Care, Emotions and Feminism: What Can They Tell Us about EAP?

Winiarska-Pringle, I. (2023) Care, Emotions and Feminism: What Can They Tell Us about EAP? BALEAP Conference 2023: Caution! EAP under Deconstruction, University of Warwick, UK, 19-21 Apr 2023.

Abstract

In this reading group, we will consider three under-researched concepts of care, emotions and feminism, explored in texts by Tuck (2018), Benesch (2020) and Cerda (2022) respectively, in order to expand theoretical frameworks through which EAP as a field and the work undertaken by its practitioners can be analysed and advanced. All three concepts are largely absent from EAP literature although each has been explored in wider English language and educational research (Tuck,2018, Benesch, 2020, Cerda, 2022). To address this gap, this session offers the attendees a chance to discuss how the concepts relate to each other, to the work and position of EAP practitioners, and to power within EAP centres and wider HEIs. By grouping the three concepts together, the session aims to bring to the fore their socially structured, and therefore often occluded, nature and strengthen the individual argument of each author to make them more visible. Specifically, to challenge the gendering discourses around care and academic labour (Tuck, 2018), to highlight the value of emotions as indicators of structural barriers and a drive for activism (Benesch, 2020) and to promote the ‘disruptive potential’ of feminism for EAP as praxis, theory and a field (Cerda, 2022, p.216). Prior to the session, the participants are encouraged to consider how these concepts manifest themselves in their contexts and the consequences of such manifestations for them, other practitioners and more broadly, the wider field of EAP. This session requires no prior familiarity or expertise in any of the selected concepts. Rather, it hopes to create space for discussing the under-represented perspectives on (and within) EAP and connect practitioners who are interested in the possibilities the three concepts have to offer for their practice, professional development and scholarship. The three texts selected for the reading group session are listed below: Benesch, S. (2020). Emotions and activism: English language teachers' emotion labor as responses to institutional power. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 17(1), 26-41. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2020.1716194 Cerda, Y. (2022). Feminism: Affordances and applications for EAP. In A. Ding & M. Evans (Eds.). Social Theory for English for Academic Purposes: Foundations and Perspectives (pp. 199–219). London,: Bloomsbury Academic. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.lib.gla.ac.uk/10.5040/9781350229198.ch-9 Tuck, J. (2018). "I'm nobody's mum in this university": The gendering of work around student writing in UK higher education. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 32, 32-41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2018.03.006

• Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Winiarska-Pringle, Mrs Iwona
• Authors: Winiarska-Pringle, I.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Modern Languages and Cultures > Language Centre

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