Artifactual Literacies and TESOL: Narratives of a Syrian RefugeeBackground Family FARES J. KARAM AND ELENI OIKONOMIDOY University of Nevada, Reno Reno, Nevada, United States AMANDA K. KIBLER Oregon State University Corvallis, Oregon, United States Theoretically framed in artifactual literacies, this study examined a refugee-background family’s visit to a group of university students enrolled in a teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) methods class. One of the authors requested they give this presentation and collaborated with them in writing it. Participants included Maria and Omar, Syrian parents of three children who selfidentify as Muslim. Primary data included transcripts of the families’ collaborative composing with the first author and of the presentation itself, in addition to a multimodal PowerPoint. Secondary data included interviews with the family before and after the presentation. A narrative analysis of this data revealed that through stories (evoked by artifacts), the family presented themselves to the students as legitimate and sociable newcomers. They also presented themselves as appreciative yet ambivalent about U.S. customs and defiant of stereotypical representations of Islam. The authors argue that artifacts, imbued with border-crossing memories and experiences, can empower refugee-background students to construct counternarratives and negotiate identities that challenge xenophobic discourses and positionings. Further, because TESOL professionals are at the front lines of supporting refugee-background students, it is important for TESOLers to be cognizant of the potential of artifacts in making migrant narratives visible. doi: 10.1002/tesq.3001 “W e are against them [Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)]. This is not what Islam is. This is not Islam!” Omar explains to a group of students attending a teaching English to speakers of other TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 0, No. 0, 0000 © 2020 TESOL International Association 1 languages (TESOL) methods class at a public university in the western United States. Omar, his wife Maria, and their three children visited this class at the instructor’s invitation (the first author of this article) to share their stories and experiences with the students. Learning English was an important goal for both Maria and Omar. In addition to learning a new language, refugee-background individuals face various other challenges including xenophobic attitudes (Duran, 2019) and changes to one’s identity, values, and beliefs—the “search for a sense of self,” as McBrien (2005, p. 339) describes it. (Re)constructing an identity is a significant challenge for adolescent English learners (ELs) from refugee backgrounds (Karam, 2018; Karam, Kibler, Johnson, & Molloy Elreda, 2020) and is particularly accentuated in the case of Muslim students in the United States, who often experience discriminatory practices based on religion (Abu El-Haj & Bonet, 2011). In the search for self, amid a new and often unwelcoming environment, objects from home become an anchor to identities in flux. “When people move across borders, objects come to stand for ‘who they are’––their identities. These objects remain powerful in their memories, which are evoked in their stories” (Pahl & Rowsell, 2010, p. 8). In other words, objects from the country of origin, texts, and identities are intertwined. Artifactual literacies (Pahl & Rowsell, 2010) bring these migrant stories and literacies to the forefront by examining how objects or artifacts (including texts) evoke experiences of the home country and carry within them layers of the authors’ identities. Given that TESOL professionals are at the forefront of encountering and advocating for refugee-background students (Duran, 2019), it is important for TESOLers to better understand the interconnections between narratives of refuge/displacement and how identities are negotiated in resettlement contexts. This study examines these interconnections in the context of a refugee-background family’s visit to a TESOL classroom at a public university in the western United States. More specifically, we ask: What narratives does a Muslim refugee-background family share with a group of university students in a TESOL class? How do these narratives mediate the family’s identity positioning during their visit to the class? We analyze these narratives through an artifactual literacies lens and discuss the potential of such a framework in TESOL contexts to render visible narratives of displacement and enable a more nuanced understanding of refugee experiences. Artifactual Literacies and Authoring Identities Through Texts The theory of artifactual literacies emphasizes the materiality of artifacts, or objects, in mediating the stories we tell and the literacies we 2 TESOL QUARTERLY practice on a daily basis (Bartlett & Vasudevan, 2010). Artifacts do not have to be physically present to evoke memories and experiences, but can be remembered. This is particularly relevant to migrant literacies, where artifacts mediate recollections of the country of origin and “invoke stories of loss, displacement, and migration” (Pahl & Rowsell, 2010, p. 8). Despite the difficulty of displacement as a theme that often dominates migrant literacies, artifactual literacies also carry the hope of “connecting communities, affording new forms of talk, engendering critical literacy, and providing spaces for authoring new selves” (Bartlett & Vasudevan, 2010, p. viii; our emphasis). This act of authoring new selves is mediated by artifacts that represent people’s identities across borders and infuse meaning into the texts that they create —including texts in multimodal form. In the context of narrating refugee experiences in particular, artifacts can embody the “stories, thoughts, communities, identities, and experiences” (Pahl & Rowsell, 2010, p. 2) of forcibly displaced individuals. On a pedagogical level, artifactual literacies can also help build a sense of community in educational contexts. Students’ stories, evoked by artifacts, can foster listening in classrooms and create spaces for students whose voices are traditionally marginalized. Such stories can also create social change by encouraging students to adopt critical stances that challenge dominant discourses relating to historically marginalized students. To better understand how narratives are mediated through artifacts, we also draw on Bruner’s (1986) conceptualization of the landscapes of action and of consciousness. According to Bruner, the act of retelling narratives, and by consequence authoring new identities, is done by the juxtaposition of these two landscapes. First, the landscape of action refers, as the name indicates, to the series of actions or events that constitute a certain narrative. At this level, the focus is on the author’s view of how the action unfolded as a series of events. The second landscape that Bruner mentions is that of