Bonnie McElhinny

Dr.  Bonnie McElhinny (she/her) is Professor of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies.  She is the former Director of Women and Gender Studies, and former Principal of New College.  She is a settler of Irish, Slavic, German,  French and English descent, who grew up on a farm at the confluence of Connoquenessing and Glade Run Creeks in Western Pennsylvania, on Lenape and Seneca Territory. She currently lives in Toronto, the 9 rivers city, in the watershed of niigaani-gichigami, or chi’nibiish, also known as Lake Ontario. She is a daughter, sister, mother and grandmother.

Dr. McElhinny is the author of 3 books and over 50 articles and chapters, on water; anti-colonial research methods, storytelling, language, politics and economy; migration and diaspora; and unsettling settler colonialism. She is the author of multiple accessible works, public writing which distills the insights of academic work for wider audiences, in newsletters, magazines for professional practitioners, encyclopedias, book reviews and textbooks.  Recent blogs she wrote for the Great Lakes Connection Newsletter reached 12,000 recipients.  She is the recipient of numerous teaching and research grants.

Her books include Words, Worlds and Material Girls; Filipinos in 
Canada (edited with Roland Coloma, Ethel Tungohan, J.P.Catungal and Lisa Davidson); and, most recently, Language, Capitalism, Colonialism:  Toward a Critical History (with Monica Heller).   

Dr. McElhinny is an award-winning teacher.  She is the recipient of the June Larkin Award for Pedagogy, the Faculty of Arts and Science Experiential Learning Fellowship, and is a senior fellow at the Centre for Community Partnerships.  She is passionate about supporting anti-colonial  land- and water-based learning attentive to treaty and territory, and about ethical forms of community-partnered learning and research.   She regularly teaches courses on unsettling settler colonialism, living on the water in Toronto, and water, climate and social justice.  Her work with community partners on water stories in her first year course, Living on the Water in Toronto, was recognized in 2016 as one of the 14 most innovative teaching initiatives in all faculties, on all 3 campuses, at the University of Toronto, and featured in  Re:Think:  Navigation and transformation in today’s learning landscape:   

 (http://rethink.utoronto.ca/rethink-navigation-and-transformation-in-todays-learninglandcape/#rethink/34-35).

Dr. McElhinny  regularly teaches courses on unsettling settler colonialism, living on the water in Toronto, and water and social justice. She directs Water Allies, with the support of a Faculty of Arts and Science Teaching and Learning Grant (see the web-site at waterallies.com.)  This initiative focuses on decolonial, feminist, queer and anti-racist approaches to environmental justice, with a focus on water.  Its projects include designing and re-designing a cluster of courses on the Great Lakes, research and teaching collaborations with community partners, designing experiential learning opportunities for students, and curating public events.

Education

Ph.D. (Stanford University, 1993)

Publications

I.    Books (3)

2018.  (with Monica Heller). Language, Capitalism, Colonialism: Toward a Critical History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
 
Reviews:
        Boudreau, Annette.  2019.  Langage et société.  1 N° 166:  203-206. 
        Corona, Victor.  2019.  Treballs de Sociolinguistica Catalana.  29:197-200.
        Delabie, Anais.  2019.  Revue de Sociolinguistique en ligne.  31:181-184. 
        Hutton, Christopher and Adam Jaworski.  2019.  Language in Society. 48(5):772-5.
        Kharbach, Mohamed.  2019.  Discourse and Society  30(5):544-6.
        Rajagopalan, Kanavillil.  2020. Word 66:3, 234-8.
        Urla, Jacqui.  2018.  Journal of Sociolinguistics.  22(5):595-607.

*Selected for one of top 12 books in 2018-9 by Presidential Panel,  Society for Linguistic Anthropology Biennial meeting, 2020 

*Selected to be featured on a panel in honor of the book at Society for Linguistic Anthropology Biennial meeting, 2022 

2012. Filipinos in Canada: Disturbing Invisibility. Ed. By Roland Coloma, Bonnie McElhinny, Ethel Tungohan, J.P. Catungal, and Lisa Davidson. University of Toronto Press.  20 chapters; I am second, co-editor of the volume, lead co-author on the introduction, and solo author of one chapter. 441 pages. 
*First academic edited collection devoted to Filipino Canadians.

