LOUKIA SARROUB, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education
44E Henzlik Hall
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0355
(402) 472-5166

Biography

Loukia K. Sarroub received her PhD in Education from Michigan State University and her BA in Linguistics from the University of Chicago. She was an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2000-2001) before moving to Nebraska in the fall of 2001.

Dr. Sarroub is interested in exploring language and literacy as cultural and sociological phenomena, where issues of ethnicity, language use, social class, gender, nationality, and culture, among others, are highly politicized. She is also intrigued by how the discourse surrounding policy gets played out at all levels of schooling and how this influences agency among key players (students, parents, teachers, schools). Both interests have been informed by sociolinguistics and literacy studies, cultural anthropology and sociology. In 1997, Dr. Sarroub spent 26 months doing fieldwork in a Yemeni American community in Michigan. This research delves substantially into the literacy and discourse practices of secondary school students as well as into migration/diversity issues of Arab Muslims and immigrants in the U.S. and Europe. She is particularly interested in how such immigrant populations negotiate their home and school worlds successfully and how a school and its teachers accommodate them. Based on this fieldwork she published All American girls: Being Muslim in a public school.

Dr. Sarroub is currently working on an multi-year ethnographic project, "Literate success: American and refugee youth in and out of school." The purpose of this cross-cultural research is to examine cultural, language, and literacy practices that may either hinder or support the intellectual and social success of low SES students at home and school. She is conducting fieldwork in an Iraqi refugee community and exploring students' literacy practices in and out of school. She is also examining how "reading" is taught at the high school level to accommodate both ELL populations, such as the Iraqis and other refugees, and American students who struggle with literacy.

 

Recent Publications

Journal Articles

Sarroub, L. K. (September 2007). Seeking refuge in literacy from a scorpion bite.  Ethnography and Education, 2, 365-380.

Hostetler, K., Latta, M. M., & Sarroub, L. K. (May 2007). Retrieving meaning in teacher education: The question of being. Journal of Teacher Education, 58, 231-244.

Sarroub, L. K., Pernicek, T., & Sweeney, T. (May 2007). I was bitten by a scorpion: Reading in and out of school in a refugee's life. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 50, 668-679.

Sarroub, L. K. (2005). Book Review: Arab American faces and voices: The origins of an immigrant community by Elizabeth Boosahda. In The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 22, 125-127.

Sarroub, L. K. (2002). Arab American youth in perspective. Newsletter of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Spring, 3-6.

Sarroub, L. K. (2002). From neologisms to social practice: An analysis of the wanding of America. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 3, 297-307.

Sarroub, L. K. (2002). In-betweenness: Religion and conflicting visions of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 37, 130-148.

Sarroub, L. K. (2002). From neologisms to social practice: An analysis of the wanding of America. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 3, 297-307.

Sarroub, L. K. ( 2002). Arab American youth in perspective. Newsletter of the Society for Research on Adolescence, 3-6.

Books & Chapters

Sarroub, L. K. (2005). All American girls: Being Muslim in a public school. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Sarroub, L. K. (2004). Reframing for decisions: Transforming talk about literacy assessment among teachers and researchers. In R. Rogers (Ed.), New directions in critical discourse analysis: The role of language and learning in social transformation (pp. 97-116). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Sarroub, L. K. (2000). Education. In A. Ameri & D. Ramey (Eds.), Arab American encyclopedia. Detroit, MI: UXL/Gale Group.