âThis inspiring book edited by three prominent scholars in the fields of applied linguistics and language education offers a critical space for raising timely questions about cultural, linguistic, and ideological orientations within higher education through a collection of international doctoral studentsâ autoethnographies about border-crossing. Each authorâs candid, reflexive, provocative, and openly contentious narratives of navigating the in-between-ness of being scholars and students, insiders and outsiders, experts and novices provide critical perspectives towards the perils and potentials of being and becoming multilingual and multicultural scholars within the academic diaspora. With the two companion collections by the same editors, this volume serves not only as a powerful resource for current and future scholars and practitioners for their personal and professional growth, but also as a critical catalyst for pushing forward the educational agenda and the academic landscape of higher education.â
â Juyoung Song, Professor at Murray State University, Murray, KY, USA
âNarrating mainly their lived experiences as trans/international students in the USA, the authors and the editors of this edited book problematize, denaturalize, and debunk the myth of seamless post-graduate studies of highly achieving doctoral students in the âglobalizedâ settings of US universities. Each chapter includes an autoethnography that captures the readerâs heart and mind via its authorâs compelling, vivid, and honest tone of voice taking the reader on a roller-coaster ride in the authorâs inner world, where there is fear, challenge, and disappointment; where there is also courage, achievement, and more importantly⦠hope. Going up and down stunned by the roller-coasterâs track, the reader finds themselves accompanying transformation stories of what it means to be a border-crosser, in-betweener, marginalized, and transnational doctoral students from their own voice in their own style. Fascinating narratives. With so many fragments⦠honesty⦠vulnerability⦠meaning-making⦠being⦠becoming⦠knowledging⦠all in an effort to understand the human conditionâ¦.â
â Ufuk KeleÅ, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. Dr., BahçeÅehir University, Turkey
â Mario López-Gopar, Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca, México
âThis edited collection is a very welcome addition to the autoethnographic literature in language studies, education, and the social sciences. After being contextually, theoretically, and methodologically set up by the introduction chapter, the twelve main chapters are autoethnographies written by different authors âstoryingâ while âacademically discussingâ their experiences as international doctoral students in the U.S. These chapters explore the authorsâ âin-betweennessâ in no longer feeling as fully belonging to their home countries while nonetheless sensing themselves in-transition in their new academic lives in the U.S. This âin-betweenâ space â replete with challenges, anguishes, rewards, and wonders â is rendered through writing that is very clear, at times epiphanic, often moving, and always engaging. This innovative book, thus, speaks to the doctoral experience as academic, professional, and personal, as studied, felt, and lived. This book, like autoethnography itself, is at the crossroads of the self and community. This book must be read.â
âKudos to the editors of this volume â Trinh, Pentón Herrera, and Yazan â for their foresight in spotlighting the experiences of international doctoral students, a population that encapsulates the big issues that emanate from contemporary large scale transborder migration, especially for educational purposes â identity shifts, stress, and what the editors call the state of in-betweenness. Over the course of twelve chapters, the contributors employ varied autoethnographic approaches to story their diverse experiences as international students living in the United States with critical reflexivity, theoretical and methodological rigor, and refreshing honesty. They take us through their journey of emotional highs and lows at every stage of doctoral study â navigating the dissonance of different cultures, values, languages, and education systems, while simultaneously being agentive and resilient. This timely volume is a much-needed corrective to the essentialist view of international doctoral students. It invites a more nuanced dialogue on the complexity of migration and the purposes and structure of higher education through the voices of those who have experienced both. A shining example of autoethnography at its best!â
â Shondel Nero, Ed.D., Professor of Language Education, New York University
âI have thoroughly enjoyed reading the studies in this edited volume. The work of the editors and of the authors themselves allowed for powerful research-based stories to be shared in a meaningful and thoughtful way. The contribution of autoethnographies, self-stories, and collaborative autoethnographies
â Elena Andrei, Ed.D. (she, her), Associate Professor, Cleveland State Universityof international doctoral students at US-based institutions is welcome. As an international doctoral student and faculty at US institutions myself, these chapters and their findings resonated with me and allowed me to learn more and expand my knowledge. All twelve chapters explore and reflect deeply on the positioning and tensions experienced by the authors who are brilliantly using a variety of conceptual and theoretical frameworks to make meaning. Chapters also focus on the impact of the pandemic and the challenges and struggles it brought. I am looking forward to share and discuss this research with my students and my community of scholars.â
âWhat happens in the lives of international doctoral students as they go through their programs and start their process of transforming themselves into critical and committed scholars aware of all the social complexities around them? How do they learn to situate themselves in the broad and unequal field of applied linguistics and why do they align themselves with some forms of meaning-making over others? Where do they find their academic home?
This collection is for those who are grappling with such questions, including graduate program directors, teacher educators, and fellow graduate students. Through a series of deeply moving, courageous, thought-and action provoking, and methodologically robust autoethnographic accounts, readers will find themselves questioning some of the taken-for-granted ways of being in US academia. Perhaps they might also find themselves relating to the experiences and the âintricate dance, unraveling the layers of personal transitions, academic aspirations, cultural realignments, and the deep-seated emotions of belonging and estrangementâ (p. 6) that all underrepresented teacher-scholars go through during their academic journeys.
As a must read for all who work with international graduate students, Autoethnographies of Border-Crossing and In-Betweenness of International Doctoral Studentsâ Voices in the United States speaks to âthe power of community, the reciprocal relationship, of knowing, understanding, feeling, empathizing, and seeing people in their own eyesâ (p. 2). But it does more than that. It provides a wide array of methodological experimentations that expand on various features of the already-established methodology of autoethnography. The authors speak about its empowering, transformative, and therapeutic potential; its capability of enabling complex storying that moves peopleâs identities and experiences away from colonial categories and dichotomous thinking; its potential to challenge the authorsâ own biases as well as to remind them
â Cristina Sánchez-MartÃn (she/ella, her), Assistant Professor, English Department, University of Washington, Seattleof what they already know; and its capacity to enable processes of unlearning and relearning and to fully embrace complex experiences. Perhaps, most importantly, this collection provides a necessary methodological tool to bring us all together despite the beautiful differences that define us and the systemic barriers that, through the empathy developed by engaging with these stories, we are agentively removing.â