2007. Words, Worlds, Material Girls:  Language and Gender in a Global Economy, ed. Bonnie McElhinny.  Berlin/New York:  Mouton de Gruyter.  452 pp.

II.    Refereed Articles and Chapters (33)

2022.  Monica Heller and Bonnie McElhinny.  Struggle, voice, justice:  a conversation and some cautions about the sociolinguistics we hope for. Decolonial Voices, Language and Race, ed. By Sinfree Makoni, Magda Madany-Saa, and Rafael Lomeu Gomes.  Bristol:  Multilingual Matters. 10,965 words.

2021.    How does water talk and other hopeful questions about and beyond gender and language.  30th anniversary issue. Gender and Language. 15(4):527-537. 

2020.  Bonnie McElhinny and Monica Heller.  The Linguistic Intimacy of Five Continents.  How Imperialism Speaks. For Handbook of Language and Race.  Editors:  Samy Alim, Paul Kroskrity, Angela Reyes, Jonathan Rosa. 8500 words.

2020.  American Mestizos:  “Mongrelization” and “Mixedness” in American Colonial Media Discourse.  In The Routledge Companion to the Work of John R. Rickford, eds. Renee Blake, Isabelle Buchstaller.   Routledge.  7500 words.   

2019.  Acknowledging.  Language, Culture, Society.  1(1):  132-140.  

2017.  Allan, Kori and Bonnie McElhinny.  Language, Neoliberalism and Migration.  Handbook on Language and Migration, ed. by Sunesh Canagarajah.  Routledge.  Length = 10,000 words.

2016a.  Reparations and Racism, Discourse and Diversity:  Apologies, Neoliberalism, & Multiculturalism in Canada.  For Special issue on “Language and Diversity” edited by Alfonso Del Percio and Zorana Sokolova. Language and Communication. Available on-line:  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027153091630060X     

2016b.  A Heartfelt Approach:  On and Beyond Neoliberalism. Ethos. Special issue on “Emotion Pedagogies” edited by James Wilce and Janina Fenigsen. 44(2):186-191.

2016c. "Neoriberaru tabunkashugi to Kanada no shazai no jidai" (Neoliberal Multiculturalism and the Canadian Age of Apologies). Mirai Kyosei: Journal of Multicultural Innovation 3:33-68.

2016d.  Language and Political Economy.  The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology, ed. Nancy Bonvillain.  NY:  Routledge, pp. 279-300.

2014. Theorizing Gender in Sociolinguistics and Linguistic Anthropology:  Towards Effective Interventions in Gender Inequity."  The Handbook of Language, Gender and Sexuality (2nd edition).  eds.  Janet Holmes,  Miriam Meyerhoff and Susan Ehrlich.  Oxford:  Basil Blackwell. Pp. 48-67. (Revised and updated version of McElhinny 2003; 25% new content.) 

2012a.  McElhinny, Bonnie, Lisa Davidson, J.P. Catungal, Ethel Tungohan and Roland Coloma. Introduction:  Spectres of (In)visibility (I am lead co-author,  with Lisa Davidson,). In Filipino Lives in Canada: Disturbing Invisibility.  Ed. By Roland Coloma, Bonnie McElhinny, Ethel Tungohan, J.P. Catungal, and Lisa Davidson.  Toronto:  University of Toronto Press,  pp. 5-45.

2012b.  Meet Me in Toronto:  The Re-Exhibition of Artifacts from the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition at the Royal Ontario Museum.  In Filipino Lives in Canada:  Disturbing Invisibility.  Ed. By Roland Coloma, Bonnie McElhinny, Ethel Tungohan, J.P. Catungal, and Lisa Davidson  Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, pp. 223-242.

2012c.  Silicon Valley Sociolinguistics?  Analyzing Language, Gender and Communities of Practice in the New Knowledge Economy. In Language in Late Capitalism:  Pride and Profit, Edited by Alexandre Duchêne and Monica Heller.  NY:  Taylor & Francis:  Routledge (Series on Critical Multilingualism), pp. 230-261.

