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.
When I tell people I came to Dartmouth to become a linguist, not many know what that is at first. Since getting here, my own understanding of what it means has changed a lot. Being the son of two college professors, I always saw myself following the familiar footsteps of academia. Around the age of 15, when a series of factors led me to resent my lack of knowledge of Krenak, my paternal family's Indigenous language, I figured out that a degree in linguistics was exactly what I needed to come back and be a resourceful community language advocate.
At Dartmouth, I was able to not only find an already great Linguistics program, but also further craft it to meet my own interests and needs better. During my first year, I realized that a pure linguistics training would leave me lacking certain key skills required in the language revitalisation work, especially as it pertained to engaging and dialoguing with Indigenous and socially marginalized groups.
Don't get me wrong: I was definitely into the in-depth semantics dives and phonetics experiments I got to conduct for my first few linguistics classes. I just wanted more, and I found it in the Native American & Indigenous Studies department (NAIS), with which I was allowed to modify my original major. For those not familiar with the idea, a modified major at Dartmouth allows any student to merge two (often seemingly unrelated) programs into one. That usually means completing 60% of the coursework in your primary department, and 40% in the other, in addition to any pre-required classes or honors programs. For me, it meant finding a great balance between formal language sciences and the combined NAIS lens, which naturally borrows from other disciplines like anthropology, law, and literature.
Adding another program into the mixture, by the end of my first term in college, I had already made up my mind about a minor in Spanish. My first class, SPAN20with Prof. Beatriz Pastor, an introductory course to the department's upper-level seminars, gave me the confidence I needed to dive deeper into the language. By the time I went to Madrid in my second year, I already wanted it to be a major. And as I followed the major path, I realized that Spanish wasn't that far off from my original interests in language revitalisation. Rather, the language opened the doors to much more scholarship in the area, allowing me to now work with Latin American sources and engage in linguistic theory from a whole new perspective.
Now, as a rising senior, I am a proud double major in Hispanic Studies and Linguistics modified with Native American & Indigenous Studies. I know it sounds long, but I guess it matches me—and all my four last names. Although I came in already knowing what I wanted three years ago, I am happy that I made time to explore different things at Dartmouth. Isn't that one of the beauties of the liberal arts?
Through Dartmouth's Guarini Institute for International Study, I am getting to take classes and experience life at Wellesley College, an all-women's school!
Academics can be challenging at Dartmouth. But there are lots of groups across campus here to support you through your academic journey. Read on for my experience asking for help and a few organizations that might be helpful to you!
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!
