Bio

Jonathan Rosa is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and, by courtesy, Departments of Anthropology, Linguistics, and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. His research examines the co-naturalization of language and race as an organizing dynamic within modern governance. Specifically, he tracks colonially structured interrelations among racial marginalization, linguistic stigmatization, and institutional inequity. Dr. Rosa collaborates with local communities to investigate these phenomena and develop tools for understanding and challenging the forms of vulnerability to which they correspond. This community-based approach to research, teaching, and service reflects a vision of scholarship as a platform for imagining and enacting more just societies. Dr. Rosa is author of the award-winning book Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad (2019, Oxford University Press) and co-editor of the volume Language and Social Justice in Practice (2019, Routledge). His work has appeared in scholarly journals such as the Harvard Educational Review, American Ethnologist, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, and Language in Society, as well as media outlets such as The New York Times, The Nation, NPR, and Univision. Dr. Rosa attained his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, and his B.A. in Linguistics and Educational Studies from Swarthmore College.

Academic Appointments

  • Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education
  • Associate Professor (By courtesy), Linguistics
  • Associate Professor (By courtesy), Anthropology
  • Associate Professor (By courtesy), Comparative Literature

Honors & Awards

  • First Book Award (Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race), American Association for Applied Linguistics (2021)
  • Prose Award for Excellence in Language & Linguistics (Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race), Association of American Publishers (2020)
  • Charles A. Ferguson Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Center for Applied Linguistics (2018)

Program Affiliations

  • Center for Latin American Studies

Professional Education

  • Ph.D., University of Chicago, Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology (2010)
  • M.A., University of Chicago, Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology (2006)
  • B.A., Swarthmore College, Linguistics and Educational Studies (2003)

Contact

  • Academic
    jdrosa@stanford.edu
    University - Faculty Department: Graduate School of Education Position: Associate Professor

Additional Info

  • Mail Code: 3096

Links

Research Interests

  • Diversity and Identity
  • Immigrants and Immigration
  • Literacy and Language
  • Poverty and Inequality
  • Race and Ethnicity
  • Sociology
  • Teachers and Teaching

Current Research and Scholarly Interests

I am currently working on two book projects through which I am continuing to develop insights into ethnoracial, linguistic, and educational formations. The first offers frameworks for understanding ethnoracial contradictions across distinctive societal contexts by interweaving ethnographic analysis of diasporic Puerto Rican experiences and broader constructions of Latinidad that illustrate race and ethnicity as colonial and communicative predicaments. The second spotlights decolonial approaches to the creation of collective well-being through educational and societal transformations based on longstanding community collaborations in Chicago.

2024-25 Courses

Stanford Advisees

All Publications