Wenhao Diao

About

Dr. Wenhao Diao is the Department Head of East Asian Studies and a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Arizona. She is also an affiliated faculty member in the interdisciplinary graduate program of Second Language Acquisition and Teaching. She founded and co-directed the Center for East Asian Studies, a Title VI National Resource Center supported by the US Department of Education, at the University of Arizona. Dr. Diao received her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University and her B.A. and M.A. from East China Normal University. As an applied linguist, her research interests include the identities, ideologies, and (in)equities that Chinese language learning and teaching (re)produce and (re)distribute. Her primary research focus has been on the phenomenon of study abroad, particularly involving China. More recently, she has examined Chinese learning during the secondary to postsecondary transition. She has co-edited a book titled Language Learning in Study Abroad: The Multilingual Turn and has guest edited a special issue themed Study Abroad in the 21st Century for the L2 Journal. Prior to her current position, she taught at Middlebury College, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Virginia, and East China Normal University.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Pedagogy
• Social Science
• Social psychology
• Law
• Gender studies
• Mathematics education
• Linguistics

Selected publications

• Caring is pedagogy: Foreign language teachers’ emotion labor in crisis

  Linguistics and Education · 2022 · 32 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Starting College, Quitting Foreign Language: The Case of Learners of Chinese Language during Secondary-Postsecondary Transition

  Journal of Language Identity & Education · 2020 · 29 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Focusing on five initially committed learners of Chinese who decide to quit the language during their college freshman year, this study is a critique of the institutional structure that disengages foreign language education in American postsecondary schools. The findings reveal three structural issues that may contribute to the declining enrollments in foreign language classes in American universities, including (a) the ideological separation of foreign language learning from the STEM curricula,…

  PublisherDOI

• Speaking against racism: stories of successful Chinese L2 learners of color in China

  Critical Inquiry in Language Studies · 2020 · 15 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  This study reports on two students of color studying abroad in China and examines the dialectic between their interpretation of American racism and their agency to study in China and speak Chinese. There have been steady increases in the number of ethnically minoritized students among the study abroad population, but students of color typically travel to places associated with their ethnolinguistic heritage. Existing research exploring study abroad students of color also tends to examine – eithe…

  PublisherDOI

• Multiracial Chinese American women studying abroad in China: The intersectionality of gender, race, and language learning

  Intercultural Communication Education · 2021-04-26 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This case study addresses the theme of mobility and intercultural education by focusing on the study abroad experience of three multiracial Chinese Americans in China. Research on study abroad and language learning has shown the salience of gender in intercultural learning, but women from minoritized groups have rarely been the focus in the literature. Meanwhile, heritage language speakers may encounter complex negotiations of identity and belonging while studying abroad in their “ancestral home…

  PublisherDOI

• Language Learning in Study Abroad

  Multilingual Matters eBooks · 2021-03-29 · 11 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  This book addresses the multilingual reality of study abroad across a variety of national contexts and target languages. The chapters examine multilingual socialization and translanguaging; how the target language is entwined in global, local and historical contexts; and how students use of local and global varieties of English.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Emma Trentman

  University of Colorado System

  21 shared

• Tracy M. Quan

  9 shared

• Anne Donovan

  Georgetown University

  3 shared

• Yi Wang

  Stony Brook University

  3 shared

• Margaret E. Malone

  2 shared

• Hsuan-Ying Liu

  University of California, Riverside

  2 shared

• Chantelle Warner

  2 shared

• Chen Chen

  Fudan University

  1 shared

Similar researchers at University of Arizona

• Jay Quadeh-83
• Weigang Wangh-72
• Hsinchun Chenh-67