The Writingworld Project

In this project, Amir Kalan and his research team study how minoritized populations’ literacy practices are scrutinized by gatekeepers such as institutions, associations, professions, assessors, teachers, and publishers. 

When immigrants and refugees adopt their hosts’ languages to write in, they need to navigate the cultural norms that regulate the relations of the humans who are involved in construction, dissemination, evaluation, and consumption of written texts. In this project, we study the “doxa” that regulate dominant literacy norms. 

We also document the “organic literacies” that help minorities develop academically, grow intellectually, and amplify their voices. We study how organic literacies challenge “the Writingworld”, or dominant writing cultures.

Principal Investigator: Amir Kalan

This project is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council - SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship (2016-present).