2010. The Audacity of Affect:  Gender, Race and History in Linguistic Accounts of Legitimacy and Belonging  Annual Review of Anthropology 39:309-328. 

2009.   Producing the A-1 Baby:  Puericulture Centres and the Birth of the Clinic in the U.S. Occupied Philippines 1906-1946. Philippine Studies Special Issue on Public Health in the Twentieth Century Philippines.  57(2):219-60.

2009. Bonnie McElhinny, Shirley Yeung, Valerie Damasco, Angela DeOcampo, Monina Febria, Christianne Collantes, and Jason Salonga.   "Talk about Luck":  Coherence, Contingency, Character and Class in the Life Stories of Filipino Canadians in Toronto.  In Beyond Yellow English: Toward a Linguistic Anthropology of Asian Pacific America,  edited by Angela Reyes and Adrienne Lo.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press, pp. 93-110. 

2007a.  "Language, Gender and Economies in Global Transitions:  Provocative and Provoking Questions about How Gender is Articulated." In Words, Worlds, Material Girls: Language and Gender in a Global Economy, ed. Bonnie McElhinny. Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 1-38.

2007b.  "Recontextualizing the American Occupation of the Philippines:  Erasure and Ventriloquism in Colonial Discourse around Men, Medicine and Infant Mortality." In Words, Worlds, Material Girls:  Language and Gender in a Global Economy, ed. Bonnie McElhinny. Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 205-236.

2007c. "Prétextes de L'Empire Américain aux Philippines:  Recontextualisation des Histoires de la Médecine Impériale" [Pretexts of American Empire in the Philippines:  Recontextualizing Histories of American Medicine]  Anthropologie et Sociétés Special issue on "Dynamiques et pratiques langagières."  edited by Michelle Daveluy. 31(1):75-95.

2006.  "Written in Sand:  Language and Landscape in an Environmental Dispute in Southern Ontario." Critical Discourse Studies.  3(2):123-152.

2005. “’Kissing a Baby is Not At All Good For Him’:  Infant Mortality,  Medicine and Colonial Modernity in the U.S.-Occupied Philippines”  American Anthropologist.  107(2):183-194.

2004.  “’Radical Feminist’ as Label, Libel and Laudatory Chant:  The Politics of Theoretical Taxonomies in Feminist Linguistics.”  In Language and Woman’s Place:  Text and Commentaries, 2nd expanded edition by Robin Lakoff and  edited by Mary Bucholtz.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press.  Pp. 129-135.

2003a. “Fearful, Forceful Agents of the Law:  Ideologies about Language and Gender in Police Officers’ Narratives about the Use of Physical Force” Pragmatics  13(2):253-284.

2003b.  "Gender, Publication and Citation in Sociolinguistics and Linguistic Anthropology:  The Construction of a Scholarly Canon" (with Claire Hicks, Marijke Hols, Jeff Holtzkener and  Susanne Unger). Language in Society 32(3):299-328.

2001  "See No Evil, Speak No Evil:  White Police Officers' Arguments Around Race and Affirmative Action." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 11(1):65-78.

1999  "More on The Third Dialect of English: Linguistic Constraints on the Use of Three Phonological Variables in Pittsburgh." Language Variation and Change  11(2):171-195.

1998 "Cooperative Culture: Reconciling Equality and Difference in a Multicultural Women's Co-operative." Ethnos  63(3):383-412.

1997 "Ideologies of Public and Private Language in Sociolinguistics." Gender and Discourse, ed. Ruth Wodak.  London:  Sage Publishers. Pp. 106-139. 

1996 Freeman, Rebecca and Bonnie McElhinny.  “Language and Gender.” Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching, eds. Sandra Lee McKay and Nancy Hornberger.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 218-280.

1995 “Challenging Hegemonic Masculinities:  Female and Male Police Officers Handling Domestic Violence.”  Gender Articulated, eds. Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz.  NY:  Routledge, pp. 217-243.

1994    “An Economy of Affect:  Objectivity, Masculinity and the Gendering of Police Work.”  In Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies, eds. Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne. NY: Routledge. 159-171.