consciousness. Here, the focus is on the intentions and objectives underlying the author’s actions and on “what those in the action know, think, or feel, or do not know, think, or feel” (p. 14; our emphasis). Through the juxtaposition of the landscapes of action and consciousness, the act of re-narrating experiences renders such experiences more comprehensible by not only presenting the actions as a series of events (landscape of action), but also providing the author’s interpretive perception of these events. Thus, drawing on artifactual literacies provides a theoretical frame on how artifacts mediate narratives, thereby authoring new selves of refugee-background individuals in their new country of resettlement. In addition, the landscapes of action and of consciousness in the act of retelling these stories allows a better understanding of how artifacts evoke not only a series of events that are shared with others, but also ARTIFACTUAL LITERACIES 3 the feelings, thoughts, and identities framing these stories of migration and redefining the self. The landscape of consciousness in particular allows insight into what storytellers feel and provides a space for uncovering tensions that arise due to resettlement. Relevant Literature We situate this study within a body of literature that examines narratives of displacement/migration in addition to studies on artifactual literacies that focus on refugee-background individuals’ negotiation of identities in resettlement contexts. To contextualize these studies, it is important to start with a brief discussion of the refugee label. Descriptions of refugee populations as disparaged and stigmatized permeate the political sphere and the media (Court, 2017). Stereotypical representations are particularly accentuated in the case of Muslim immigrants, positioning them as a threat to national identity (Abu El-Haj, R
ıosRojas, & Jaffe-Walter, 2017), with reports of harassment and even death threats in schools and communities (Abu El-Haj & Bonet, 2011). In addition to discriminatory practices, resettlement challenges are exacerbated by cultural differences such as ambivalent relationships with neighbors. For instance, Court (2017) reported the surprise of refugees in the United Kingdom who expected to develop relationships with their neighbors but were not even greeted by them. Indeed, studies that examine narratives and personal recounts of immigrant and refugee-background populations address the theme of ambivalence (Tazreiter, 2019; Warriner, 2013), balancing identity constructions to suit the values of the resettlement context (De Fina, 2018) and navigating identity across time and place (Dickinson & De Fina, 2019). Analyzing the personal narratives of migrant workers in Australia, Tazreiter (2019) documented how they had ambivalent feelings of the host society, which included both trust and mistrust of its members. Tazreiter further explained that despite this surface appearance of irrationality, such ambivalence had an explanatory function and revealed a complex process of adaptation to the participants’ new context. Warriner (2013) analyzed the personal narratives of a refugeebackground woman from Bosnia, revealing how she experienced an “ambivalence of place” (p. 29) regarding life in the United States—describing it at times in favorable terms yet being afraid of the distance separating her from Bosnia. Resettlement is far from a linear and straightforward process (Bonet, 2016), and the path to citizenship often involves delicate balancing acts of identity construction. De Fina (2018) examined video 4 TESOL QUARTERLY narratives related to the Dreamers movement and showed how through their narratives they sought to elicit empathy, challenge dehumanizing narratives, and balance their identity positionings as both defiant (raising awareness to the Dreamers’ cause) yet compliant (aligned with traditional U.S. values) individuals at the same time. Along similar lines of constructing legitimate identities, Kirkwood, McKinlay, and McVittie (2013) found that one way in which refugees in Scotland challenged the deficit narrative about them was through the juxtaposition of the home country as characterized by problems and being “war-torn” and the United Kingdom as being problem-free, which constituted their identities as legitimate and authentic. Another balancing act in constructing identities is related to spatial and temporal dimensions of narratives. Dickinson and De Fina (2019) studied the narratives of the Mapuche families in Chile who migrated from their rural indigenous communities to the city of Santiago. Findings suggested that the participants sought to construct an authentic Mapuche identity and maintain cultural continuity with their original communities by “making reference to a variety of practices and objects that they regard as central to their culture” (p. 33). For example, the participants narrated how it was important for them to recreate ancestral food preparation traditions in Santiago and thereby maintain the ancestral practice of yafutuwun, € which involved family reunions and the use of specific artifacts (e.g., traditional Mapuche house) and foods (e.g., kofke, or flatbread fried in oil). Although Dickinson and De Fina did not use artifactual literacies as a theoretical lens, they did emphasize the centrality of artifacts in evoking memories and weaving narratives and identities across time and space. Indeed, many studies document how artifacts evoke stories from home countries and reflect the identities and cultural practices of learners, especially those from immigrant and refugee backgrounds. For example, Pahl and Pollard (2010) studied the cultural value of gold for immigrant Yorkshire families of South Asian origin—linking it to decorative aesthetic practices and explaining how it can be a symbol for how well an immigrant family is doing. Pe~ nalva, Coggin, and Medina (2014) examined an immigrant fifth grader’s counternarrative to surface-level representations of Latinas and uncovered various layers of her spirituality and identity embedded in the artifact of a keychain. In addition, artifactual literacies had also been shown to help preservice teachers develop intercultural understanding and acceptance of cultural differences, as evidenced by narratives written in response to realistic fiction books (Varga-Dobai, 2015). Studies using artifactual literacies as a lens do not claim to encompass identity in an artifact, but rather that all people have stories to tell and artifacts to share that carry memories and aspects of their identities. We argue that artifacts ARTIFACTUAL LITERACIES 5 can provide insight into refugee narratives of displacement/resettlement and the underlying ambiguities and nuances that surround this process of reimagining the self in a new country. METHODS Setting This study took place in a mid-sized city in the western United States. We were introduced to the family through one of the English instructors