Research Projects

This book manuscript shows how language revitalization can become a site of contestation when divergent ideas about knowledge and property collide. In the face of overt and subtle forms of linguistic appropriation, Hopi actors have developed protections for the Hopi language that challenge extractive uses by outsiders. This resistance has given rise to new structures of circulation, in which Hopi values and contexts-of-use move from the margins to the center.  

I’ve been lucky to spend time with the Hopi Food Cooperative and Tutskwat Oqawtoynani over the past few years. During this time, I’ve become interested in women’s roles in ecological reclamation. This project, like my first project, will be subject to approval by the Cultural Preservation Office.

Benjamin Lee Whorf was a mid-century linguist who worked extensively with a Hopi speaker based in New York, Ernest Naquayouma. While Whorf’s ideas have been the subject of much debate by linguists and anthropologists, less is known about his methodologies and relationship with Naquayouma.

Based in Acadian communities in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, this project investigates the politics of multilingualism in this French and English speaking region of the Canadian Maritimes. I focus especially on the qualities speakers associated with different ways of speaking, and how these fall along class and generational lines.