"Conditions of (Im)Possibility" - Nancy Bou Ayash

Bou Ayash, Nancy. "Conditions of (Im)Possibility: Postmonolingual Language Representations in Academic Literacies." College English 78.6 (2016): 555-577.

Bou Ayash brings attention to the "complex dialectic between students' language representations and practices, their interrelationship with dominant language representations and practices of the academy and its local institutions, and the material implications of the negotiation of these" and urges readers to view academic literacies as embedded, rather than removed from changing practices (574).  Reductive representations of language practices can have a limiting effect on students' performance of literate acts.  She uses examples of four university students in Lebanon to show how translating and incorporating resources across and beyond languages are encouraged (or not).