at a local English tutoring center 2 months after their arrival to the United States. The study focused on Maria and Omar, the parents of three elementary-age children. We first met the family in February 2017 and started visiting them on a weekly basis, providing tutoring in English for the adults, helping the children with their homework, assisting with the translation of documents, and negotiating interactions with schools and medical providers. In October, the first author invited Omar and Maria to visit his TESOL class at the university to share their journey to the United States with his students. The purpose of that TESOL class was to prepare preservice and inservice teachers to teach multilingual students classified by their schools as English learners (ELs). The course advocated for culturally and linguistically responsive approaches to teaching and better understanding the experiences of marginalized students. In an article that recently appeared in this journal, Duran (2019) proposed advocating for refugee students in particular through better understanding the refugee journey, promoting respect for cultural and linguistic diversity, and addressing racism and xenophobia in the classroom. Therefore, the first author believed it was valuable for his students to hear about the experiences, stories, and identities of refugee-background families in the process of learning English as a second language—hence the invitation to the family to visit the classroom. Omar and Maria enthusiastically accepted the invitation. The first author asked Omar and Maria to share their stories and “who they are” with the students. In preparation for the visit, he visited their home and assisted them in creating a PowerPoint presentation, incorporating photographs that they chose and categorizing the information. To facilitate this effort, the first author used an adapted version of an identity semantic map (Daniel & Eley, 2018; see Figure 1) as a brainstorming tool to gain insight into various aspects of the participants’ identities. The word identity was written in the middle, and several other identity elements branched out in bubbles: beliefs, ambitions, goals, how will goals be accomplished, hobbies, food 6 TESOL QUARTERLY (added by Omar), friends, family, and history. This identity map facilitated discussions about Omar’s and Maria’s identities and mediated the production of the slideshow presentation. Because the slideshow presentation was a collaborative work, the first author emphasized that his role was to help put it together, but that it was important for Omar and Maria to decide what content went into the slides. Consequently, Maria and Omar took ownership of the content. For example, Maria shared several pictures of the family, and both Maria and Omar instructed the first author about what (images of objects and text) to include on each slide. Any text written on the slides also came from Omar and Maria, with the first author translating what they said in Arabic into English and then reading the text in English and orally back-translating the text into Arabic as a form of member checking. He worked with Omar and Maria over two extended visits (around two and a half hours each) to complete the slideshow presentation, after which the family visited the class, along with their children and the second author, and presented their story. Participants Omar was born and raised in Syria. He married Maria, and they had three children. In 2014, the family relocated to Turkey to escape FIGURE 1. Identity semantic map: Beliefs, ambitions, goals, plans, hobbies, food, friends, family, history. ARTIFACTUAL LITERACIES 7 the Syrian civil war. Although they stayed in Turkey for 3 years, Omar said he considered the move only temporary and as a result did not invest time in learning Turkish. After relocation to the United States, however, he was highly motivated to learn English—which he had not been exposed to through formal schooling—and expressed appreciation for the one-on-one tutoring lessons. He also discouraged his children from speaking Turkish because, he said, English was more important in the U.S. context. Omar spoke Arabic with his children at home and encouraged them to maintain their home language. Maria was also born and raised in Syria. Unlike Omar, she graduated from high school and had some exposure to English through formal schooling. She explained that when she came to the United States, this foundation assisted her greatly in learning the language. Unlike Omar, she preferred to engage directly with English speakers rather than to rely on interpreters to negotiate interactions. Maria frequently spoke Arabic to her children and occasionally Turkish, encouraging them to maintain both languages. Research Design We adopted an ethnographic approach (Green & Bloome, 1997) to enable us to uncover our participants’ identities “in cultural spaces, listening to and recording home practices” (Pahl & Rowsell, 2011, p. 137). More specifically, we drew on our understanding of the family’s practices and experiences via a 15-month period of regular weekly visitations and extended interviews with the family before and after the classroom visit. Although timeframes of ethnographies may vary, Pahl and Rowsell (2011) acknowledge that shorter periods of time, especially through extended ethnographic interviews, can still uncover important understandings of participants’ practices and their identities. We conceptualize identity as fluid, plural, and discursively constructed (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005; Dickinson & De Fina, 2019). Such a view of identity as “the social positioning of self and other” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005, p. 586) is relevant to this study because the participants shared aspects of their identities through the narratives they shared with the university students. Identity is also related to place, especially in contexts where identities are shaped by migratory experiences (Warriner, 2013). From an artifactual literacies perspective, artifacts carry narratives of not only past lives and identities, but also the “potential for transformation, which can then move people across diasporas into new spaces” (Pahl & Rowsell, 2011, p. 135). In other words, identity is shaped by and woven across the various contexts of the refugee journey—the home 8 TESOL QUARTERLY country, the countries of temporary resettlement, and the country of permanent resettlement. Consent, Ethical Research, and Researchers’ Positionalities This study was approved by an Institutional Review Board with the objective of exploring the integration experiences of the refugee-background family. We explained to the participants the nature of the overall research project and the aims of the university visit in particular as part of the overall project. Moreover, participants signed consent forms that were translated into Arabic. When the first draft of this article