Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor
Language and Literacy Education (Faculty)
Professor- TWLE
309Q Aderhold
Phone: 706.543.8127
Email: cahnmann@uga.edu
Website: http://teachersactup.com/
Melisa "Misha" Cahnmann-Taylor (formerly Melisa Cahnmann) is interested in the relationship between language, culture, literacy, and power. She studies multicultural education and multilingual classrooms as sites of social conflict, where possibilities exist for social change, justice and democracy. She uses a hybrid form of qualitative inquiry that embraces traditional methods alongside nontraditional, feminist, poetic, narrative and arts-based approaches. She is most interested in theoretical and empirical work that excites teachers about the depth and possibility of their work to improve the education of all children, especially children for whom standard English is not a first language. She explores how Georgia educators might learn from bilingual education policy and practice in other states to provide the most effective education possible to the growing Latino presence in the region.
Cahnmann Taylor’s recent research projects include using Boalian Theatre of the Oppressed methodologies in dialogic professional development with pre- and in-service bilingual teachers and our friends; merging methodologies of poetry, memoir and social science scholarship to understand individual and societal bilingualism; and supporting meaningful approaches to bilingual education in early childhood and elementary education. She judges an annual poetry contest for the Society for Humanistic Anthropology and, with great joy, regularly teaches courses utilizing poetry, theatre, memoir, and children's literature in Spanish to nurture creativity in education.