias and logocentrism. In Northeast Asia, nationalism and neoliberalism contribute to these dynamics, limiting the transformative and justice-building potentials of ELE and literature education. While many educators work in justice-centered ways, monolingual and logocentric means can only go so far. Integrating translanguaging and arts-based pedagogy, or ABP (Rhoades, 2022) can “expand the channels” (Rajendram & Tian, 2026, p. 195) for greater complexity and more deeply affirming practice that facilitates boundary crossing and collaborative meaning making. This presentation offers understandings generated from a Japan-based empirical study examining how integrations of translanguaging and arts-based pedagogy facilitate critical explorations of the intersections of language, gender, sexuality, and other embodied dimensions of social location. Engaging with these intersections fosters belonging, affinity, and collaboration that goes beyond national and linguistic borders.