was produced, we conducted member checking in the participants’ first language. To ensure they understood key findings, the first author explained these to them orally in Arabic. Both Maria and Omar agreed with the findings and made suggestions for changes that were all honored, including selecting their pseudonyms and highlighting two points in particular: that Islam is a religion of tolerance and not terror and that their family was not a burden on the government. The first author highlighted how these important points were included in the article as part of the participants’ narratives, translating these specific sections into Arabic to show Omar and Maria how these points were addressed. In addition to member checking, we used triangulation as an additional strategy to increase trustworthiness. More specifically, findings were corroborated through a multiplicity of sources including the pre- and post-presentation interviews. We understood participants’ responses in the interviews and class visit as their representations of their identities to particular audiences (including us as researchers) for particular purposes, not as their true identities per se. As such, their narratives provided “little t” truths—their lived experiences as they chose to represent them—and not a “big T” Truth about what the refugee experience or identity “is.” Because research with Arabic-speaking refugee-background populations is often conducted by those who do not share their cultural or linguistic backgrounds, it is important to acknowledge the researchers’ positionalities. All three of us are bi/multilingual and have worked with or researched immigrant and refugee-background populations in the United States and/or the Middle East, and we share a common interest in advocating for historically marginalized students in the United States and around the globe. Although none us are Muslim by religion, the first author is of Arab origin and speaks fluent Arabic. Because this study involved collaborative co-authoring of artifactual content, it is important to acknowledge the potentials and pitfalls of conducting cultural work with refugee-background populations. As ARTIFACTUAL LITERACIES 9 Phipps (2017) argued, such work can either confirm or challenge dominant depictions of refugee-background populations, and “no cultural work undertaken about refugees, which does not involve refugees throughout its inception, design, creation and production, has their wellbeing at heart and therefore cannot be part of fostering good intercultural relations or integration” (p. 6). As such, we took great care to work with the participants to promote their agency in choosing what aspects of their identities and narratives to share with (or withhold from) the TESOL students. What they shared is by no means a comprehensive account of their refugee experience. Indeed, we view the refugee experience as multifaceted and far from monolithic. Resettlement is conceptualized in this study as a continued phase of the refugee journey (Nunn, Gifford, McMichael, & Correa-Velez, 2017)— as opposed to a safe endpoint of forced displacement. Moreover, the refugee experience is nonlinear and often imbued with ambivalence resulting from the challenges of adapting to a new life (Warriner, 2013). Data Collection Primary data (see Table 1) for this study centered on a transcript of the family’s visit to the first author’s classroom and the PowerPoint presentation that was co-authored by Maria, Omar, and the first author, including pictures of the various artifacts that mediated the family’s identity construction and journey to the United States. The first slide of the PowerPoint presentation included a picture of the family upon arrival at the airport in the United States, and the second slide included a photograph of the three children. A chronological journey enriched by the flags from the three countries (Syria, Turkey, and the United States) appeared on the next slide. The following three slides were titled as home and had pictures from Syria, including first a house and food on a barbecue and then the destruction of the same house after the war. Next was a slide with photos of the children in Turkey. The remainder of the slides focused on the United States and were titled as goals, beliefs, food, and life in the United States. Secondary data included pre– and post–university visit semistructured interviews that were important in contextualizing the process of Omar’s and Maria’s identity construction and consolidating major themes that emerged from their classroom visit. The interview provided insight into the production process of the slideshow presentation and into the participants’ perceptions of the classroom visit and their interactions with the students. These interactions were mostly in Arabic, with some phrases in English. On this note, it is important to 10 TESOL QUARTERLY TABLE 1 Data Collection Data Date Duration Pre–classroom visit interview with Omar Pre–classroom visit interview with Omar and Maria Classroom presentation Post–classroom visit interview with Omar and Maria 10/30/17 11/20/17 11/28/17 12/04/17 76 minutes 137 minutes 55 minutes 20 minutes mention that we italicized any direct quotes that Omar and Maria originally uttered in English. As such, throughout this study, any italicized direct quotes from participants (whether from interviews or fieldnotes) indicate an original (and not translated) English text, and nonitalicized direct quotes were originally spoken in Arabic. Data Analysis Postulating that artifacts evoke stories and recollections of refugee and immigrant experiences (Pahl & Rowsell, 2010), we use narrative analysis (Bold, 2012) to analyze our data. This is a good fit for this study because Omar and Maria visited the TESOL class with the aim of sharing their stories and identities with the students, focusing primarily on their refugee experience. In developing an analytical process, Bold (2012) advises researchers to draw from other analytical schemes, but to eventually develop their own analyses that are consistent with the data collected and the experiences of their participants. To examine Maria’s and Omar’s refugee experience, we draw on an experiential approach to narrative analysis (Patterson, 2008), which utilizes traditional Labovian tools of structural analysis where applicable while allowing for a more flexible and inclusive definition of what counts as a narrative. As explained in Patterson (2008), traditional structural analysis of personal experiences involves assigning clauses to narrative categories that include abstract (what the story is about), orientation (who, when, where), complicating action (then what happened), evaluation (so what), and result (what finally happened). But this approach has its limitations “because there are difficulties in distinguishing between clauses that report a sequence of events and those that evaluate” (Bold, 2012, p. 127). Because stories have a level of