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.
Aloha everybody! After a much needed break for the summer term, I'm super excited to be back and writing to you all as I tackle my sophomore year taking online classes in New Orleans, Louisiana.
This term, though virtual, will be different than my previous virtual spring term because I moved into a house with a few of my Dartmouth friends here in New Orleans. We'll all be taking our different classes together but living under the same roof, which almost fills the gap of not being able to be in beautiful Hanover. My favorite part about Dartmouth has always been the people, and this way it's like bringing Dartmouth to us.
As a non-STEM major, the distributive requirements that Dartmouth has can seem daunting. For those of you that don't know, distributives are course requirements needed to graduate. As a liberal arts institution, these requirements exist to encourage us to try many different things. Some of these requirements have to do with the arts, languages, and sciences. For me personally, as a relatively non-artsy, decidedly un-STEM person, I was especially intimidated by the art and lab distributes — that was before I realized I could take classes relatively close to my comfort zone, allowing me to try new things while also working towards my graduation requirements.
One of my first assignments was to code a children's book cover, so I just had to rep my own favorite. Not too shabby, you think?
My first class is COSC 1, better known as Introduction to Computer Science. We're currently learning the Python coding language, and though the pace has been brisk, in my first week alone I was able to relearn a ton of coding concepts that I haven't used or remembered in many, many years. I had a bit of coding experience from when I used to be an indie game developer during middle school, but it was all self-taught and pretty disjointed. My class has gone through a very structured introduction that's rapidly reacquainting me with my coding basics and showing me the fundamentals to a coding language I've never tried before. Because I currently intend to be a Linguistics major, this computer science class could help me further explore the intersection between language and machines — which opens up opportunities in game design, speech recognition, or even AI. Computer science is allowing me to pursue or and glimpse the horizon of this interdisciplinary path while also giving me a lab credit — for a guy that doesn't necessarily science, I couldn't be happier.
My second class is LING 35, known as Field Methods, taught by the same professor that taught my first Linguistics class just a year ago. During this class, we're exploring a rare, almost completely unstudied language and taking extensive notes and documentation. It's simulating exactly what linguistics do when they go somewhere in the world to study an unstudied language, and being able to take part in this firsthand research is an opportunity I simply couldn't pass up. This class makes me super excited and is just another fruit of my discovering the Linguistics department at Dartmouth, which is almost certainly going to be my major.
My third class is CRWT 40.01, known as Imaginary Countries, taught by the same professor that taught my incredible First-Year Seminar during my first winter term. Professor Chee is a total legend, and the class is currently structured so as to let us dive into speculative fiction in all of its beautiful absurdity. We're learning a lot about how setting informs plot, and on the first day of class, we all told ghost stories. I've always loved creative writing, but this is my first creative writing class at Dartmouth and I'm already really excited to be able to have an outlet other than my Notes app to write stories. Not only will I be having fun finally pursuing my passion for storytelling, but I'll be satisfying my art distributive. Words are art, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
If you guys couldn't tell, I'm bursting with excitement about this term and really invested in all of my classes for their individual experiences. I have so many plans for this term, and in many ways, at the risk of being cheesy, in my head it felt much like taking this post's featured picture on the plane ride: a blank canvas or new horizon. Even though I'm a sophomore, I want to keep up my freshman year trend of trying new things and reaching, and I won't be stopping anytime soon.
I will most definitely be diving into each of my classes in greater detail as the term progresses while also showing you how I stay engaged with the Dartmouth community regardless of my being as far as New Orleans. In the meantime, stay safe and healthy and I couldn't be more excited to be back on the blog!
This spring in Spare Rib, the intersectional feminist zine and feminist collective on campus, has been quite busy and exciting with a bunch of new events. Keep reading to find out more!
What kind of classes do you take in a subject-based Foreign Study Program? Here's a rundown of my classes in the Music FSP in London to give you an idea of what academic life is like in the program!
