Interim Co-PI at CUNY-Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY-IIE)
Klapper Hall, Room 735
sara.alvarez@qc.cuny.edu
Research Interests
As a scholar in Rhetoric and Composition my research interests intersect the fields of critical applied linguistics, immigration geopolitics, and urban and bilingual education. Through ethnography-based investigation and community engagement, I look to how immigrant and racialized youth negotiate and transform writing practices, languages, and national borders. I work in, research, and write about language literacy, multilingualism, multimodality, and transnational writing.
Teaching Interests
I teach courses about writing, the teaching of writing in multilingual and academic contexts, and the politics of immigration in writing. My first-year writing courses (ENG 110 and 115) have focused on topics like the economy of language, laboring multilingualism, and community belonging. I have also designed and taught courses like ENG 202W: Rhetoric and Writing for English Education, ENG 391W: American-ish: Immigrants Writing Citizenship in the Literary Imagination, and ENG 703: Composition Theory and Literacy Studies. More recently, I have taught one of our Writing Minor courses, ENG 200W: Writing about Writing, with a focus on community writing.
Selected Publications
Articles
Alvarez, S. P. (forthcoming). “Multilingualism Beyond Walls: Undocumented Young Adults Subverting Writing Education.” In D. Martins, X. You, & B. Schreiber (Eds.), Writing on the Wall: Literacy Education and the Resurgence of Nationalism. Utah State University Press.
Alvarez, S. P. Kurchirko, Y., McBeth, M., Tarafdar, M., & Watson, M. (Eds.). (2022). “Emergent Teaching and Learning Through Emergencies: Literacies’ and Learnings’ Role in Crisis.” Peter Lang.
Alvarez, S. P., Lee, E., & Wan, A. J. (2022). “Workin’ Languages: Who We are Matters to our Writing.” In D. Driscoll, M. Stewart, & M. Vetter (Eds.), Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume.
Lee, E., S. P. Alvarez, & A. J. Wan. (2021). Cultivating Multimodality from the Multilingual Epicenter: Queens, “The Next America.” Journal of Global Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging Pedagogies, 7(1), 1256-1281.
Lee, E., & S. P. Alvarez. (2020). “World Englishes, Translingualism, and Racialization in the US College Composition Classroom.” World Englishes, 1(1), 1-12.
Alvarez, S. P., & Wan, A. J. (2019). “Global Citizenship as Literacy: A Critical Reflection for Teaching Multilingual Writers.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 63(2), 213-216.
Alvarez, S. P. (2018). “Multilingual Writers in College Contexts.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(3), 342-345.
