Anne Pomerantz Lecturer apomeran@gse.upenn.edu

Education
1993: B.A., Classical Studies, Wesleyan University
1998: MS.Ed., TESOL, University of Pennsylvania
2001: Ph.D., Educational Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania

Areas of Expertise
Language and social identity
Applied linguistics
Bilingualism

Professional Biography
Dr. Pomerantz began her career as an educator teaching at an independent school for gifted and talented inner city youth. She taught Spanish and Latin to middle school students and served as the advisor to the fifth-grade girls. For six years, she taught Spanish to undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania and coordinated the department’s elementary and intermediate language programs. In addition to developing numerous language courses, she worked closely with newly arrived graduate students on their teaching portfolios and pedagogical practices. Dr. Pomerantz has also taught English as an additional language in a variety of university settings, focusing primarily on the acquisition of academic literacies. Since 2001, she has been a lecturer at GSE.

Research Interests and Current Projects
Dr. Pomerantz’s research has concentrated primarily on the relationship between language and social identity in language classrooms. In particular, she has explored the ways in which learners challenge the boundaries of their linguistic repertoires to create palpable and enduring social identities within and through their newly acquired languages. Her current work focuses on how engagement in language play in the classroom, a common but often devalued linguistic practice, might facilitate advanced L2 learning.  Moreover, she has recently embarked on a project that examines relationships between international students and American students in university contexts, asking how particular ideologies of language are implicated in the negotiation of identities and power relationships.  She is particularly interested in developing a series of workshops that would highlight and interrogate the notion of linguistic diversity on college campuses.  Since 1999, she has presented papers at the American Association of Applied Linguistics, the International Symposium on Bilingualism, the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Language, the South African Association for Applied Linguistics, and Penn GSE’s Ethnography Forum.

Selected Publications
Pomerantz, A. (forthcoming). Review of Language and Social Identity, The Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts, & Identity in Narrative. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 

Pomerantz, A. (2007). Review of Language and Gender: An Advanced Resource Book. International Journal of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education,10 (4).

Pomerantz, A. and Bell, N. (2007). Learning to play, playing to learn: FL learners as multicompetent language users. Paper presented at the American Association of Applied Linguistics, Costa Mesa, California.

Pomerantz, A. (2006). Negotiating complex classroom identities:  Gender and the Good Language Learners. Paper presented at the Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics/ American Association for Applied Linguistics, Montreal, Canada.

Pomerantz, A., Isaacs, C., Kim, E., Lee, C., & Theodoropulos, C. (2006). Intercultural Communication in University Classrooms: Exploring the Ideological Context of ITA/Undergraduate Interactions. 27th Annual Ethnography in Education Forum., University of Pennsylvania.

Pomerantz, A. (2002). Language ideologies and the production of identities: Spanish as a resource for participation in a multilingual marketplace. Multilingua, 21(2/3).

Pomerantz, A. (2000). Interviews and identity: A critical discourse perspective. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 16 (1).  

Pomerantz, A. (1997). Who is telling stories and whose stories are being told? University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 13 (1).