Departmental News

Posted:  May 24, 2021 - 01:00pm

Dr. Catherine Rhodes, a semiotic anthropologist and Assistant Professor in the Ethnology program, has been featured in a Society for Linguistic Anthropology blog entitled Creative Contributions: Undergraduates Apply Linguistic Anthropological Insights Beyond the Classroom.  The blog showcases the work of two undergraduate students, Jacob Sandoval and Daniel Romero.  Mr. Sandoval persents a radio piece while Mr. Romero presents a musical composition. 

Dr. Rhodes writes: In the fall of 2019, I tried out a new assignment with students. Replacing an essay, instead I asked students to submit a product of their choosing that would allow them to communicate a linguistic anthropological concept to individuals who had no background in anthropology or in the study of ‘language.’ Among the things they created were brochures, a song, advertisements, video vignettes, and a radio spot. In our course, we focused on developing an understanding of ‘language’ as a socially enacted, communicative system that people situationally mobilize in daily life to accomplish social work. We questioned what we thought we knew and stretched the bounds of our understanding of ‘language.’ Students worked to come to understand ‘language’ and other communicative phenomena as key means through which social work is done, such as how sociological differentiators like ‘gender’ and ‘race’ become socially salient. Read more