action (events) and a level of consciousness (associated feelings and thoughts) attributed to them (Bruner, 1986), we listed action-oriented events separately from evaluative recounts where Omar and Maria shared thoughts or feelings pertaining to each narrative. ARTIFACTUAL LITERACIES 11 When recounting traumatic experiences (Patterson, 2008), people often share stories that do not follow a linear narrative pattern of orientation (when, where, who), complication (problem and events), and resolution (conclusion), and there is a need to attend to a more inclusive view of narratives and consider how they function in social contexts (De Fina, 2018). In Omar’s and Maria’s case, events were not presented in a linear fashion and were interspersed across the duration of the presentation. For that reason, we grouped action-oriented events into three main narratives that were predominant throughout the presentation, assigning the events of each narrative into the following categories: orientation (when and where), events (what happened), and resolution (what finally happened). It is worth noting that not all the stories had a conclusion in the traditional sense, and some narratives remained open-ended. For example, when recounting their dreams of the future, a resolution was not applicable. Considering the social function of our participants’ narratives (De Fina, 2018), their storytelling carried the communicative act of sharing aspects of their identities through recollections of their refugee and resettlement experiences. To summarize our process, the first and second authors read the transcript several times and inductively identified three main narratives (see Table 2). Within each narrative, we analyzed the entire transcript and assigned clauses that highlighted the orientation, events, and resolution of each narrative. We differentiated between events at the level of action and at the level of consciousness, as shown in Table 2. Differences in coding and identifying themes were resolved by consulting the third author and through discussions. Furthermore, we inductively identified several emergent identity positionings that Omar and Maria assumed through sharing their stories: legitimate (providing a rationale for seeking refuge in the United States), sociable (open to interacting with others and adapting to social norms of a new country), and defiant (resistant) of stereotypical representations of Islam. Although they appreciated such U.S. ideals as freedom of expression and religious freedom, they were ambivalent about some of the social practices. These emergent positionings were achieved through Maria’s and Omar’s interpretive perception of the narrative events as mediated by the various artifacts. Interview data were translated and transcribed by the first author. We then immersed ourselves in the data by reading the transcripts several times and comparing the data to the emergent themes from the classroom presentation. Each instance in which the secondary data confirmed the emergent themes was documented, and this evidence was combined with the primary data and is integrated throughout the Findings section toward that purpose. Interview data were also read for possible divergences from emergent themes, but no such evidence 12 TESOL QUARTERLY ARTIFACTUAL LITERACIES TABLE 2 Identity Positioning Mediated by Artifacts Landscape of action (stories evoked through artifacts) • • • Escaping the war: “Life was very tough in Syria.” Orientation: Syria and Turkey; presettlement Events (recounting war experiences) ∘ ∘ ∘ ∘ • experiencing war in Syria (e.g., exploding barrels) getting physically wounded witnessing destruction of Maria’s family home relocating to Turkey in search of safety Mediating artifacts • • • Landscape of consciousness (thoughts and feelings evoked through stories) Identity positioning The airplane* Maria’s family home (before/after the war) The children in Turkey • • • Fear and trauma as a result of the war Legitimate Loss induced by the civil war Happiness and safety in Turkey, yet feelings of transience and instability linger due to “temporary” resettlement Hookah Food The empty container* • • • • Ambivalent perceptions of U.S. social practices and customs Happiness and family fun in Syria Hospitality and wanting to reach out to others in the United States Rejection (albeit as perceived by the participants) despite reaching out to their neighbors Resolution: finding stability/safety in the United States; paying taxes and challenging misconception that refugees are dependent on government assistance Trying to adapt to new norms: “It’s different here!” Orientation: Syria and the United States; comparing then and now • ∘ 13 Events (recounting differences between Syria and the United States); grilling kababs and smoking hookah with family and friends in Syria versus people in the United States barely saying hello; returning food containers with home-cooked food in Syria versus people in the • • • Sociable yet ambivalent about U.S. social customs 14 Table 2 (Continued) Landscape of action (stories evoked through artifacts) Mediating artifacts Landscape of consciousness (thoughts and feelings evoked through stories) Identity positioning United States returning empty food containers • Resolution: not giving up traditions and trying to revive social practices (e.g., inviting the students to visit and share food), thereby challenging isolationist perceptions of refugees Presenting a counternarrative: “Islam is a religion of peace.” Orientation: Syria during the civil war • ∘ TESOL QUARTERLY • Events (challenging associations of Islam with terrorism); being captured by terrorists and Omar refusing to join them; recounting how Jesus, just like other prophets in Islam, was sent by God to guide people • The Kaaba • • Tolerant of other religions Condemning terrorist acts Defiant of stereotypical representations of Islam yet appreciative of U.S. value of religious freedom Resolution: Omar emphasizes that “this [terrorism] is not Islam!” *Artifact was remembered orally during the presentation rather than being included as a physical picture in the PowerPoint presentation. was found. In addition, the post-presentation interview helped us gain insight into the participants’ thoughts about the visit and served as a process of member checking initial findings with the participants. FINDINGS Our findings are organized around the three narratives evoked by the various artifacts in Omar and Maria’s presentation. Through each narrative, the participants assume different positionings revealed through not only the events or episodes of each narrative (landscape of action), but also the feelings and thoughts (landscape of consciousness) that they share with their audience—including what they do and do not know, think, or feel. In juxtaposing the landscapes of action and consciousness, Omar and Maria present narratives that challenge some of the stereotypes of refugee-background families in general