Ibrar Bhatt

This book offers an intimate ethnographic window into the ways Chinese Muslims produce, maintain, and transmit religious, cultural, and historical knowledge through their everyday practices of heritage literacy. Sino-Muslims in China inhabit a unique landscape of religious and spiritual expression, shaped by the intersections of the Islamic faith with Chinese cultural traditions, and where the spoken and written word plays a vital role in sustaining Islamic heritage across generations. Drawing from multiple personal narratives across diverse regions — including Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Qinghai, Gansu, Jilin, Henan, and Hong Kong SAR — this book illuminates the lived experiences of Chinese Muslims as they navigate the intersections of faith, language, and identity. These accounts trace practices of heritage literacy shaped by migration, linguistic-semiotic ideologies, life-cycle rituals, and forms of artistic expression. The authors show how practices of heritage literacy, rooted in Islamic traditions yet responsive to contemporary shifts, tether Sino-Muslims to a broader sense of Muslimness while also anchoring them in local Chinese cultural and historical milieus and diverse linguistic traditions. This interdisciplinary study offers new insights into the significance of heritage literacy in linguistic anthropological study, and the vital role of narrative in preserving and articulating Islamic heritage in China’s evolving sociocultural landscape.

This Element examines the semiotics of Sino-Muslim heritage literacy in a way that integrates its Perso-Arabic textual qualities with broader cultural semiotic forms. Using data from images of the linguistic landscape of Sino-Muslim life alongside interviews with Sino-Muslims about their heritage, the author examines how signs of 'Muslimness' are displayed and manipulated in both covert and overt means in different contexts. In so doing the author offers a 'semiotics of Muslimness' in China and considers how forms of language and materiality have the power to inspire meanings and identifications for Sino-Muslims and understanding of their heritage literacy. The author employs theoretical tools from linguistic anthropology and an understanding of semiotic assemblage to demonstrate how signifiers of Chinese Muslimness are invoked to substantiate heritage and Sino-Muslim identity constructions even when its expression must be covert, liminal, and unconventional.

This Element examines the semiotics of Sino-Muslim heritage literacy in a way that integrates its Perso-Arabic textual qualities with broader cultural semiotic forms. Using data from images of the linguistic landscape of Sino-Muslim life alongside interviews with Sino-Muslims about their heritage, the author examines how signs of 'Muslimness' are displayed and manipulated in both covert and overt means in different contexts. In so doing the author offers a 'semiotics of Muslimness' in China and considers how forms of language and materiality have the power to inspire meanings and identifications for Sino-Muslims and understanding of their heritage literacy. The author employs theoretical tools from linguistic anthropology and an understanding of semiotic assemblage to demonstrate how signifiers of Chinese Muslimness are invoked to substantiate heritage and Sino-Muslim identity constructions even when its expression must be covert, liminal, and unconventional.

Approaching academic assignments as practical controversies, this book offers a novel approach to the study of digital literacy. Through in-depth accounts of assignment writing in college classrooms, Bhatt examines ways of understanding how students engage with digital media in curricular activities and how these give rise to new practices of information management and knowledge creation. He further considers what these new practices portend for a stronger theory of digital literacy in an age of informational abundance and ubiquitous connectivity. Looking also at how institutional digital learning policies and strategies are applied in classrooms, and how students may embrace or avoid imposed technologies, this book offers an in-depth study of learner practices. It is through the comprehensive study of such practices that we can better understand the efficacy of technological investments in education, and the dynamic nature of digital literacy on the part of students charged with using those technologies.

Academics Writing recounts how academic writing is changing in the contemporary university, transforming what it means to be an academic and how, as a society, we produce academic knowledge. Writing practices are changing as the academic profession itself is reconfigured through new forms of governance and accountability, increasing use of digital resources, and the internationalisation of higher education. Through detailed studies of writing in the daily life of academics in different disciplines and in different institutions, this book explores: the space and time of academic writing; tensions between disciplines and institutions around genres of writing; the diversity of stances adopted towards the tools and technologies of writing, and towards engagement with social media; and the importance of relationships and collaboration with others, in writing and in ongoing learning in a context of constant change. Drawing out implications of the work for academics, university management, professional training, and policy, Academics Writing: The Dynamics of Knowledge Creation is key reading for anyone studying or researching writing, academic support, and development within education and applied linguistics.

Academics Writing recounts how academic writing is changing in the contemporary university, transforming what it means to be an academic and how, as a society, we produce academic knowledge. Writing practices are changing as the academic profession itself is reconfigured through new forms of governance and accountability, increasing use of digital resources, and the internationalisation of higher education. Through detailed studies of writing in the daily life of academics in different disciplines and in different institutions, this book explores: the space and time of academic writing; tensions between disciplines and institutions around genres of writing; the diversity of stances adopted towards the tools and technologies of writing, and towards engagement with social media; and the importance of relationships and collaboration with others, in writing and in ongoing learning in a context of constant change. Drawing out implications of the work for academics, university management, professional training, and policy, Academics Writing: The Dynamics of Knowledge Creation is key reading for anyone studying or researching writing, academic support, and development within education and applied linguistics.

Approaching academic assignments as practical controversies, this book offers a novel approach to the study of digital literacy. Through in-depth accounts of assignment writing in college classrooms, Bhatt examines ways of understanding how students engage with digital media in curricular activities and how these give rise to new practices of information management and knowledge creation. He further considers what these new practices portend for a stronger theory of digital literacy in an age of informational abundance and ubiquitous connectivity. Looking also at how institutional digital learning policies and strategies are applied in classrooms, and how students may embrace or avoid imposed technologies, this book offers an in-depth study of learner practices. It is through the comprehensive study of such practices that we can better understand the efficacy of technological investments in education, and the dynamic nature of digital literacy on the part of students charged with using those technologies.