Brendan O'Connor
Asst Professor
Asst Professor
Assistant Professor
Affiliate Faculty Member; Assistant Professor, School of Transborder Studies
Assoc Professor
Asst Professor
Brendan H. O’Connor is associate professor in the School of Transborder Studies and an affiliated faculty member in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. He is a linguistic anthropologist of education who has studied issues related to language, identity, youth culture, and education among Mexican-American high school students and migrant undergraduates in Arizona, transfronterizo (border-crossing) university students in South Texas, and a Navajo hip hop artist in northern New Mexico. Prior to his time at ASU, he was assistant professor of language, literacy and intercultural studies at the University of Texas at Brownsville. He has also taught in the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) at the University of Arizona and at Tohono O’odham Community College in Sells, AZ.
In 2011, Professor O’Connor was named a Presidential Early Career Fellow by the Council on Anthropology and Education (CAE) of the American Anthropological Association. He was also a finalist for the CAE's 2012 Outstanding Dissertation Award. His work appears in journals such as Teachers College Record, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, The Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology, Journal of Language, Identity & Education, Linguistic Landscape, Latino Studies, and Linguistics and Education, as well as several edited volumes.
Ph.D. Language, Reading and Culture, University of Arizona
O’Connor, B.H. (2021). Culture, after all. (Reflection on the Field). Anthropology & Education Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1111/aeq.12371
Canizales, S.L., & O’Connor, B.H. (2021). From preparación to adaptación: Language and the imagined futures of Maya-speaking Guatemalan youth in Los Angeles. In D.S. Warriner (ed.) Refugee Education across the Lifespan, pp. 103-119. Educational Linguistics, vol 50. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79470-5_6
O'Connor, B.H. (2020). Revisiting Americanist arguments and rethinking scale in linguistic anthropology. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12280
O’Connor, B.H., Mancinas, O., & Troxel Deeg, M. (2020). Drops in the ocean: Rooted academic identities and transformational resistance in a College Assistance Migrant Program. Journal of Latinos and Education, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348431.2020.1783267
O’Connor, B.H., Mortimer, K.S., Bartlett, L., de la Piedra, M.T., Gomes, A.M.R., Mangual Figueroa, A., Novaro, G., Orellana, M.F., & Ullman, C. (2019). Cruzar fronteras em espaços acadêmicos: Transgressing “the limits of translanguaging.” Applied Linguistics Review. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2019-0003
O'Connor, B.H. (2019). "Everything went boom": Kinship narratives of transfronterizo university students. The Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology, 24(1), 242-262. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jlca.12346
O’Connor, B.H. (2018). “Too much cream on the tacos”: Narrative and moral personhood in transfronterizo experience. Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal, 12(2), 153-181. http://dx.doi.org/10.24974/amae.12.2.398
O’Connor, B.H. (2018). Introduction to the invited special issue: Linguistic hegemony and counterhegemonic discourse in the borderlands. Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal, 12(2), 6-19. http://amaejournal.utsa.edu/index.php/amae/article/view/392/303
O’Connor, B.H. (2018). Cross-border mobility and critical cosmopolitanism among South Texas university students. Teachers College Record, 120(5). http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentId=22115
O’Connor, B.H., & Mangual Figueroa, A. (2017). A time to keep silence and a time to speak. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 48(4), 411-419. Special issue: Educational Anthropologists Respond to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aeq.12216
O’Connor, B.H. (2017). Language out of place: Transgressive semiotics and the lived experience of race in borderlands education. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 16(3). http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2017.1283991
O’Connor, B.H., & González, N. (2017). Language education and culture. In T. McCarty (Ed.) Language Policy and Political Issues in Education, Vol. 1 of Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 3rd Edition, S. May, Ed. (pp. 1-12). Heidelberg: Springer. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-02344-1_5
