The War at Home: Militarized and Racialized Identities in the University ‘Critical Language’ Classroom

Abstract

Despite the defunding and shuttering of many language courses and departments in public American universities, offerings deemed ‘critical’ to security and military interests have seen a dramatic rise since 11 September 2001. These courses are largely populated by Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) learners interested in career advancement and payment through military stipends for course enrollment and ‘heritage’ learners interested in deepening their familial connections and cultural identities as expressed through language. Drawing on nine months of participant-observation and interviews in one such course, the author identifies three locally constructed symbolic boundaries ( us/them; soldier/civilian; white/non-white) used by students to reflect unequal identities and classroom experiences. Findings suggest that the federally-funded American critical language classroom can serve as a domestic stage upon which ROTC students may informally ‘try on’ militarized identities vis-à-vis classmates who are sartorially, spatially, culturally, and racially cast as native-civilian others.