and Muslim families in particular, and they uncover certain migrant and resettlement experiences that would have remained otherwise hidden. Escaping the War: “Life Was Very Tough in Syria.” Omar and Maria shared with the students their personal experiences of the war in Syria. Two artifacts that evoked these stories were an airplane and pictures of Maria’s family’s house before and after the war. Omar evoked the image and sounds of an airplane to share with the students the bombardment he experienced in Syria and the sense of fear that he associated with airplanes due to these experiences. Although the airplane was presented as a photo in the PowerPoint presentation, the memories elicited through Omar’s flashbacks were quite vivid: In Syria, we witnessed a war stronger than World War II. Even here in the U.S., whenever I hear or see a plane fly over, I get scared and think that the next thing that is going to happen is to have an exploding barrel get dropped on us. Sometimes we would wake up and think that today is going to be the last day for us. On some days, we would not be able to get bread for the children. Life was very tough in Syria. (Presentation, 11/20/17) Omar also shared that he and some of his extended family members were injured by one of the exploding barrels dropped by a government plane. Thus, on a landscape-of-action level, Omar recounted the stories of bombardment and being injured, while on a consciousness ARTIFACTUAL LITERACIES 15 level, he emphasized the emotions of fear that are associated with these events and that are evoked by the image and sounds of an airplane. Omar explained to students that safety is the main reason why he and his family decided to come to the United States. In providing this rationale, he positioned himself as a legitimate newcomer who sought refuge for the valid reason of escaping the war and seeking safety. Maria shared another war experience by showing students pictures of her parents’ house in Syria before and after the war. She told the students in English that “it is a farm.” Maria asked the first author to tell students that by sharing these pictures of home, she wanted them to see what life was like before and after the war. “I wanted them to see the damage that is inflicted by war not only on the stone, but also on people and their psyche,” Maria emphasized in class, and the first author translated this sentiment to the students. Omar added that “losing physical property and money are obviously a problem, but the memories that linger with a person are the real problem.” The postwar picture showed graffiti on the house and how tiles and window frames were pulled out and looted, Maria explained to the students. She told them that home is where one felt comfortable and safe. “Although Syria is a home that we will always dream about and long for, but here is also home because we feel safe,” Maria explained. She continued by sharing that “life was horrible during the war in Syria. When we arrived in Turkey, everything changed for the better,” pointing at pictures of the children in Turkey, smiling and sitting in a park surrounded by trees and flowers. Omar emphasized the sense of safety that the family started to enjoy in Turkey, but Maria chimed in and highlighted a sense of instability there as a result of not knowing what the future held for the family. She explained that in the United States, the family now enjoyed a sense of stability that was missing in Turkey. “We were living day to day there, but there was this worry about the future,” Maria explained. Thus, Maria’s words provided insight into the family’s sense of instability in Turkey—a country of temporary resettlement. In a previous interview (10/30/17), Omar explained, Life was tough there. We did not have the basic necessities for a decent life. There was no stability in Turkey. We did not have any rights in Turkey. They did not give me a work permit, the same applied for three million other Syrians, so I had to work without a legal permit. They gave us low wages and took advantage of us. Maria also emphasized that they had not come to the United States to live at the expense of the government. She told students that they were paying back the government for the expenses of their plane tickets and that they pay taxes. Therefore, on a landscape-of-action level, 16 TESOL QUARTERLY we learned of the destruction of the house and the looting, but more importantly, on a landscape-of-consciousness level, we learned about what this destruction does to one’s psyche and how safety could lead one to a “home” that is away from the home country. Thus, similar to Omar, Maria emphasized the importance of safety as a legitimate factor in the family’s decision to seek refuge in the United States and considering this country “home.” In their new home, Maria wanted to focus on the fact that they were contributing members and challenged the misconception that refugees were dependent on government assistance. Trying to Adapt to New Norms: “It’s Different Here!” Another personal experience that Omar and Maria shared was how different cultural norms are in Syria compared to the United States. These experiences were mainly evoked through food as an artifact. In an earlier interview, Omar explained that sharing food in his culture is an expression of love and friendship (Interview, 10/30/17). In class, Maria told students that American food is different than our food, and we did not like it to be quite honest. It is very different here! We tried Mexican food, but it is still different. It is possible to eat, but we did not like it that much. Favorite? No! One will always be attached to his food and culture. We preserved our food and our ways and did not change that aspect. (Presentation, 11/28/17) During the presentation, Maria and Omar shared a picture of home-cooked food (Figure 2) and a hookah (instrument for smoking tobacco), which they used to smoke often in Syria and still occasionally smoked at their apartment in the United States. They shared stories about these artifacts and explained their significance. For example, Omar told the students about how they used to sit on the patio in Syria to enjoy smoking a hookah with apple-scented tobacco (his favorite) and how he used to grill kababs there for the extended family. The first author told the students about how he and the second author were invited to the family’s apartment for breakfast and shared the names of certain dishes such as mana’eesh (Figure 3). Omar explained to students how Arab people are “very sociable”—often sharing their food with other people and checking on them when they are sick. He also invited the students to come to his place to smoke the hookah and have a meal. “Why not?” Maria agreed. He followed this with a description of how his American neighbor passed by every day and said “good morning” and “goodbye” without ever coming in or having more extended interactions, contrasting this with the warm and friendly