Fernanda Carra-Salsberg

Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies » Faculty & Staff » Faculty Profiles

Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics

Assistant Professor
Teaching Stream

Office: Ross S505A
Phone: 416-736-2100 Ext: 88737
Email: fcarra@yorku.ca

Attached CV

Fernanda Carra-Salsberg has been a postsecondary foreign language educator since 2001. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, her interest in language, culture, migration, trauma and identity formations stems from her repeated relocations as a child and an adolescent migrant, and from experiences as a foreign-language pedagogue. She teaches English as a Second Language and Spanish to heritage and second language learners at York University, Ontario, Canada. She has earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree with honours in Spanish Language, Literature and Linguistics at York University, a Bachelor of Education Degree in Language Acquisition and History at OISE UT, and a Master of Arts Degree in Spanish Language and Ibero-American Literature at the University of Toronto. In 2015 Carra-Salsberg has completed an Interdisciplinary Doctoral Degree at the Faculty of Education, York University. Examples of her published work include: “Impressions and Transformations: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Effects of Early Linguistic Disruptions, Emotional Trauma, and of Testimony through the Study of Oscar Hijuelos’ Thoughts without Cigarettes.” Journal of Language and Psychoanalysis, and “Aggression and the Telos of Learning: A Psychoanalytic Study of Significant Language Learning.” Journal of Language and Psychoanalysis. Volume 4, No 2 (2015): 34-49. Currently, Fernanda is completing a book titled Child and Adolescent Migration, Mental Health and Language: Effects of Foreign Language Immersions, with the University of Exeter Press. She is also the co-editor of an upcoming publication titled: Curriculum Design and Praxis in Language Teaching: A Globally Informed Approach, currently under review by the University of Toronto Press.

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Degrees

PhD, York University
MA, University of Toronto
BEd, OISE, UT
BA (hns)., York University

Research Interests

Education , Spanish and Hispanic Studies, Second Language Acquisition, Migration , Translingualism , Psychoanalysis, Semiotics

Current Research Projects

Book in press

Summary:

Child and Adolescent Migration, Mental Health and Language: Effects of Foreign Language Immersions. Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press.

Description:

Child and Adolescent Migration, Mental Health and Language: Effects of Foreign Language Immersions focuses on migration and the socio-affective significance of language. It is a look into how the latter influences while forming part of children’s and adolescents’ development, subjectivity, identifications and identity formations. By taking a thorough approach to the intricacy of migrancy, this timely publication examines the many challenges young economic migrants, environmental migrants, refugees, irregular migrants and asylum seekers encounter prior to and following their geographic, socio-cultural and linguistic relocations. While not disregarding the benefits that stem from international relocations, Carra-Salsberg addresses contemporary concerns influencing young migrants’ socio-affective experiences.

As part of the book’s discussion on the subjective significance of language, this publication takes a semiotic, pedagogic and psycho-analytic approach to the study of the effects of host, foreign language immersions and significant language learning. The author draws attention to the manner in which the juxtaposing challenges minors’ encounter within receiving countries often add to pre-existing traumas. Throughout this book, the developmental importance of language is studied through theory, the analysis of memoirs and the author’s depiction and understanding of her own experiences between languages. This book, written for academics, psychologists, psychiatrists, pedagogues, counsellors, human right advocates and policy makers, highlights the intricate connection between language, migration and mental health. The restorative significance of language is also discussed in relation to migrants’ natural need to grieve, testify and find meaning within the hybridity that integrates their past and present sense of self.

Role: Author

Books
Articles

Book Reviews

Publication

Year

In Retelling the Stories of our Lives: Everyday Narrative Therapy to Draw Inspiration and Transform Experience, David Denborough presents a well written, detailed and easy to follow account of an alternative form of psychotherapy. Guided by his personal and professional experiences2, this Australian therapist informs his general audience of the significance of understanding affective occurrences and of bearing witness to stress evoking events through the act of writing and sharing.

2015

Degrees

PhD, York University
MA, University of Toronto
BEd, OISE, UT
BA (hns)., York University

Research Interests

Education , Spanish and Hispanic Studies, Second Language Acquisition, Migration , Translingualism , Psychoanalysis, Semiotics

Current Research Projects

Book in press

Summary:

Child and Adolescent Migration, Mental Health and Language: Effects of Foreign Language Immersions. Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press.

Description:

Project Type:

Role:

All Publications

Book Reviews

Publication

Year

2015

Journal Articles

Publication

Year

The article “A Psychoanalytic Look into the Effects of Childhood and Adolescent Migration in Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation” takes a psychoanalytic, philosophical and socio-linguistic approach to the understanding of the short and long-term socio-emotional effects of child and adolescent migrations. Through a close look into Eva Hoffman’s classic migrant memoir, I examine the subjective meanings of a mother tongue in relation to language learners’ acquisition and internalization of a second language. Migrants’ stages of culture shock and integration are discussed and contrasted with the methodical textual division presented in the memoir. I draw attention to the way in which migrants’ initial unsettlement, which derives from preliminary and subsequent stages of linguistic, social and cultural immersions, gives way to a sensed trauma and resulting defenses. My article suggests how with a good enough environment, emigrants’ experiences often lead to integrations, as well as psychic and social growth.

2017

In “Placing Myself in the Picture: An Autobiographical Approach to the Phenomenology of Language, Identity, Trauma and Memory” this researcher juxtaposes philosophical and psychoanalytic theories of language with descriptions of experiences of migration, language learning and education. She studies the effects of having one’s language of identification undervalued by political tensions and examine the subjective meaning of reconstructing one’s identity following a language-related emotional crisis. Carra-Salsberg defines her own libidinal attachments to introjected tongues and discuss how my present state of being within uneven languages were carved by the memory of experiences as a child and an adolescent migrant. Similar to Jacques Derrida’s (1996) description of “disorders of identity”, she blends theory with recollections of lived occurrences to conceptualize the way in which the inscription of early traumatic occurrences within languages ground individuals’ life-long responses and attitudes towards their acquired tongues.

2016

“Impressions and Transformations: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Effects of Early Linguistic Disruptions, Emotional Trauma, and of Testimony through the Study of Oscar Hijuelos’ Thoughts without Cigarettes” takes an ontological approach to the landscape of a lived language. Through an in-depth study of Oscar Hijuelos’ memoir I examine how a primary language promotes the emergence of the speaking subject. I look into the manner in which individual and shared histories interact with speakers’ perceptions, ongoing relations and dialogical conceptions within a culture. Through the research of semiotic, language philosophy, and psychoanalytic theories I study the ways in which speakers’ social, cognitive and emotional worlds are made from the fluid worlds of others and examine language’s core implication with such relation.

2015

“Aggression and the Telos of Learning: A Psychoanalytic Study of Significant Language Learning” focuses on descriptions provided in Richard Rodriguez’ Hunger of Memory, Alice Pitt’s “Language on Loan”, and Alice Kaplan’s French Lessons. This article analysis the psycho-emotional situation of significant language learning for both: child and adolescent monolingual migrants, and host-foreign language students. This work pays close attention to the manner in which acquiring a new language unveils learners’ affect and history of learning. It looks into language acquisition in relation to our human nature, universal needs and responses to host-foreign language learning. Drives and defenses behind the embodiment of a new language are discussed through questions of desire, identifications and need for individuation. Also central to this paper is the exploration of how significant learning, as a cognitive-emotional experience, is tied to differing forms of aggression.

2015