Yuri Kumagai
Biographic Data
| ID | 825489 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Yuri Kumagai |
| GIVEN NAMES | Yuri |
| FAMILY NAME | Kumagai |
| SIGNATURE | KUMAGAI Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | Smith College |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8631-9984 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 7 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Translingual practices in a ‘Monolingual’ society: Discourses, learners’ subjectivities and language choices
This study explores how Japanese EFL students engaged in translingual practices during a telecollaborative project that connected two college classrooms in the US and Japan. The project aimed at encouraging the students’ creative uses of languages, promoting an appreciation for their multiple linguistic resources, and nurturing their sense of ownership of languages informed by translingual practices. Contrary to our expectations, students in Japa…
Race in Conflict With Heritage: “Black” Heritage Language Speaker of Japanese
Heritage language speaker is a relatively new term to denote minority language speakers who grew up in a household where the language was used or those who have a family, ancestral, or racial connection to the minority language. In research on heritage language speakers, overlap between these 2 definitions is often assumed—that is, there has been little research on the situation in which a heritage language speaker’s perceived race does not match…
Singing Japan’s heart and soul: A discourse on the black enka singer Jero and race politics in Japan
This article analyses a discourse around the ascendancy of Jero, an ‘African-American’ male dressed in hip-hop attire singing enka, a genre of music that has been dubbed ‘the heart and soul of Japan.’ Since his debut in Japan in February 2008, Jero has attracted much media attention. This article analyses a prominent discourse, ‘Jero is almost Japanese because he sings enka well.’ While many argue that to challenge stereotypes and racism is to in…
Learning through laughing: An 'African-American' singer with 'Japanese soul' and the possibility of a new subjectivity in Japan
In this article, we argue that laughter can be a catalyst in learning about a new subjectivity – simultaneously African-American and Japanese – by analyzing an audience's initial reaction to Jero, a young 'African-American' singer wearing hip hop attire who sings enka, a genre of music that is considered the 'heart and soul of Japan'. Using television clips uploaded to YouTube and the viewers' comments left on the sites as data, we analyze the au…
What It Means to Read “Critically” in a Japanese Language Classroom: Students' Perspectives
Questioning the traditional reading instruction that overly emphasizes literal comprehension of texts, one of the authors conducted action research and revised her advanced-level Japanese reading course at a university by incorporating some principles from critical literacy. The “critical reading” course aimed at developing students' ability to analyze linguistic features of texts and making students cognizant of the effects of the writer's langu…
Ignorance’ as a rhetorical strategy: How Japanese language learners living in Japan maneuver their subject positions to shift power dynamics
Traditionally, the goal of foreign language education has been to teach learners linguistic and cultural knowledge so that they could function successfully in the target language and cultural environment. But does demonstrating knowledge always help learners accomplish their interactional goals? To explore this question, this study investigate when and how the learners of Japanese-as-Foreign-Language used their ‘ignorance’ as a rhetorical strateg…
Tension in a Japanese Language Classroom: An Opportunity for Critical Literacy
This paper presents one example of moments of tension from a yearlong ethnographic study conducted in a college intermediate Japanese-as-a-foreign-language classroom (Kumagai, 2004 Kumagai, Y. 2004. De Mystifying the literacy practices in a foreign language classroom: A critical discourse analysis, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Unpublished doctoral dissertation [Google Scholar]). I define moments of tension as those moments when conflic…
Ignorance’ as a rhetorical strategy: How Japanese language learners living in Japan maneuver their subject positions to shift power dynamics
Traditionally, the goal of foreign language education has been to teach learners linguistic and cultural knowledge so that they could function successfully in the target language and cultural environment. But does demonstrating knowledge always help learners accomplish their interactional goals? To explore this question, this study investigate when and how the learners of Japanese-as-Foreign-Language used their ‘ignorance’ as a rhetorical strateg…
Learning through laughing: An 'African-American' singer with 'Japanese soul' and the possibility of a new subjectivity in Japan
