AFRS 350 - Seminar in Linguistic Anthropology

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

A set of offerings that prepares students for advanced, self-directed research in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and historical linguistics. Topics range from language and culture, language and colonialism, language and gender, or linguistic documentation and revitalization to religious and ritual linguistic practices, language and political order, historical linguistics, language and media, or an intensive focus on the languages spoken in a specific region.

May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.

Topic for 2023/24b: Creolizing the World. (Same as ANTH 350 ) This course focuses on creole languages and the communities who speak them as a window to understand how historical processes—imperial expansion, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, racist domination, the plantation system, anti-colonial resistance, and post-colonial nation-building—impact language genesis, change, and shift. This course also traces how colonial legacies continue to inform dominant attitudes about language in the current global political economy. Themes include multilingualism, language revitalization, the relationship between language and ethnonationalism, the role of language in anti-imperialist social movements, the aesthetics and politics of creolization, the role of language in the upholding and challenging racism, as well as the role of language in creating cosmopolitan and diasporic communities and identities. Louis Römer.

One 3-hour period.

Course Format: CLS