Linguistics

Meet the Latinx Cluster Hire: Guillem Belmar Viernes

LINGUISTICS - The College of Arts and Sciences is investing in its Latinx studies courses by hiring nine new tenure-track faculty members. Meet Guillem Belmar Viernes, who is joining the Department of Linguistics. After working as a foreign language teacher in Catalonia, Guillem Belmar Viernes was inspired by language revitalization efforts to pursue a PhD at University of California, Santa Barbara.
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Latinx students who are studying abroad can face discrimination

GLOBAL STUDIES AND LANGUAGES, LINGUISTICS, SPANISH - U.S. Latinx students studying Spanish while studying abroad can encounter discrimination and condescending attitudes from their instructors. For students who grew up speaking Spanish, known as heritage speakers, this can lead to missed learning opportunities, according to Devin Grammon and Sergio Loza, both assistant professors of Spanish sociolinguistics in the College of Arts and Sciences.

UO faculty earn grants for language preservation, health equity research

LINGUISTICS - A historian and a linguist have received National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) awards, a prestigious honor that goes to only 16% of applicants in a given year. The grants were awarded to Gabriela Pérez Báez, associate professor of linguistics and director of the Language Revitalization Lab, and Arafaat Valiani, an associate professor in the Department of History and affiliated faculty in the Global Health program.

Reweaving Cultural Threads

LINGUISTICS - Language awakening is part of an ongoing effort to help Indigenous communities revitalize their languages and cultures after long periods of forced dormancy and even when no one is alive who speaks the language. While Indigenous tribes have been doing this work for decades, a growing movement within the field of linguistics aims to assist with these efforts. Read more in the May-June issue of CAS Connection.

Upcoming forum features undergrad research on Latinx studies

JAPANESE, LATINX STUDIES, LINGUISTICS, SPANISH - The Latinx Studies Experiential Learning Program offers funding for a limited number of undergraduates to conduct research or pursue creative projects under the supervision of a faculty member. At a Feb. 13 forum, four undergrads showcased their research, which includes language revitalization, preservation and environmental justice radio reporting.

Volume on Awakening Languages announced by the Language Revitalizaton Lab

LINGUISTICS - The first volume-length work dedicated to awakening languages is now available for open access in the journal Living Languages Lenguas Vivas Línguas Vivas. The volume includes case studies about Kusunda in Nepal, African contexts, Coatec Zapotec in Mexico, and Brorán in Costa Rica, the last two written in Spanish, along with chapters on the US and Australia.

Environment Initiative awards funds to 5 teaching projects

The UO’s Environment Initiative has awarded seed funding to five new teaching projects to support faculty members who have proposed innovative courses and dynamic classroom experiences. The funding supports both research and curricular projects and focuses the intellectual energy and work of faculty, students and community partners on a just and livable future through transdisciplinary research, teaching and experiential learning.