reception that the family received at the airport, where a ARTIFACTUAL LITERACIES 17 FIGURE 2. Home-cooked breakfast food. group of people were there with welcome signs in Arabic to greet them and welcome them to the United States. In a previous interview with the first author (Interview, 10/30/17), Omar shared his frustration regarding neighbors not reciprocating his invitations: Interviewer:: Were you able to establish any relationships with your neighbors? Omar:: I tried, but they keep to themselves. Hello, how are you, and that’s it. Interviewer:: How did you try? Omar:: 18 I greeted them and sent them food more than once. They would return an empty dish, and they would not enter my house. I would invite them to come see us, but they would not come in. TESOL QUARTERLY FIGURE 3. Mana’eesh. Omar explained that it is customary and respectful in Syria to return a food container your neighbor had shared with you after filling it with home-cooked food. Returning an empty container was a sign of disrespect and rejection. Thus on a landscape-of-action level, we have stories of food sharing, grilling, and smoking hookahs. On a landscape-of-consciousness level, we have Maria and Omar sharing how they felt about food and its importance to their identities and as a medium of connecting with other people and showing friendship and openness. Both of them seem open to having U.S.-born guests and immigrants like the first and second author at their house, and they even extended an invitation to the students as a sign of goodwill. They both want to socialize with others and share some of their customs and traditions—albeit with the expectation that socializing can occur in the United States in the same ways as it did at home. Food is an important artifact that allowed Omar and Maria to show how ARTIFACTUAL LITERACIES 19 sociable they were in Syria and how they like to maintain this aspect of who they are, despite their ambivalence toward some of the social practices in the United States, such as returning empty containers. Through stories about food and inviting others to share food, they showed their openness and their willingness to reach out and share their identities and culture. Through these stories we also gain insight into Maria’s and Omar’s ambivalence and confusion about U.S. customs that do not observe reciprocating home-cooked food. Presenting a Counternarrative: “Islam Is a Religion of Peace.” The picture of the Kaaba (the holiest site in Islam, see Figure 4) on one of the presentation slides is an artifact through which Omar and Maria wanted the students to learn that “Islam is a religion of peace and not terrorism,” as the text on the slide reads. Also on the same slide, Maria and Omar asked the first author to include the words religious freedom and freedom of expression to emphasize the importance of these “American” values, as they described them. Maria asserted to the students that Islam is the family’s religion, and both Omar and Maria told the students how much they appreciated freedom of expression and religious freedom in the United States. Omar added, pointing at the slide, This is one of the holiest places in Islam where people worship. We recognize and respect all religions. We do not criticize any prophet, because prophets like Jesus and Moses are prophets like Muhammad (peace be upon him), sent by God to guide people away from sin and vice. (Presentation, 11/28/17) As a testament to the power of artifacts in evoking stories, Omar used the Kaaba to explain the link between his objective to learn English and his desire to communicate to people what Islam is. In the preparatory session for the presentation, he explained, “I want to learn English so I can communicate with other people, so I can express what is in my heart. I want to tell people that I am a Muslim and that they should not be afraid of me.” He pointed at the picture of the Kaaba in his living room, “Look, we have the Kaaba (points at the picture hanging on the wall), the holiest site of Islam,” and explained that it is a lesser evil to destroy the Kaaba than to take someone’s life. He drew on other sources (YouTube videos and quotes from the Koran) to produce a counternarrative of Islam to its image as a 20 TESOL QUARTERLY FIGURE 4. A picture of the Kaaba hanging in the living room in Maria’s and Omar’s apartment. religion of terror and highlight such tenets of Islam as tolerance and respect for other religions. On a consciousness level, Maria used the Kaaba to proudly assert the family’s religious beliefs and identification as Muslims, and Omar used the artifact to present an image of Islam that challenges common stereotypes that associate the religion with terrorism. He focused on how respectful Islam is of other religions. Also during the presentation, Omar told the students how he had been captured by ISIS and how they tried to recruit him to fight with them, but he refused. Omar then condemned a recent ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in Egypt where he described that around 300 people were killed, asserting, “This is not Islam!” He told students that ISIS are mercenaries and not Muslims. Through sharing these stories and feelings, Omar and Maria positioned themselves as defiant of dehumanizing and stereotypical discourses that surround Muslim refugees, yet they also balanced this positioning by appreciating what they consider values of the host country, such as freedom of expression and religious freedom. DISCUSSION Maria’s and Omar’s positionings during the presentation to the TESOL class both confirmed and expanded findings from previous ARTIFACTUAL LITERACIES 21 research on refugee narratives of displacement/migration and negotiating identities in resettlement contexts. First, reflecting the finding in Kirkwood et al.’s (2013) study, Omar and Maria positioned Syria as war-torn and problem-stricken and the United States as safe. But beyond the binary between Syria and the United States, they also inserted the lack of stability that characterized their lives in Turkey in contrast to the stability that existed for them in the United States. As such, they adopted the narrative of “genuine refugees” who were forced to relocate in order to escape violence and as such should have a legitimate place in the receiving country. The integration of the images of the bomb-striking airplane and the photos of the family home pre- and postwar consolidated such positioning. However, this image of the United States as a stable resettlement context is problematized by the sense of ambivalence that the participants recount with respect to social practices (e.g., the empty container story, unanswered invitations to visit). Contrasting the warmth of the airport reception with the coldness and surface-level neighborly greetings reveals the sense of ambivalence (Warriner, 2013) that accompanies resettlement and confirms conceptualizations of resettlement as more of a process and a journey rather than