While language is a powerful apparatus that has been used as a tool to perpetuate dominant ideologies and to subjugate people, it can also create a path of emancipation when marginalized people use it to voice their unheard stories. And yet, multicultural, and multilingual experiences are often lost in translation during the normalizing process of the so-called standards of academic writing and communication. To counter this erasure, we propose that multilingual communities are multimodal in nature and that it is imperative to articulate the world as it is encountered to create resilient learning communities (Ainsworth et al., 2023).

Through the lens of multimodality, this symposium seeks to put into conversation multicultural and multilingual experiences from a range of stakeholders. We thus seek to discuss multilingualism as a system of thought, articulation of personhood, and a pedagogical practice by creating a space in which we can listen to the oftentimes unheard voices in academia. To this effect, we ask for submissions on the significance of multilingualism inside and outside of the classroom that address the current conversations on multilingualism in today’s globalized world with specific attention on creating a dialogue between students and instructors.

Co-sponsored by the School of Literature, Media, and Communication; the Writing and Communication Program; and the Brittain Fellowship.