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Teachers College, Columbia University
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Ofelia Garcia

Professional Background

Educational Background

Ofelia Garcia did her undergraduate and graduate studies at The City University of New York. She studied Spanish and Education as an undergraduate and became a bilingual teacher in 1970. Her Ph.D. is from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She did post-doctoral work on Sociology of Language and Bilingualism at Yeshiva University under the mentorship of Joshua A. Fishman.

Post-Doctoral Fellowship  1990 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Institute of Political and Social Science
Post-Doctoral Fellowship  1981 Yeshiva University, NYC
Sociology of Language and Bilingualism
Ph.D.  1981 Graduate Center, City University of New York
Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Languages & Literatures
M.A.  1975 Hunter College, CUNY
Spanish
B.A.  1970  Hunter College, CUNY
Education and Spanish

Scholarly Interests

Selected Publications

FOR A COMPLETE LIST VISIT MY WEBSITE AT http://www.tc.edu/faculty/garcia/home/

Selected books

Garcia, Ofelia and Colin Baker, eds. 2007. Bilingual Education: An Introductory Reader Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Garcia, Ofelia, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Maria Torres-Guzman, eds. 2006. Imagining Multilingual Schools: Language in Education and Globalization. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Garcia, Ofelia, Hal Schiffman and Rakhmiel Peltz. 2006. Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change: Joshua A. Fishman's Contributions to International Sociolinguistics. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters

Garcia, Ofelia and Joshua A. Fishman, eds. 1997. (2001, 2nd edition). The Multilingual Apple. Languages in New York City. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Garcia, Ofelia and Colin Baker, eds. 1995. Policy and Practice in Bilingual Education. Extending the Foundations.Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters.

Garcia, Ofelia, ed. 1991.  Bilingual Education: Focusschrift in honor of Joshua A. Fishman. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Garcia, Ofelia and Ricardo Otheguy, eds. 1989. English across cultures.Cultures across English: A Reader in cross-cultural communication.  Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

 

Selected articles

Garcia, Ofelia, Lesley Bartlett and JoAnne Kleifgen. 2007. From Biliteracy to Pluriliteracies. In Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Vol. 5: Multilingualism, ed. by Peter Auer and Li Wei. Berlin: Mouton/de Gruyter, pp. 207-228.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2007. Lenguas e identidades en mundos hispanohablantes. Desde una posicin plurilinge y minoritaria. In M. Lacorte (ed.), Lingstica aplicada del espaol. Madrid: Arco, pp. 377-400.

Garcia, Ofelia and Lesley Bartlett. 2007. A speech community model of Bilingual Education: Educating Latino Newcomers in the U.S. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10: 1-25.

Garcia, Ofelia and Kate Menken. 2006. The English of Latinos from a plurilingual transcultural angle: Implications for assessment and schools. In Dialects, Other Englishes, and Education, ed. by Shondel Nero (pp. 167-184). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2006. Lost in transculturation: The case of bilingual education in New York City. In M. Putz, J.A. Fishman, and Neff-Van Aertselaer (eds.), pp. 157-178. Along the Routes to Power: Exploration of the empowerment through language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2005. Positioning Heritage Languages in the United States. Modern Language Journal 89 (4): 601-605.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2005. Minority Language Education. In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, ed. by Keith Brown. Vol. 8. Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 159-163.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2004. Lost in transculturation: The case of bilingual education in New York City. Linguistic LAUD Agency. Series A, Paper No. 624. Universitat Duisburg-Essen.

Garcia, Ofelia and Cecelia Traugh. 2002. Using Descriptive Inquiry to Transform the Education of Linguistically Diverse U.S. Teachers and Students. In Opportunities and Challenges of (Societal) Bilingualism, ed. by Li Wei, Jean-Marc Dewaele and Alex Housen.Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 311-328.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2002. Teaching language minorities in the United States: From bilingualism as a deficit to bilingualism as a liability. Comments to Eugene Garcia, Bilingualism and Schooling in the United States. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 155/156: 125-130.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2001. Writing backwards across languages: The inexpert English/Spanish biliteracy of uncertified bilingual teachers. In Developing Advanced Literacy in First and Second Languages, ed. by M. Schleppegrell and Cecelia Colombi. Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.

Garcia, Ofelia, Jos Luis Morn and Klaudia Rivera. 2001. How Threatened is the Spanish of New York Puerto Ricans? Language Shift with vaivn. In Can Threatened Languages be Saved? Reversing Language Shift Revisited   ed. by Joshua A. Fishman. Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters, 44-73.

Otheguy, Ricardo, Ofelia Garcia, and Ana Roca. 2000. Speaking in Cuban: The Language of Cuban Americans. In New Immigrants in the United States. Readings for Second Language Educators, ed. by Sandra McKay and Sau-ling Cynthia Wong. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, pp. 165-188.

Garcia, Ofelia. 1999. The Forging of a Latin American Ethnolinguistic Identity: Between the Written and Oral Word. In Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, ed. by Joshua A. Fishman. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, pp. 226-243.

