Assistant Professor of Clinical Education
Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles
Concentration: Teacher Education Expertise: Critical sociolinguistics and applied linguistics expert specializing in second language acquisition (SLA), language teaching, service-learning, and sociocultural investigations of race, gender, sexual, and social class identities in SLA.
E-Mail: anya@usc.edu
Dr. Uju Anya is Assistant Professor of Clinical Education in the Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) program. She specializes in critical sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and SLA with particular focus on race, gender, sexual, and social class identities in the language classroom. She also has expertise in service-learning and civic engagement in secondary and university-level language pedagogy.
Presently, Dr. Anya is preparing a monograph on the critical analysis of discourses of language learner identities across transnational, multicultural, and multilingual borders. Her other research interests include applied linguistics as a practice of social justice; motivation and investment in second language learning; and the use of service and second language learning to build social capital, intercultural and political relationships among blacks and descendants of formerly enslaved Africans throughout the Americas. Dr. Anya's publications on second language learning include: "Languages, Identities, and Accents: Perspectives from the 2010 Linguistic Diversity Conference" and "Connecting with Communities of Learners and Speakers: Integrative Ideals, Experiences, and Motivations of Successful Black Second Language Learners." She served as co-editor of a special volume on language identities and diversity for the journal Issues in Applied Linguistics and translated from Portuguese to English a series of publications on race and blackness in Brazil for Latin American Perspectives.
Previously, Dr. Anya was a lecturer in applied linguistics, TESOL, Portuguese, and Spanish at UCLA, as well as visiting lecturer in Portuguese at Dartmouth College. She has taught English, Portuguese, and Spanish languages in K-12 schools, universities, adult community, and corporate programs in the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America. She has also trained language teachers in the U.S. and abroad in learning theories, instructional methodologies, and technologies of SLA. Dr. Anya received her Ph.D. in applied linguistics from UCLA, her M.A. in Brazilian studies from Brown University, and B.A. in Romance languages from Dartmouth College. She was the 2010-11 Thurgood Marshall Fellow at Dartmouth College. Other honors and awards include: a University of California Humanities Research Institute grant for collaborative writing; a UCLA Office of Instructional Development grant to design TESOL service-learning courses; the 2008 Centro Lati no for Literacy Manos Amigas Volunteer of the Year Award for service-learning activities benefiting new immigrants in Los Angeles; the Dartmouth College Reynolds Alumni Fellowship for International Research in Brazil; a Phillips Academy Andover Spanish Teaching Fellowship; and the John Sloan Dickey Foundation Fellowship for International Understanding to teach in Venezuela.