The efforts of non-native English-speaking scholars to publish their research in journals printed in English will be discussed by Mary Jane Curry, assistant professor at the Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, at noon Friday, Feb. 25, on the University of Rochester's River Campus.
With English as the dominant language for publishing in almost every field, Curry has studied multilingual scholars in Slovakia, Hungary, Portugal, and Spain. They face pressure to publish in English, she has found, and they use different writing practices and have various experiences in doing so. Her talk, "The Global Imperative of English in Academic Publishing," will focus on scholars from Slovakia and Hungary. The event is sponsored by the Skalny Center for Polish and Central European Studies at the University of Rochester. The lecture and lunch are free and open to the University community.
With colleague Theresa Lillis of the Open University in Great Britain, Curry continues to study how these scholars approach such English publishing ventures and how an increased understanding of their experiences might help in the teaching of English academic writing.
Curry earned her doctoral degree in curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and joined the Warner School faculty in 2003. She is the co-author of Teaching Academic Writing: A Toolkit for Higher Education (Routledge, 2002), and has written articles, reviews, and book chapters on teaching English as a second language, the experiences of immigrant students learning English writing, and on second language and media literacy.
For lunch reservations, contact the Skalny Center at x5-9898 by noon Wednesday, Feb. 23. Luncheon seminars are part of the center's continuing Skalny Lecture and Artist Series, which offers lectures, films, musical performances, and other presentations about Poland and Central Europe.