Garcia, Ofelia. 1999. Educating Latino High School students with little formal schooling. In So Much to Say. Adolescents, bilingualism and ESL in the Secondary School, ed by Christian Faltis and Paula Wolfe.  New York: Teachers College Press, pp. 61-82.

Garcia, Ofelia. 1997. From Goya Portraits to Goya Beans: Elite traditions and popular streams in U.S. Spanish language policy. In Southwest Journal of Linguistics 12 (1993): 69-86.

Garcia, Ofelia. 1997. New Yorks Multilingualism: World Languages and their Role in a U.S. City. In Garca, Ofelia and Joshua A. Fishman, eds. The Multilingual Apple: Languages in New York City. Berlin: Mouton, pp. 3-50.

Garcia, Ofelia. 1997. Bilingual Education. In The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, ed. by Florian Coulmas. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 405-420.

Corona, Dolores and Ofelia Garcia. 1996. English in Cuba: From Imperialist Design to Imperative Need.  In Post Imperialist-English, edited by Joshua Fishman, Andrew Conrad and Alma Rubal-Lopez. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Garcia, Ofelia. 1995. Spanish Language Loss as a Determinant of Income among US Latinos:  Implications for language policy in schools.  In Power and Inequality in Language Education, ed. by James W. Tollefson. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, pp. 142-160.

Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove and Ofelia Garcia. 1995. Multilingualism for all? General Principles.  In Multilingualism for All. ed. by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas. Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets and Zeitlinger, pp. 221-256.

Garcia, Ofelia. 1994. Que todo el pluralismo es sueo, y los sueos, vida son: Ethnolinguistic dreams and reality:  A response to John Edwards.  In International Journal of the Sociology of Language 110: 87-104.

Garcia, Ofelia and Ricardo Otheguy. 1994. The value of speaking a LOTE in U.S. Business. In Annals of the AmericanAcademy of Political and Social Science 532: 99-122.

Otheguy, Ricardo and Ofelia Garcia. 1993. Convergent conceptualizations as predictors of degree of contact in U.S. Spanish. In Spanish in the United States, ed. by Ana Roca and John Lipski. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Garcia, Ofelia. 1992.  Societal multilingualism in a multicultural world in transition.  In Languages for a Multicultural World in Transition.  Northeast Conference Reports on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.  ed. by Heidi Byrnes, pp. 1-27.  Lincolnwood, Illinois: National Textbook Company. 

Otheguy, Ricardo, Ofelia Garcia and Mariela Fernndez.  1989.  Transferring, switching, and modeling in West New York Spanish:  An intergenerational study.  International Journal of the Sociology of Language 79:41-52.

Garcia, Ofelia, I. Evangelista, M. Martinez, C. Disla and B. Paulino.  1988.  Spanish language use and attitudes:  A study of two New York City communities.  Language in Society 17:475-511.

Garcia, Ofelia and Ricardo Otheguy. 1988.  The bilingual education of Cuban American children in DadeCounty's ethnic schools.  Language and Education 1:83-95.

 

 

 

honors and awards

Ofelia Garcia  is a Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in South Africa. She has also been a Fulbright Fellow at the Universidad de la Republica (Uruguay) (1996), a Spencer Fellow of the National Academy of Education (1985) and a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities (1981). In addition, she was the first recipient of the Ofelia Garcia Spirit of the Community Award for vision in adult education (1994, CCNY). In 1983 she was awarded the Huntington Award for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation, 1983 from the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese,

 

recent publications


FOR A COMPLETE LIST OF PUBLICATIONS VISIT MY WEBSITE AT http://www.tc.edu/faculty/garcia/home/


Journals (recent)

Spanish in Context. John Benjamins Publisher (co-editor with Rosina Marquez-Reiter and Ricardo Otheguy)

Educators for Urban Minorities. LIU Press (1999-2003)

 

 

Books (From 2001)

Garcia, Ofelia and Colin Baker, eds. 2007. Bilingual Education: An Introductory Reader Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Garcia, Ofelia, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Maria Torres-Guzman, eds. 2006. Imagining Multilingual Schools: Language in Education and Globalization. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Garcia, Ofelia, Hal Schiffman and Rakhmiel Peltz. 2006. Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change: Joshua A. Fishman's Contributions to International Sociolinguistics. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters

Garcia, Ofelia and Joshua A. Fishman, eds. 1997. (2001, 2nd edition). The Multilingual Apple. Languages in New York City. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

 

 

Articles (5/2007 through 1999)

Garca, Ofelia, Lesley Bartlett and JoAnne Kleifgen. 2007. From Biliteracy to Pluriliteracies. In Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Vol. 5: Multilingualism, ed. by Peter Auer and Li Wei. Berlin: Mouton/de Gruyter, pp. 207-228.

Garca, Ofelia. 2007. Lenguas e identidades en mundos hispanohablantes. Desde una posicin plurilinge y minoritaria. In M. Lacorte (ed.), Lingstica aplicada del espaol. Madrid: Arco, pp. 377-400.

Garca, Ofelia and Lesley Bartlett. 2007. A speech community model of Bilingual Education: Educating Latino Newcomers in the U.S. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10: 1-25.