O’Connor, B.H. (2016). Racializing discourse in public and private: Social differentiation and the question of Mexicanness at an Arizona high school. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 47(2), 130-147. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aeq.12145/full
Casanova, S., O’Connor, B.H., & Anthony-Stevens, V. (2016). Ecologies of adaptation for Mexican Indigenous im/migrant children and families in the U.S.: Implications for Latino studies. Latino Studies, 14(2), 192-213. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/lst.2016.4
O’Connor, B.H., & Zentz, L. (2016). Theorizing mobility in semiotic landscapes: Evidence from South Texas and Central Java. Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal, 2(1), 26-50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ll.2.1.02oco
O’Connor, B.H. (2015). “I heard it wasn’t really a myth”: Enacting and contesting expertise in an Arizona science classroom. Linguistics and Education, 31, 30-43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2015.04.001
O’Connor, B.H., & Crawford, L. (2015). An art of being in between: The promise of hybrid language practices. In Y. & D. Freeman (Eds.) Research on Preparing Inservice Teachers to Work Effectively with Emergent Bilinguals (pp. 149-173). Bingley, UK: EmeraldBooks. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/S1479-368720150000024008
O’Connor, B.H., & Brown, G. (2014). Just keep expanding outwards: Embodied space as cultural critique in the life and work of a Navajo hip hop artist. In L. Wyman, T. McCarty, & S. Nicholas (Eds.) Indigenous Youth and Multilingualism: Language Identity, Ideology, and Practice in Dynamic Cultural Worlds (pp. 48-69). New York: Routledge. https://asu.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/just-keep-expanding-outwards-embodied-space-as-cultural-critique-
González, N., Wyman, L., & O’Connor, B.H. (2011). The past, present, and future of “Funds of Knowledge”. In B. Levinson & M. Pollock (Eds.) A Companion to the Anthropology of Education (pp. 481-494). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444396713.ch28/summary
Courses
2022 Spring
Couse Number | Course Title |
---|---|
TCL 498 | Pro-Seminar |
GRD 593 | Applied Project |
EPA 598 | Special Topics |
TSS 593 | Applied Project |
TSS 792 | Research |
2021 Spring
Couse Number | Course Title |
---|---|
TCL 498 | Pro-Seminar |
TWC 593 | Applied Project |
GRD 593 | Applied Project |
EPA 598 | Special Topics |
TSS 593 | Applied Project |
2021 Fall
Couse Number | Course Title |
---|---|
TSS 792 | Research |
2020 Spring
Couse Number | Course Title |
---|---|
EPA 790 | Reading and Conference |
TSS 598 | Special Topics |
TCL 348 | The Borders of Language |
TCL 494 | Special Topics |
ENG 348 | The Borders of Language |
ASB 348 | The Borders of Language |
TCL 493 | Honors Thesis |
2020 Fall
Couse Number | Course Title |
---|---|
TCL 275 | Culture, Language & Learning |
ASB 275 | Culture, Language & Learning |
TCL 303 | Transborder Theory |
SOC 303 | Transborder Theory |
TCL 499 | Individualized Instruction |
2019 Spring
Couse Number | Course Title |
---|---|
TCL 498 | Pro-Seminar |
EPA 790 | Reading and Conference |
TCL 394 | Special Topics |
ENG 394 | Special Topics |
ASB 394 | Special Topics |
TCL 499 | Individualized Instruction |
2019 Fall
Couse Number | Course Title |
---|---|
TCL 275 | Culture, Language & Learning |
ASB 275 | Culture, Language & Learning |
TCL 494 | Special Topics |
TSS 598 | Special Topics |
ASB 494 | Special Topics |
TCL 492 | Honors Directed Study |
2018 Spring
Couse Number | Course Title |
---|---|
TCL 275 | Culture, Language & Learning |
TCL 394 | Special Topics |
ENG 394 | Special Topics |
ASB 394 | Special Topics |
ASB 275 | Culture, Language & Learning |
TSS 690 | Reading and Conference |
2018 Fall
Couse Number | Course Title |
---|---|
TCL 494 | Special Topics |
TCL 275 | Culture, Language & Learning |
TSS 598 | Special Topics |
HED 494 | Special Topics |
HED 598 | Special Topics |
ASB 275 | Culture, Language & Learning |
2017 Fall
Couse Number | Course Title |
---|---|
TCL 494 | Special Topics |
TSS 598 | Special Topics |
ASB 494 | Special Topics |
- Brendan H. O'Connor. Precarious cosmopolitanism: Double-voiced narratives of transnational university students on the Texas-Tamaulipas border. 36th Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum (Feb 2015).
