Tommaso M. Milani
· Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Applied Linguistics, Jewish Studies, African Studies, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality StudiesPennsylvania State University · Teaching English as a Second Language (TESOL)
Active 2002–2026
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About
Tommaso M. Milani is an Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Applied Linguistics, Jewish Studies, African Studies, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, where he also serves as the Head of the Department of Applied Linguistics. He is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work intersects Applied Linguistics with Jewish, African, and Gender Studies. His research aims to understand how power in (in)balances is reproduced and contested through various meaning-making resources such as language, visuality, and the body. While strongly aligned with the critical discourse analysis tradition, he employs a diverse range of theoretical frameworks including language ideology, intersectionality, queer theory, southern/decolonial perspectives, and theories of affect in his analyses of language and power. Over the past decade, Milani's primary research focus has been on the spatial semiotics of gender and sexuality, contributing to the discourse on normativity and queering language, gender, and sexuality. He has also recently shifted his attention to discursive constructions of time, working on projects related to collective remembering and the commemoration of victims of the Shoah in Italy and Sweden. Additionally, he collaborates on projects concerning Yiddish in Sweden. Since 2020, he has been editing the journal Language in Society. His scholarly contributions include numerous articles and book chapters that explore themes such as collective memory,…
Research topics
- Sociology
- Political Science
- Computer Science
- Social Science
- Epistemology
- Philosophy
- Gender studies
- Pedagogy
- Communication
- Law
Selected publications
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism · 2024-01-30 · 5 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingIn this article, we explore how people in conflict-affected societies use language to navigate the affective constraints that political conflicts impose. Specifically, we consider the role of multilingualism in enabling sexual and romantic intimacy between Jewish and Palestinian Israelis in Israel/Palestine. Our data are drawn from a close examination of the speech of Fadi Daeem, one of the protagonists in the 2015 documentary Oriented. Building on studies of (in)securitization and everyday bord…
International Journal of the Sociology of Language · 2024-05-01 · 4 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingAbstract This article presents an analysis of Rana Bishara’s installation Roadmap for Elimination , which is semiotically and materially interesting due to the skillful combination of language, maps of Palestine, and other key symbolic elements of Palestinian resistance such as cactus leaves. The article illustrates how, in the artwork, space and time fold into each other for political purposes in such a way that the European colonial past is visually overlaid with the present Israeli occupation…
Why should we care about multilingualism, gender, and sexuality?
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism · 2024-02-15 · 4 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingIn this introductory essay, we lay some theoretical ground to the special issue on Queering Multilingualism. We outline what we mean by 'queering', and why it is necessary in relation to multilingualism. Ultimately, our argument is that a focus on gender and sexuality allows us to expand our understanding of the complexity of power relations in multilingual settings, encounters, and lived experiences. With the help of examples from the contributions to the special issue we not only illustrate ho…
Why Everybody Wants to Be a Fascist and Why We Should Study Language to Understand It
Journal of Right-Wing Studies · 2025-01-18 · 2 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingIn this commentary, I want to take up the topic of heroes and hard truths.Gender, sexuality, and the sociolinguistics of the far right are the starting point from which to make two interconnected discursive moves: first, I want to revisit Flix Guattari's statement that "everybody wants to be a fascist"; and, second, I put particular emphasis on why we should study language in order to investigate and understand such a desire for fascism.While the articles in this special issue do not overtly dra…
2023-11-16 · 2 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingOn 9 March 2015, a group of students spearheaded by political science senior Chumani Maxwele tossed a bucket of human excrement at the statue of Cecil John Rhodes towering over the campus of the prestigious University of Cape Town (UCT). The act of poo-throwing was the spark that started a protest movement which not only questioned the legitimacy of public memorials of colonial history such as Rhodes's statue but also advanced a broader critique of institutional racism, unequal access to tertiar…
Frequent coauthors
- 29 shared
Erez Levon
University of Bern
- 20 shared
Kristine Køhler Mortensen
University of Copenhagen
- 12 shared
Rickard Jönsson
Stockholm University
- 10 shared
Šimon Bauer
University of Gothenburg
- 10 shared
Kerstin von Brömssen
University West
- 10 shared
John Richardson
University of Liverpool
- 9 shared
Andrea Spehar
- 8 shared
Johan Järlehed
Tilburg University
Education
- 2007
PhD, Centre for Research on Bilingualism
Stockholms Universitet
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