 1993  "Copula and Auxiliary Contraction in the Speech of White Americans." American Speech 68(4):371-399.

III.    Non-Refereed Articles and Chapters; Community/Public Writing (32)

2019.  with Giidaakunadaad/Nancy Rowe and Debby Danard. Ceremony as Research: 13 moon journey. Working/policy paper submitted to SSHRC Conference for Building Indigenous Research Capacity and Reconciliation. 10 pages 

2017. Boudreau, Sheila and Bonnie McElhinny.  Kayanase:  A Native Plant Nursery at Six Nations. Ground: Quarterly of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects. October 2017.

2017.  Great Lakes Waterworks at the University of Toronto. Great Lakes Connection/Connexion Grand Lacs: Linking science and action/les citoyens et la science en action. Monthly Newsletter, International Joint Commission, May 2017. (1500 words)

2016a.  Boudreau, Sheila and Bonnie McElhinny.  Harvesting What We Sow:  The Pickering Airport Lands.  Ground: Quarterly of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects. Volume 36.  http://oala.ca/ground_issue/ground-36-data/harvesting-sow-pickering-airp...

2016b.  Something in the Water:  Stories and Social Change.  Great Lakes Connection/Connexion Grand Lacs:  Linking science and action/les citoyens et la science en action. Monthly Newsletter, International Joint Commission. Sept. 2016.  Volume 1, Issue 5. http://ijc.org/greatlakesconnection/en/2016/09/something-water-stories-s... (1400 words)

2015.  History and Debates in Studies of Affect and Racialization.  Comment invited on Ulla D. Berg and Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas, "Racializing Affect: A Theoretical Proposition," Current Anthropology 56, no. 5 (October 2015).  667-8.

2013. (with Kori Allan and Lalaie Ameeriar).  Gender, Racialization, Labour and Language in Multicultural Toronto. In Cultural Anthropology, Fourth Canadian Edition. William Haviland, Liam Kilmurray,  Shirley Fedorak, and Richard Lee, eds. Nelson Publishers. 2500 words. 

2011. Bonnie McElhinny, Ann Weatherall, Elizabeth Stokoe.  Five Years of Gender and Language. Gender and Language 5(2): 167-173.

2007a. (with Sara Mills). From the editors:  A report on our first year. Gender and Language.  1(2):169-172.

2007b. (with Sara Mills) "Launching Studies of Gender and Language in the Early 21st Century."  Gender and Language.  1(1):1-13.

2006a.  Bonnie McElhinny.  "Deborah Cameron." In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition.  Ed. by Keith Brown. Oxford:  Elsevier.  190-191.

2006b.  Bonnie McElhinny.  "John Rickford." In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition.  Ed. by, Keith Brown.  Oxford:  Elsevier.  627-628

2006c. Bonnie McElhinny and Shaylih Muehlmann.  “Discursive Practice Theory.”  In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition.  Ed. by Keith Brown.  Section Editor, Michael Silverstein.   Oxford:  Elsevier.  696-700.

2005.  “Gender and the Stories Pittsburgh Police Officers Tell About Using Physical Force.”  In Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective, eds. Caroline Brettell and Carolyn Sargent.  4th edition.  London:  Pearson Prentice Hall.  Pp. 219-230. [Also Reprinted in the 5th edition of this collection, published in 2009.]

2003a.  “Language and Gender.”  In Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Men and Women in the World’s Cultures, eds. Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember.  Human Relations Area File/Kluwer/Plenum, pp. 150-162.  

2003b  "Theorizing Gender in Sociolinguistics and Linguistic Anthropology."  The Language and Gender Handbook, eds. Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff.  Oxford:  Basil Blackwell.  Pp. 21-42.

2002a.  "Women and Child-rearing."  In Cultural Anthropology, First Canadian Edition  By William Haviland, Gary Crawford and Shirley Fedorak.  Nelson Publishers, pp. 143-5. 

2002b.  "Language, Sexuality and Political Economy."  Language and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice, eds. Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Robert Podesva, Sarah Roberts, Andrew Wong.  Palo Alto:  Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford Univ.  Pp. 111-134.