Garca, Ofelia and H. Schiffman (with Z. Zachariah). 2006. Fishmanian Sociolinguistics: 1949 to the present. In Garca, O., R. Peltz and H. Schiffman (eds.). Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change: Joshua A. Fishmans Contributions to International Sociolinguistics. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 3-68.

Garca, Ofelia, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Mara Torres-Guzmn. 2006. Weaving spaces and de(constructing ways for multilingual schools: The actual and the imagined. In Garca, O., T. Skutnabb-Kangas and M. Torres-Guzmn, eds. Imagining Multilingual Schools: Languages in Education and Glocalization. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, pp. 3-47.

Garca, Ofelia and Kate Menken. 2006. The English of Latinos from a plurilingual transcultural angle: Implications for assessment and schools. In Dialects, Other Englishes, and Education, ed. by Shondel Nero (pp. 167-184). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Garca, Ofelia. 2006. Lost in transculturation: The case of bilingual education in New York City. In M. Putz, J.A. Fishman, and Neff-Van Aertselaer (eds.), pp. 157-178. Along the Routes to Power: Exploration of the empowerment through language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2005. Positioning Heritage Languages in the United States. Modern Language Journal 89 (4): 601-605.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2005. Minority Language Education. In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, ed. by Keith Brown. Vol. 8. Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 159-163.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2003. Nouvelles esprances et barrieres dans le domaine de l'ducation aux tats-Unis. Hommes et Migrations (France) no. 1246. (Novembre-Dcembre 2003, pp. 17-27.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2003. La enseanza del espaol a los latinos de los EEUU. Contra el viento del olvido y la marea del ingls. nsula julio-agosto, num. 679-680 (julio-agosto, 2003, Spain).

Garcia, Ofelia and Cecelia Traugh. 2002. Using Descriptive Inquiry to Transform the Education of Linguistically Diverse U.S. Teachers and Students. In Opportunities and Challenges of (Societal) Bilingualism, ed. by Li Wei, Jean-Marc Dewaele and Alex Housen. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2002. Teaching language minorities in the United States: From bilingualism as a deficit to bilingualism as a liability. Comments to Eugene Garcia, Bilingualism and Schooling in the United States. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 155/156: 125-130.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2001. Writing backwards across languages: The inexpert English/Spanish biliteracy of uncertified bilingual teachers. In Developing Advanced Literacy in First and Second Languages, ed. by M. Schleppegrell and Cecelia Colombi. Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2001. Language Spread. Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics, ed. by R. Kaplan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Garcia, Ofelia, Jos Luis Morn and Klaudia Rivera. 2001. How Threatened is the Spanish of New York Puerto Ricans? Language Shift with vaivn. In Can Threatened Languages be Saved? Reversing Language Shift Revisited   ed. by Joshua A. Fishman. Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters, 44-73.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2001. Bilingual education is beneficial. In Education. Opposing Viewpoints, ed. By Mary E. Williams. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 126-129.

Garcia, Ofelia. 2000. Language, a diversity category beyond all others. In Rights to Language. Equity, Power, and Education, ed. by Robert Phillipson, Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 243-248.

Otheguy, Ricardo, Ofelia Garcia, and Ana Roca. 2000. Speaking in Cuban: The Language of Cuban Americans. In New Immigrants in the United States. Readings for Second Language Educators, ed. by Sandra McKay and Sau-ling Cynthia Wong. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 165-188.

Garcia, Ofelia. 1999. Reversing language shift: The Role of scholarship and grandfathership. Liber Amicorum Koen Zondag. Ljouwert, Friesland, The Netherlands. pp. 29-30.

Garcia, Ofelia and Jessica Trubek. 1999. Where have all the minority educators gone and when will they ever learn. In Educators for Urban Minorities  1: 1-8.

Garcia, Ofelia. 1999. The Forging of a Latin American Ethnolinguistic Identity: Between the Written and Oral Word. In Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, ed. by Joshua A. Fishman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 226-243.

 

Garcia, Ofelia. 1999. Educating Latino High School students with little formal schooling. In So Much to Say. Adolescents, bilingualism and ESL in the Secondary School, ed by Christian Faltis and Paula Wolfe.  New York: Teachers College Press, pp. 61-82.

Documents & Papers

Centers and Projects

Center for Multiple Languages and Literacies
Website: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/centers/cmll

The Center for Multiple Languages and Literacies (CMLL) focuses on the challenges occasioned by the multiplicity of languages and literacies in the 21st century. CMLL conducts and disseminates research on how different languages and literacies can be used as resources to advance human development, education, and intercultural understanding. CMLL also promotes dialogue across societies and groups through lectures, conferences, and the Internet. In addition, it supports educators in using research to inform practice. CMLL's work is elaborated in the context of a world characterized by greater flows of people, information, goods and services within and across national boundaries. CMLL is distinctive because of its emphasis on international and transcultural societies, with New York City as an expression of such a society, and its attention to educational systems, including schools, families, religious institutions, community centers, the workplace, and the media.



Office of Doctoral Studies
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