Usree Bhattacharya

Biography

Usree Bhattacharya is Associate Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia. She earned her Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interrogates how dominant ideologies of language and normativity shape educational policy and practice in multilingual contexts. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and ethnography, her work examines the reproduction of social hierarchies in schools—particularly through English language teaching, multigrade pedagogy, and rote learning in in under-resourced schools. Following her daughter’s diagnosis of Rett syndrome in 2018, Bhattacharya established the Rett Lab@UGA, where she leads interdisciplinary research on communication and literacy in contexts of significant disability. Her work in this area foregrounds the communication repertoires of individuals using eye-tracking augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), while critiquing the clinical, racialized, and monolingual assumptions that undergird most assistive technologies. Her current research examines artificial intelligence (AI) as both communicative infrastructure and cultural production. She explores how AI mediates possibilities for voice and relationality for individuals with disabilities, while analyzing the representational logics that AI systems reproduce—particularly with respect to disability, race, and linguistic difference. She is affiliated faculty at the UGA Institute for Artificial Intelligence and regularly teaches and writes on language, technology, and the politics of access.

Areas of Expertise

  • Language and literacy socialization
  • Language ideology
  • Globalization
  • Multilingualism
  • Language policy
  • Rett Syndrome
  • Disability studies
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Education

  •  PhD in Education, 2013
    University of California, Berkeley
  •  MA in Teaching International Languages, 2006
    CSU Chico
  •  MA in English Literature, 2001
    Lakehead University
  •  BA (Hons.) in English, 1998
    Delhi University

Concentrations

Google Scholar Page Download CV

Contact

 Aderhold Hall, 309W
 @usreeb
 usree-bhattacharya
 https://rettcenterll.com/

Research Summary

Books:

Adinolfi, L., Bhattacharya, U., & Phyak, P. (2022). Multilingual Education in South Asia: At the Intersection between Policy and Practice. Routledge.

Bhattacharya, U. (2025). A Show of Hands: Kalika and the Goddess of Learning [Children’s picture book, ebook edition]. Amazon Kindle and Paperback. (https://a.co/d/gWveKdJ)

Chapters in Books

  1. ***Bhattacharya, U., & Pradana, W. A. (accepted). Communicative Justice in Action: Reimagining Inclusive Foreign Language Education Through AAC. In Diclusion in Foreign Language Teaching (edited volume, Germany). (*Invited)
  2. ***Bhattacharya, U. (2024). Arriving at a linguistics of hope. In E. Milak & A. Tankosić (Eds.), Becoming a linguist: Advice from key thinkers in language studies. Routledge. (*Invited)
  3. ***Bhattacharya, U. (2024). “See me”: Disability, race, and language education. In R. Kubota & S. Motha (Eds.), Race, racism, and antiracism in language education. Routledge. (*Invited)
  4. ***Bernstein, K. A., Johnson, J., & Bhattacharya, U. (2024). Transcription as ethics: (Re)presenting young children’s complex communicative repertoires in applied linguistics research. In P. I. De Costa, A. Rabie-Ahmed, & C. Cinaglia (Eds.), Ethical issues in applied linguistics research. John Benjamins. (*Invited)
  5. ***Bhattacharya, U. & Mohanty, A. K. (2021). Ideological plurality: English in policy and practice in India. In R. Rubdy & R. Tupas (Eds.), World Englishes: Ideologies. Bloomsbury.
  6. Bhattacharya, U. & Sterponi, L. (2020). The morning assembly: Constructing subjecthood, authority, and knowledge through classroom discourse in an Indian school. In M. J Burdelski & K. M. Howard (Eds.), Language Socialization in Classrooms (pp. 181-199). Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK.
  7. ***Bhattacharya, U. (2019). “There is nothing to do with these girls”: The education of girls with Rett Syndrome. In P. Smagorinsky, J. Tobin, & K. Lee (Eds.), Dismantling the Disabling Environments of Education: Creating New Cultures and Contexts for Accommodating Difference (pp. 89-98). Peter Lang: NY.
  8. Bhattacharya, U. (2014). Mediating inequalities: exploring English-medium instruction in a suburban Indian village school. In M. O. Hamid, H.T.M. Nguyen, and R. B. Baldauf (Eds.), Language Planning for Medium of Instruction in Asia (pp. 164-184). Routledge: London & NY.

