Congratulations to Professor Dominika Baran for the release of her new book "Language in Immigrant America"! Professor Baran has been teaching a service-learning course by the same name for several years now as a way of helping students connect in a deeper and more meaningful way to class material. When students began engaging and developing relationships with community partners such as Church World Service, Durham Public Schools, Durham Public Libraries, El Centro Hispano and GANO (at Duke), class concepts were deeply rooted in authentic engagement and community relationship building.
In the book's acknowledgments, Baran thanks her students for the lively class discussions that helped inspire and shape the book, as well as community partners, who made it possible to connect class discussions with real immigrant lives. She also thanked Duke Service-Learning, with a special shout out to Joan Clifford, Kristen Wright, and Bonnie McManus.
"I hope that this book succeeds in helping to debunk some longstanding myths about immigrants, to challenge assumptions about American citizenship and identity, and to reimagine the relationship between the categories of citizen and immigrant," says Baran.