Ei! My name is Antônio Jorge Medeiros Batista Silva (yes—four last names!) and I'm a '25 from Governador Valadares, Brazil. My journey to Dartmouth has crossed two continents, three countries, and over 10 schools—and I'm a strong believer that everyone's path to the Big Green was unique in a way. At Dartmouth, I study Linguistics, Native American & Indigenous Studies, and Spanish. I am passionate about social justice, language-learning, and the oxford comma!
This class is an introduction to the Spanish minor and major courses and, although I did not expect to particularly like it, it not only turned out to be my favourite but it made me start considering a degree in the department!
In this class, we analysed different productions of Latinx American theatre. Prof. Analola Santana was probably the best person I met this year at Dartmouth. Being her student was a very important experience as I try to navigate my potential majors and minors.
In this class, I was able to carve time out of my busy Dartmouth schedule to study and learn my Indigenous language: Krenak. With the help of Prof. Gokke, all students were encouraged to develop a final project that spoke to their community's needs for language learning and revitalisation. It was an extremely important class for me, not only academically, but also for my personal healing process.
I had the honour of spending my sophomore fall in Madrid, taking part in the Spanish FSP. There, Prof. Martín was not only a great professor, responsible for my favourite lecture of the program, but also an incredible company throughout our classes and in-country trips. Great way to wrap up my Spanish minor, honestly!
This was my second class in the NAIS department, and thus it took me one step closer to wrapping up my major. Nonetheless, it was Prof. Powell's genuine charisma and caring personality that made it my favourite of the term!
This course was definitely life changing! Prof. Pochedley, a visiting post-doc of the Potawatomi nation did a great job at keeping the students engaged while teaching us to see the land we inhabit as a source of knowledge and spirituality. In a majority Indigenous classroom, we got to develop individual projects related to our traditional homelands, learning to navigate the world through Native world lenses.
Prof. Gómez is one of those profs I've always wanted to take a class with. His work with the Horror genre in Modern Spanish literatures amazes me, and it was an honour to guide in-class discussions and develop my own research on the themes of science, testimony, and fear.
LING54 is an umbrella course: the actual content of the course may vary each year, but it is the common letter-number code to refer to the course taught abroad by your accompanying Dartmouth Linguistics professor. In this year's Linguistics Foreign Study Program (FSP), LING54 was a 'Language Documentation' class, wonderfully taught by Prof. David Peterson.
Before this class, I had no idea what visual and cultural studies actually encompassed. Every chat with Prof. Broner opened my eyes to a different analysis or method for interpreting literature, and for that, I feel truly lucky! We got to discuss films made by Indigenous women from all over Latin America, exposing the class to distinct ways of interacting with and stewarding the environment.
For about eight months now, I have been doing research under Prof. Laura McPherson's guidance. She is one of the biggest proponents of the linguistic description of speech surrogates. Although the phrase might not make sense to many — as it didn't to me before meeting her — I find it important to contextualise: speech surrogates are alternative ways of encoding a message. Most cases we studied so far have employed music to transpose phonological features of language, such as the whistled Spanish found in the Canary Islands and the drummed Igbo of Nigeria. As part of my research position, I have been collecting, editing, and archiving videos and recordings of surrogate speeches spoken across West Africa — more specifically, Benin and Burkina Faso.
Last term, as I found myself having to elect yet another set of three courses, I was very intentional in selecting those that were taught by Prof. McPherson. At some point during our research meetings, I quit seeing her just as an academic inspiration, and she soon became a friend and academic mentor. Now, this Spring term, I am enrolled in both her Phonology class (LING 21) and a senior seminar on Speech Surrogates (LING 80.09). It is somewhat unusual for underclassmen to take senior seminars, as those are traditionally used to fulfill the culminating experience required for most majors, but the Linguistics department made me an exception due to my acquaintance with the topic.
And, to be honest, this experience only gets better! This week, we had the incredible opportunity to meet one of the research contributors in person: Mamadou Diabaté, a native speaker of the Sambla balafon. With the instrument, Mamadou showed us how his people communicate through songs. The phonemic abridging system of the language — that links phonological features of Seenku, such as tone, to musical features, such as pitch — is incredible, but what truly made my day was getting to play it with Mamadou himself. As part of Dartmouth's unique hands-on learning experience, we were invited to learn some basic rhythmic structures of the balafon, which was amazing!
Mamadou teaching us how to play/speak through the balafon!
The day after that class, I even got to show all of this to my friends. Mamadou and his band, Percussion Mania, held a free concert at Collis common ground. I cannot even begin to describe how beautiful it was, and everyone seemed to be having a great time!
Only at Dartmouth would I have gotten the chance to learn through practice, even in the most niched of the subjects.
Every Dartmouth student is required to demonstrate proficiency in a language other than English. Here's my experience navigating the language requirement!
In addition to blogging, I work as a Fellow for the Tucker Center, which focuses on promoting spiritual and ethical life on campus. As part of this role, I'm leading the Interfaith Alternative Spring Break Trip. Read on to learn more about my work!
