Aloha to the page of a wanderlusting writer juggling college life and several other hobbies into an eternally-short 24-hour day. I hope to shed light on the Dartmouth experience as I explore the brave new world of Hanover, NH and everything going to college here has to offer. In my free time, you can find me trying to learn a new language or building the perfect Spotify playlist (alternative/indie, anyone?). I hope you enjoy!
Taught by Gordon Henry, an Anishinaabe poet and author, this class taught me to explore Indigenous storytelling within digital contexts. I took this class with only seven other classmates, allowing us to really engage with films, comic books, and television shows in Indigenous languages or produced by Indigenous artists.
Taught by Timothy Pulju, this class taught me how to identify and understand how languages evolve over time and why. I analyzed and reconstructed fictional languages of imaginary nations in order to understand the link between language and culture, and ended up having such an appreciation for the complexity and beauty of language's place in history!
Taught by Lindsay Whaley, this class let me discover a newfound love for ancient apocalyptic literature. We analyzed ancient texts and compared them to modern apocalypses, looking at the zombie apocalypse phenomenon and other apocalypses in pop culture and comparing them to the ancient tradition of writing apocalypses. Additionally, I learned the Greek alphabet and now I can even stumble through ancient Greek passages.
FallNew Orleans, LA
Favorite Class: Native American Literature and the Law
Taught and organized by David Peterson, this class let me get into the shoes of a real linguist as we did fieldwork (virtually!!) with the Zophei language. I learned how to describe a never-before-learned language's phonology (sound system), how to characterize its grammar and words, and ultimately got to present my research to experts in the language family around the world in a workshop at the end of the term!
WinterHanover, NH
Favorite Class: Native American Literature and the Law
Taught by N. Bruce Duthu, this class taught me how Native literature can provide lens by which to evaluate, critique, and ultimately revise Federal Indian Law. During this class, I read works by Native authors like Tommy Orange and Louise Erdrich '76 alongside the opinions of definitive case opinions in American law and explained how literature can be a catalyst for Indigenous sovereignty.
Supervised by N. Bruce Duthu, I spent this off-term performing research after being awarded a Sophomore Research Scholarship to study contemporary Hawaiian cultural and linguistic revitalization. I studied 19th-century newspapers and contemporary Hawaiian texts in order to understand how Hawaiian language revitalization both past and present has advanced and continues to enable a contemporary bodied Hawaiian politic of sovereignty.
Taught by Laura McPherson, this class taught me about how languages create meaning through words. During this class, I learned how to analyze different languages' morphological processes and compare different approaches within the field as to morphological structures.
Taught by N. Bruce Duthu, this class offered me a glimpse into the lived realities of Native people in Indian Country Today. I learned about the economic, social, cultural, and historical roots for the struggles of Indigenous people today within the United States, and was able to write about the contemporary battle for Native Hawaiian visibility and Hawaiian sovereignty.
Taught by Laura McPherson, this class taught me how to engage in language documentation and how, as a linguist, we can put our skills to use to help communities seeking to document and revitalize their languages. I worked on the Satawalese language, spoken on the island of Satawal in the Federated States of Micronesia. Ultimately, my team created two dictionaries - one in English, one in Hawaiian, a website, and several materials that focused on the Satawalese tradition of wayfinding and non-instrumental ocean navigation.
Taught by Charles Eastman fellow Sunaina Kale, this class taught me about the role of sound in delineating, conceiving, and comprehending relations between people and the land in Indigenous musical traditions. Over the course of the class, we discussed Indigenous musicians, listened to music from Native peoples around the world, heard from masterful Indigenous musicians, and ultimately presented a project that creatively analyzed a song of our choice. My project focused on the song "Ask Yourself" by Foster the People, and I wrote a poem that integrated aspects of Indigenous languages and worldviews to answer questions posed by the song.
This term, I formally began the research process for my upcoming honors thesis in the Linguistics department on Hawaiian semantics! While living in Hanover, I also began working as a Senior Fellow with the Admissions department—a position I will be holding for the entirety of my last year at Dartmouth.
During my junior winter term in 2022, I had the opportunity to spend the term in the state of Hawaiʻi, on the islands of Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi Island, also known as Big Island. As is the case with Dartmouth Study Abroad experiences, either international or domestic, Dartmouth professors travel with you—this was the case for my class on language documentation, Linguistics 54.
This class, taught by Professor Laura McPherson, is a hallmark of the annual Linguistics Foreign Study Program (FSP). During the class, we learned about what it means to be a linguist when conducting language documentation in communities around the world. Importantly, we touched on the ethics involved in language documentation—how do we center community needs and craft projects that aren't just beneficial from a scholarly perspective, but help communities revitalize their language or educate their own members? More importantly, how can we be partners with the communities we serve rather than just knowledge-seeking outsiders?
In Week 5, our program traveled from O'ahu to Big Island, where we lived on the campus of the University of Hawai'i at Hilo. While there, we studied the Hawaiian language and language revitalization in the Hawaiian context, before beginning our fieldwork for our Linguistics 54 class. We were to work with two Micronesian languages known as Woleaian and Satawalese. As is the case with linguistics fieldwork, we worked with a consultant—in our case, a fluent speaker of the Satawalese language and someone with incredible knowledge of Satawalese culture and traditional practices. We quickly learned that the Satawalese people have an incredible tradition of wayfinding, or specifically of non-instrument ocean navigation. In canoes without any electronic implements or GPS, the Satawalese people use the sky to travel around the Pacific. We decided to craft a project that presented the Satawalese language alongside our consultant's extensive knowledge, thus working to create a product we could share with the community.
At the end of our program, we presented our final project portfolio: two lexicons, one in English and one in Hawaiian, that documented the different vocabulary used in Satawalese wayfinding and navigation, and a website which contained our entire dictionary in searchable form, as well as interactive diagrams of both a Satawalese waa (canoe) and a star compass. Seeing all of our work pay off via the enthusiasm of the community response was an incredible reward after a term of work, and I couldn't be more grateful for the opportunity. If you're even slightly considering studying-abroad, do it! A hui hou aku, until next time!
Picture credit for the cover to this post goes to my amazing classmate/photographer, Julia Levine '23!
SIP, or Social Impact Practicum, is a type of course that is offered at Dartmouth that centers around engaging with local community partners. I have taken two of these courses now and have found them to be enriching and interesting.
This year, I moved to Triangle House, one of Dartmouth's Living Learning Communities (LLCs), a welcoming space for LGBTQIA+ students and allies that fosters learning, community engagement, and personal connections.