In this article, we argue that laughter can be a catalyst in learning about a new subjectivity – simultaneously African-American and Japanese – by analyzing an audience's initial reaction to Jero, a young 'African-American' singer wearing hip hop attire who sings enka, a genre of music that is considered the 'heart and soul of Japan'. Using television clips uploaded to YouTube and the viewers' comments left on the sites as data, we analyze the au…
Singing Japan’s heart and soul: A discourse on the black enka singer Jero and race politics in Japan
This article analyses a discourse around the ascendancy of Jero, an ‘African-American’ male dressed in hip-hop attire singing enka, a genre of music that has been dubbed ‘the heart and soul of Japan.’ Since his debut in Japan in February 2008, Jero has attracted much media attention. This article analyses a prominent discourse, ‘Jero is almost Japanese because he sings enka well.’ While many argue that to challenge stereotypes and racism is to in…
Tension in a Japanese Language Classroom: An Opportunity for Critical Literacy
This paper presents one example of moments of tension from a yearlong ethnographic study conducted in a college intermediate Japanese-as-a-foreign-language classroom (Kumagai, 2004 Kumagai, Y. 2004. De Mystifying the literacy practices in a foreign language classroom: A critical discourse analysis, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Unpublished doctoral dissertation [Google Scholar]). I define moments of tension as those moments when conflic…
Ignorance’ as a rhetorical strategy: How Japanese language learners living in Japan maneuver their subject positions to shift power dynamics
Traditionally, the goal of foreign language education has been to teach learners linguistic and cultural knowledge so that they could function successfully in the target language and cultural environment. But does demonstrating knowledge always help learners accomplish their interactional goals? To explore this question, this study investigate when and how the learners of Japanese-as-Foreign-Language used their ‘ignorance’ as a rhetorical strateg…
What It Means to Read “Critically” in a Japanese Language Classroom: Students' Perspectives
Questioning the traditional reading instruction that overly emphasizes literal comprehension of texts, one of the authors conducted action research and revised her advanced-level Japanese reading course at a university by incorporating some principles from critical literacy. The “critical reading” course aimed at developing students' ability to analyze linguistic features of texts and making students cognizant of the effects of the writer's langu…
Singing Japan’s heart and soul: A discourse on the black enka singer Jero and race politics in Japan
This article analyses a discourse around the ascendancy of Jero, an ‘African-American’ male dressed in hip-hop attire singing enka, a genre of music that has been dubbed ‘the heart and soul of Japan.’ Since his debut in Japan in February 2008, Jero has attracted much media attention. This article analyses a prominent discourse, ‘Jero is almost Japanese because he sings enka well.’ While many argue that to challenge stereotypes and racism is to in…
Learning through laughing: An 'African-American' singer with 'Japanese soul' and the possibility of a new subjectivity in Japan
In this article, we argue that laughter can be a catalyst in learning about a new subjectivity – simultaneously African-American and Japanese – by analyzing an audience's initial reaction to Jero, a young 'African-American' singer wearing hip hop attire who sings enka, a genre of music that is considered the 'heart and soul of Japan'. Using television clips uploaded to YouTube and the viewers' comments left on the sites as data, we analyze the au…
Race in Conflict With Heritage: “Black” Heritage Language Speaker of Japanese
Heritage language speaker is a relatively new term to denote minority language speakers who grew up in a household where the language was used or those who have a family, ancestral, or racial connection to the minority language. In research on heritage language speakers, overlap between these 2 definitions is often assumed—that is, there has been little research on the situation in which a heritage language speaker’s perceived race does not match…
Translingual practices in a ‘Monolingual’ society: Discourses, learners’ subjectivities and language choices
This study explores how Japanese EFL students engaged in translingual practices during a telecollaborative project that connected two college classrooms in the US and Japan. The project aimed at encouraging the students’ creative uses of languages, promoting an appreciation for their multiple linguistic resources, and nurturing their sense of ownership of languages informed by translingual practices. Contrary to our expectations, students in Japa…
Sociology (7 works) · Linguistics (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (4 works) · Pedagogy (4 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (4 works) · Gender Studies (3 works) · Political science (3 works)