Brendan O'Connor
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Mail code: 6303Campus: Tempe
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Brendan H. O’Connor is associate professor and coordinator of undergraduate and graduate programs 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 works broadly on issues of language, identity, youth culture, and education in multilingual and intercultural contexts. He is the author of Multilingual Baseball: Language Learning, Identity, and Intercultural Communication in the Transnational Game (Bloomsbury Academic, May 2023) and co-author, with sociologist Stephanie Canizales (UC Berkeley), of Everyday Futures: Language as Survival for Indigenous Youth in Diaspora (Stanford University Press, August 2025). He is co-editor-in-chief of Anthropology & Education Quarterly.
In earlier research projects, Professor O'Connor has worked with migrant/seasonal farmworker undergraduates and staff in ASU's College Assistance Migrant Program, transfronterizo (border-crossing) university students in South Texas, and Mexican American high school students in southern Arizona. 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 runner-up for the CAE's Douglas Foley Early Career Award in 2020 and a finalist for the CAE's Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2012. His academic work has appeared in a wide range of journals in linguistics, anthropology, and education and his public scholarship has been featured in outlets such as Sapiens, The Conversation, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, and Spark: Elevating Scholarship on Social Issues. Reach him at brendanhoconnor@gmail.com.
Ph.D. Language, Reading and Culture, University of Arizona (2012)
Warr, M., Dicochea, L., Flores, S., Holmes, T., O’Connor, B.H., Garcia, D.R., Martínez-Orozco, R. (2025). Leveraging interdisciplinary problem-based learning for social impact in graduate education. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.14434/ijpbl.v19i1.36159
Garcia, D.R., & O’Connor, B.H. (2024). Aspiring to shape education policy for equity: Lessons from graduate education. Policy Futures in Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/14782103241287571
O’Connor, B.H., & Szkupinski Quiroga, S. (2024). Applying anthropology to transform migrant/seasonal farmworker experiences in higher education. Practicing Anthropology. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08884552.2024.2361057
O’Connor, B.H. (2024). Scholarly talks: A quick fix for authentic intellectual engagement in small-group cooperative learning. College Teaching. https://doi.org/10.1080/87567555.2024.2342907
O’Connor, B.H. (2024). Arguing with objects and bodies: Material entanglements and embodied reasoning in science learner interaction. Classroom Discourse. https://doi.org/10.1080/19463014.2024.2332725
O’Connor, B.H., & Canizales, S.L. (2023). Thresholds of liminality: Discourse and embodiment from separation to consummation among Guatemalan Maya youth workers in Los Angeles. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 279, 155-179. (Special issue: Youth at the Margins: Ethnographic Perspectives on Language and Liminality). https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2022-0035
O’Connor, B.H. (2022). To walk the same road: Convivial possibilities and ethical affordances in borderlands schooling. Anthropologica, 64(2), 1-25. (Thematic section: Dignity, Conviviality, and Moral Contests of Belonging). https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica6422022365
O’Connor, B.H., Kirsch, H., & Maestas, N. (2022). “I learned that I don’t have to change”: Migrant/seasonal farmworker undergraduates’ experiences at academic conferences. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2022.2097746
Canizales, S.L., & O’Connor, B.H. (2022). “Maybe not 100%”: Co-constructing language proficiency in the Maya diaspora. International Multilingual Research Journal. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19313152.2022.2065598
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
2025 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| TCL 305 | Transborder Practicum |
| TSS 609 | Prspctus Desgn Trnsbd Studies |
| TSS 792 | Research |
2025 Summer
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| TSS 695 | Continuing Registration |
| TSS 795 | Continuing Registration |
| TSS 690 | Reading and Conference |
2025 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| TCL 498 | Pro-Seminar |
| TSS 695 | Continuing Registration |
| TSS 799 | Dissertation |
| TSS 690 | Reading and Conference |
| TSS 690 | Reading and Conference |
2024 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| TCL 305 | Transborder Practicum |
| TSS 799 | Dissertation |
| TSS 799 | Dissertation |
| TSS 695 | Continuing Registration |
2024 Summer
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| TSS 799 | Dissertation |
| TSS 792 | Research |
| TSS 695 | Continuing Registration |
2024 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| TCL 498 | Pro-Seminar |
| TCL 348 | The Borders of Language |
| TSS 599 | Thesis |
| TSS 690 | Reading and Conference |
| TSS 799 | Dissertation |
| ENG 348 | The Borders of Language |
| ASB 348 | The Borders of Language |
| TSS 609 | Prspctus Desgn Trnsbd Studies |
| TSS 690 | Reading and Conference |
2023 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| TCL 494 | Special Topics |
| TSS 598 | Special Topics |
| TSS 609 | Prspctus Desgn Trnsbd Studies |
| TSS 690 | Reading and Conference |
| TSS 799 | Dissertation |
| TSS 583 | Fieldwork |
| TSS 590 | Reading and Conference |
| ASB 494 | Special Topics |
2023 Summer
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| TSS 690 | Reading and Conference |
2023 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| GRD 593 | Applied Project |
| TSS 593 | Applied Project |
| TCL 494 | Special Topics |
| TSS 598 | Special Topics |
| TCL 493 | Honors Thesis |
| EPA 593 | Applied Project |
| TSS 690 | Reading and Conference |
| TSS 690 | Reading and Conference |
2022 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| TCL 348 | The Borders of Language |
| TCL 275 | Culture, Language & Learning |
| ASB 275 | Culture, Language & Learning |
| ASB 348 | The Borders of Language |
| ENG 348 | The Borders of Language |
| TSS 690 | Reading and Conference |
| TSS 690 | Reading and Conference |
| TSS 792 | Research |
| TCL 492 | Honors Directed Study |
2022 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| TCL 498 | Pro-Seminar |
| GRD 593 | Applied Project |
| EPA 598 | Special Topics |
| TSS 593 | Applied Project |
| TSS 792 | Research |
2021 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| TSS 792 | Research |
2021 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| TCL 498 | Pro-Seminar |
| TWC 593 | Applied Project |
| GRD 593 | Applied Project |
| EPA 598 | Special Topics |
| TSS 593 | Applied Project |
2020 Fall
| Course 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 |
- 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- )