- Brendan H. O'Connor. Transnational mobility among postsecondary students on the Texas-Tamaulipas border. Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (Dec 2014).
- Brendan H. O'Connor. Signs of mobility: Linguistic landscapes on the Texas-Tamaulipas border. Interdisciplinary Seminars on Transborder Studies, ASU School of Transborder Studies (Sep 2014).
- Brendan H. O'Connor, Lauren Zentz. Moving people, transporting texts: A comparative case study of linguistic landscapes and language policy on the Texas-Tamaulipas border and Central Java, Indonesia. Multidisciplinary Approaches in Language Policy and Planning (Sep 2014).
- Brendan H. O'Connor. The idea of order in science learner discourse. Annual Meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (Mar 2013).
- Brendan H. O'Connor. World enough and time: Time-consciousness and the time of practice in linguistic anthropology. Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (Nov 2012).
- Brendan H. O'Connor. An art of being in between: "Ordinary" classroom language in extraordinary times. Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (Nov 2011).
- Brendan H. O'Connor. Meta-knowledge, rights to speak, and scientific discourse socialization in a high school science classroom. Conference on Language, Interaction, and Social Organization (May 2011).
- Brendan H. O'Connor. Mexicans and "Mexicans": Making sense of racialized interactions at a southern Arizona high school. Arizona Anthropology and Education Exchange (Apr 2011).
- Brendan H. O'Connor. "We’re gonna be astronomers and say it right!": Negotiating identity and scientific knowledge in teacher-student interactions. Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (Nov 2010).
- Brendan H. O'Connor. Barack Obama wants your child to learn Spanish: Language paranoia in the "post-racial" United States. Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (Dec 2009).
- Brendan H. O'Connor. "Ancient tongue, modern software": Chronotopic contrasts in mass-mediated discourses of language endangerment. Annual Meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (Mar 2009).
- Brendan H. O'Connor, Gilbert Brown. Not for your average brain: The social meaning of metaphor in an underground hiphop community. Symposium About Language and Society (SALSA) XVI (Apr 2008).
- Brendan H. O'Connor, Maisa Taha, Megan Sheehan. The revolutionary we: Discursive variation in Castro’s nosotros. New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 36 (Oct 2007).
Excellence in Teaching Award, School of Transborder Studies, Arizona State University (Fall 2016-Spring 2017)
Nominee, Zebulon Pearce Distinguished Teaching Award, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University (2015-2016)
Nominee, University of Texas Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award (2014)
Runner-up, Outstanding Dissertation Award, Council on Anthropology and Education, American Anthropological Association (2012)
Presidential Early Career Fellow, Council on Anthropology and Education, American Anthropological Association (2011)
Associate Editor, Anthropology & Education Quarterly (2017- )
American Anthropological Association American Educational Research Association American Association for Applied Linguistics
Assistant Professor, Department of Language, Literacy, & Intercultural Studies University of Texas at Brownsville (2014-2016)
ASU Interdisciplinary Committee on Linguistics, Member (2016- )
Co-organizer, 14th Inter-American Educational Ethnography Symposium (2016-2017)
Council on Anthropology and Education, Dissertation Award Committee, Member (2017)
School of Transborder Studies Curriculum Committee, Member (2016- )
Chicanos por la Causa/Carl Hayden Community Center, Service learning coordinator (2014 - 2016)
University Senate, Representative - School of Transborder Studies (2014 - 2017)
ASU University Carillonneur (2016- )