Recovering Voices:
Documenting & Sustaining
Endangered Languages & Knowledge
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Events and Past Seminars
Listen to Past Seminars
"Jesuit Grammarians in the Chaco:
Their Analytical Strengths and Weaknesses" (Willem de Reuse)
The Society of Jesus, more than any other order missionizing in the New World, put a special value upon learning the indigenous languages, and if Jesuits wrote grammars of them, they were often quite perceptive and rigorous. Furthermore, Jesuits with non-Spanish language backgrounds brought a variety of analytical skills with them. Although Zwartjes (2010) claims that the education of Jesuits was so international that their native language background would have mattered little, in this talk de Reuse argues that native language background and nationality mattered to some extent.
Download associated materials:
de Reuse_20130213.pdf
"Encounter with the Harrington Collection: Building a New Generation of Access" (Candace Greene and Stephanie Christensen)
The John P. Harrington Papers, one of the largest collections in the National Anthropological Archives, has been extensively used by researchers as diverse as linguists, ethnobotanists, environmental scientists, cultural anthropologists, and Native scholars from Oklahoma to Oregon. The NAA has launched a new effort to make this material more accessible, moving from microfilm and audio tape to online access. Members of the team will speak about some of the challenges, achievements, and rewards of work with this complex and challenging collection.
Download associated materials:
Harrington_20130116.pdf
"Love Letters and Goodbyes in Nepal: The Case for Linguistic Anthropology" (Laura M. Ahearn)
This talk analyzes some of the many social transformations that the village of Junigau, Nepal, has experienced over the past several decades and demonstrates the benefits of close attention to language for analyzing social change. Focusing on shifts in courtship and marriagepractices, Ahearn shows how the advent of female literacy led to an unanticipated switch from arranged and capture marriage to “love” marriage in the 1990s. She then turns her current work on the process of leave-taking in Nepal, examining farewell routines at the micro level and leave-taking at more macro levels in order to illustrate the benefits of linguistic anthropology for understanding cultural meanings and social relations.
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"Cloud traces: Texts from the codices of our memories" (Víctor Cata and Emiliano Cruz Santiago)
This presentation focuses on texts recovered from Zapotec knowledge bearers considered to be living codices who safeguard the memory of the Peoples of the Clouds. The texts are from Juchitán in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and from San Bartolomé Loxicha in the Souther Sierra, in Oaxaca, both Zapotec towns but with distinct Zapotec languages and cultural practices. The voices recovered through these two language and knowledge documentation efforts bear witness to distinct philosophies, cosmogonies and literary traditions. Further, they provide evidence of the changes taking place among the Peoples of the Clouds and in their cultures and languages which are under pressure given the dominance of Spanish in Mexico.
Download associated materials:
Zapotec_20121108.pdf
Zapotec Handout.pdf
Zapotec1 Victor Cata presentation
Zapotec2 Emiliano Cruz presentation
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