a final safe destination (Bonet, 2016; Nunn et al., 2017). Second, similarly to findings from Court (2017), Maria and Omar expressed their enthusiasm in feeling welcomed by the people and embracing the ideals of U.S. society, such as religious freedom. Despite his initial puzzlement with differing interpersonal dynamics, such as the perceived lack of reciprocity from neighbors (Court, 2017), Omar did not feel discouraged. He extended an invitation to the students and expressed his desire to increase his social network while maintaining his cultural practices. Similar to the members of the Mapuche families in Dickinson and De Fina (2019), the participants wanted to replicate social practices from their home country in the resettlement context, and food and other artifacts were essential in this process (e.g., the hookah, home-cooked Syrian food). Omar and Maria, however, did not want to replicate these practices with Syrianonly participants, but showed their openness to host the students and share these practices with them—asserting their positioning as an open and hospitable Muslim family. Moreover, the presentation to the TESOL class took place only a few months after the initial discussion on travel bans in the United States. As such, Maria and Omar were quite aware of the surrounding narrative about them and their compatriots. By presenting a counternarrative (Pe~ nalva et al., 2014) of themselves as peace-loving Muslims, they challenged stereotypes of refugee-background populations in the United States while aligning themselves with U.S. values of 22 TESOL QUARTERLY freedom of expression and religious freedom. This balancing act of negotiating identities is similar to De Fina’s (2018) findings regarding Dreamers’ narratives and how they raised awareness to their cause yet claimed “acceptable identit[ies] of citizens of the US” (p. 10). In short, Omar’s and Maria’s narratives not only confirm some of the main themes in the literature (e.g., presenting themselves as genuine refugees, positioning the country of permanent resettlement as a land of opportunity), but also expand on these by highlighting the temporality and sense of instability experienced in Turkey (country of temporary resettlement), problematizing resettlement as a safe yet ambivalent stage of the refugee journey and presenting counternarratives that challenge deficit positionings of refugee-background populations. IMPLICATIONS: ARTIFACTUAL LITERACIES, REFUGEEBACKGROUND STUDENTS, AND TESOL TESOLers are “at the forefront of encountering refugee students in various settings, from teaching school-age refugee learners to tutoring refugee adults in English as a second language (ESL) classes provided by local agencies and organizations” (Duran, 2019, p. 817). From such a position, and in order to be able to combat xenophobia and discriminatory practices, it is important that TESOL professionals develop a more nuanced understanding of refugee students and their experiences, promote respect for cultural and linguistic diversity, and address xenophobia in the classroom (Duran, 2019). We argue that the theory of artifactual literacies holds enormous promise in realizing these aspirations. If every object tells a story, and if each story carries shards of refugee experiences, then these stories can present a vivid (albeit not complete or monolithic) portrayal of refuge/resettlement across various spatial and temporal dimensions of this journey. Through their materiality— and because artifacts travel with their owners and carry their stories, memories, and aspects of their identities—Omar’s and Maria’s artifacts evoked narratives that transported us to Syria (home country), Turkey (country of temporary resettlement), and the United States (country of resettlement). We heard the war planes in Syria, we saw the children’s smiles in Turkey, and we felt the ambivalence of negotiating social practices with neighbors in the United States. Because artifacts can embody the stories and identities of forcibly displaced individuals, narratives evoked by such artifacts can enhance our understanding of and respect for refugee-background students and their experiences. But artifacts go beyond increasing understanding and respect to empowering meaning makers into sharing what matters to them with ARTIFACTUAL LITERACIES 23 their audience. With refugee-background populations, they open up the classroom space to share not only narratives of their experiences and identities, but also counternarratives that challenge dehumanizing representations of refugees and restore a sense of agency that may have been lost with the violence of displacement. For example, the Kaaba as an artifact is used to explain the sanctity of life in Islam and produce a counternarrative to dominant discourses that represent Islam as a religion of terror. From an artifactual literacies point of view, the materiality of the Kaaba is essential, so a picture of it is put on display in the living room to signify the cultural centrality of Islam in the family’s lives. Thus, the concept of artifactual literacies moves beyond multimodality to emphasize the materiality of artifacts and how they can be a “connecting piece” (Pahl & Rowsell, 2010, p. 3) among literacy, multimodality, and material culture. In short, because TESOL professionals are at the front lines of supporting, advocating for, and learning with refugee-background students of all ages, it is important for them to be artifactually literate. An artifactually literate teacher not only is aware of the promise of artifactual literacies in creating spaces for marginalized students’ (counter)narratives to become more visible, but also is able to “read” the artifacts that students produce, recognize inequalities, and empower students to challenge dominant narratives. In the context of the TESOL classroom at institutes of higher education, exposing teacher candidates to the theoretical underpinnings of artifactual literacies and modeling pedagogical practices and activities in which K–12 students use artifacts to share their stories (in multimodal and multilingual modes) could support those future teachers in implementing those practices in their future classrooms. More importantly, advocating for and supporting refugee-background students cannot be done without their voices and stories. As Omar described to the first author, the classroom presentation “gave us the opportunity to present the image that we wanted to society” (Interview, 12/04/17). If every object tells a story, it is important to bring these stories into educational settings. More specifically, refugee students and adults themselves should be given the opportunity to share these stories in K–12, adult education, and teacher education programs that aim to prepare culturally and linguistically responsive teachers. THE AUTHORS Fares J. Karam is an assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Reno. 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