Refereed Journal Articles

  1. ***Bhattacharya, U. (2024). Speaking across cultures: decolonization and disability in a multilingual world. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2024.2318310
  2. Bhattacharya, U., Pradana, W. A., Wei, X., & Ogunsola, B. (2023). “Why don’t they talk to our daughter?”: Eye-tracking AAC and medical communication in Rett syndrome. Language and Health, 1(1), 32-43.
  3. Wei, X., & Bhattacharya, U. (2023). Language modeling using an augmentative and alternative communication device during virtual schooling: A single case study. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 39(3), 203-217.
  4. Fabio, R.A., Bhattacharya, U., Wei, X., Canegallo, V. (2023). Reading and writing in severe cognitive disability: A systematic review. Current Developmental Disorders Reports.
  5. Bhattacharya, U. (2022) “I am a parrot”: Literacy ideologies and rote learning. Journal of Literacy Research. 54(2) 113–136.
  6. Bhattacharya, U. & Pradana, W. (2022). Exploring literacy engagement in a significant disability context. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. Doi: https://doi-org.proxy-remote.galib.uga.edu/10.1177/14687984221100129
  7. Bhattacharya, U. (2022). A mother’s argument for patient self-advocacy in Rett Syndrome using an eye-tracking communication device. American Journal of Nursing, published on AJN blog (peer-reviewed). https://ajnoffthecharts.com/a-mothers-argument-for-patient-self-advocacy-in-rett-syndrome-using-an-eye-tracking-communication-device/
  8. Bhattacharya, U., Pradana, W.A., Wei, X., Tarquinio, D.C., Datta, O, Anderson, K., Patel, D., & Cruz-Díaz, N. (2022). “I want to discuss”: Rett syndrome and medical communication using an eye-tracking AAC device. EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics, 9(1), 71–90.
  9. Bhattacharya, U. & McGovern, K. (2020). Schools, sexual violence, and safety: Adolescent girls and writing resistance at an afterschool program in suburban Mumbai. Writing & Pedagogy, 11(3), 329-350.
  10. Hou, W., Bhattacharya, U., Pradana., W. A., & Tarquinio, D. C. (2020). Assessment of a clinical trial metric for Rett Syndrome: Critical analysis of the Rett Syndrome Behavioral Questionnaire. Pediatric neurology, 107, 48-56.
  11. Bhattacharya, U. (2019). “My school is a big school”: Imagined communities, inclusion, and ideology in Indian textbooks. Journal of Curriculum Studies. 51(5), 664-677.
  12. Bhattacharya, U., Jiang, L., & Canagarajah, S. (2019). “Race, representation, and diversity in the American Association for Applied Linguistics.” Applied Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amz003
  13. Bhattacharya, U. & Jiang, L. (2018). The Right to Education Act (2009): Instructional medium and discitizenship. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2018(253), 149-168.
  14. Bhattacharya, U. (2017). Resisting English: Excavating English ideologies of young boys through chutkule at an Indian orphanage. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 16(6), 1-16.
  15. Bhattacharya, U. (2017). Colonization and English ideologies in India: A language policy perspective. Language Policy, 16(1), 1-21.
  16. Bhattacharya, U. (2016). The politics of participation: Dis-citizenship through English in a suburban Indian village school. The Journal of English as an International Language, 11(1), 71-85.
  17. Bhattacharya, U. (2013). Mediating inequalities: exploring English-medium instruction in a suburban Indian village school. Current Issues in Language Planning, 14(1), 164-184.
  18. Sterponi, L., & Bhattacharya, U. (2012). Dans les traces de Hymes et au-delà: les études de la socialisation langagière [In the footsteps of Hymes and beyond: the language socialisation studies]. Langage et Société, 139, 67-82.
  19. Bhattacharya, U. (2011). The “West” in Literacy Studies. Berkeley Review of Education, 2(2), 179-198.

Encyclopedia entry

  1. ***Ramanathan, V. & Bhattacharya, U. (in press). Vernacular and English postcolonial research. Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Wiley. (*Invited)
  2. ***Bhattacharya, U. (2022). The Teaching of English in India. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education.

Book Reviews

  1. ***Bhattacharya, U. & Bhattacharya Haddad, K. N. (2019). The tomato flood. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 15(3).
  2. Sarda, A., & Bhattacharya, U. (2019). The multilingual reality: Living with languages. Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2019.1654974
  3. ***Bhattacharya, U. (2016). Reconsidering English Studies in Indian Higher Education. Asian Studies Review, 40, 466-46.
  4. ***Bhattacharya, U. (2013). Postcolonial perspectives on global citizenship education. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 12(5), 357-359.