This seminar provides students with the opportunity for a critical exploration of emotions in second language teaching and learning. We will begin by investigating how emotions have been defined; then consider and explore how they have been made sites of oppression through gendering and racialization. Using a critical and often feminist analysis of existing research, theoretical frameworks, and pedagogical approaches, we will challenge traditional dichotomies of emotions as positive/negative, rational/irrational and look at the impacts on teacher and learner. A concern for non-Western perspectives will be prominent, and a range of research methodologies will be considered. We will draw on positive psychology, but an integration of social perspectives will be sought as well. Posthumanist thinking will be attempted, and the ways in which teachers can modify, shape, and engage with student emotions, and professional values that are democratically-aligned, will be addressed.
Department of Second Language Studies
University of Hawaii at Manoa