2002c.  "Armed Robbers, Assholes and Agency:  Linguistic Ideologies, Gender and Police Officers."  Gendered Practices in Language,  eds. Sarah Benor, Mary Rose,     Deyvani Sharma, Julie Sweetland and Qing Zhang.  Palo Alto:      CSLI, Stanford, pp. 65 - 90.    

2002d.  (with Marijke Hols, Jeff Holtzkener, Susanne Unger and Claire Hicks).  "Women's Writing in Sociolinguistics and Linguistic Anthropology, 1965-1995."  Under Construction: Gendered Practices in Language,  eds. Sarah Benor, Mary Rose, Deyvani Sharma, Julie Sweetland and Qing Zhang. Palo Alto: CSLI, Stanford, pp. 33 - 51.

2000a. "Dale Spender." Routledge Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories, ed. Lorraine Code.  NY:  Routledge, p. 473.  

2000b.  "Affirmative Action and Veterans' Hiring Preferences: Two Quota Systems."  For Voices: Newsletter of the Association for Feminist Anthropology.  July, 4(1):1-6.

1998a  "Genealogies of Gender Theory:  Practice Theory and Feminism in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology." Social Analysis 42(3): 164-189.

1998b  "'I Don't Smile Much Anymore':  Affect, Gender and the Discourse of Pittsburgh Police Officers." Language and Gender: A Reader, ed. Jennifer Coates.  Malden, MA:  Blackwell. Pp.  309-327.

1998e  "It's a Process, I Guess":  The Role of Language in Building an Ethnically Diverse Worker's Co-operative for Women.  Engendering Communication: Proceedings of the Fifth Berkeley Conference on Women and Language, eds.  Suzanne Wertheim, Ashlee Bailey and Monica Corston-Oliver. Berkeley Women and Language Group, University of California Berkeley.  Pp. 347-359.

1997  "Challenging Analytic Dichotomies in Sociolinguistics:  Ideologies of Public and Private Language." Salsa III: Proceedings of the Third Annual Symposium About Language and Society--Austin, ed. Yukako Sunaoshi et al.

1996a  "Strategic Essentialism in Sociolinguistic Studies of Gender."  Gender and Belief Systems:  Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Conference on Women and Language, eds. Natasha Warner, Jocelyn Ahlers, Leela Bilmes, Monica Oliver, Suzanne Wertheim and Melinda Chen.  Berkeley:  Berkeley Women and Language Group, University of California Berkeley.  Pp.  469-480.

1996b  “I teach talk only, not language':  Writing the Scholarship of Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi into Histories of Eighteenth Century Linguistics" Gender and Belief Systems: Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Conference on Women and Language, eds. Natasha Warner, Jocelyn Ahlers, Leela Bilmes, Monica Oliver, Suzanne Wertheim and Melinda Chen.  Berkeley:  Berkeley Women and Language Group, University of California Berkeley.  Pp. 803-814.

1995 Cunningham, Clark and Bonnie McElhinny.  "Taking it to the Streets:  Putting Discourse Analysis to the Service of a Public Defender's Office" Clinical Law Review  2(1):285-314.

1993a  (with Peter Patrick) "Speakin and Spokin in Jamaica:  Consensus and Conflict in Sociolinguistics."  Nineteenth Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, pp. 280-90.  Berkeley:  Berkeley Linguistics Society. Eds. Joshua Guenter, Barbara Kaier and Cheryl Zoll.

1993b "'You Don't Smile A Lot': Gender, Affect and the Discourse of Pittsburgh Police Officers." In Locating Power: Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Conference on Women and Language, eds. Kira Hall, Mary Bucholtz,  and Birch Moonwomon, pp. 386-403.  Berkeley:  Berkeley Women and Language Group, University of California, Department of Linguistics. 

1993c  "The Interaction of Syntax, Semantics and Phonology in Language Change: The History of Modal Contraction in English." CLS 28:  Papers from the 28th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society 1992.  Eds. Costas Canakis, Grace Chan and Jeannette Denton. Volume 1, pp. 367-381.