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.
The last time I was able to witness the leaves begin their sudden shift to hues of red, orange, yellow, I was a bright-eyed First-Year consulting a digital map of campus to find my classes. Now, in only my second time ever in the Upper Valley for college, I am a whole junior -- allegedly an upperclassman -- expected to dispense wisdom and act like I know what I'm doing. No, I don't need a map to find my classes anymore, but when I tell you that it feels like I jumped into a portal at the start of the pandemic and only just emerged, I mean it. Junior year who?
This fall, Dartmouth College made the transition to in-person classes for the first time in a long time. After a beautiful, peaceful sophomore summer with predominantly virtual and some in-person classes, this fall is actively allowing all of us on campus to engage in the familiar-and-yet-oh-so-distant exercise of in-person class. We are in a classroom, with classmates (lacking those nametags at the bottom right corner of their Zoom screen, no less), and with a professor. It's finally feeling like college again, and from my writing this at the dawn of Week 2, it feels good.
The time I've spent as a Dartmouth student during the pandemic feels a lot like a fever dream in retrospect, though one that my friends and I have lots of fond memories about and I think, at least in my case, became quite attached to experiencing. The tumult of breakout rooms, the laughs with unfortunate technical difficulties mid-answers, the convenience of attending class from our rooms in pajamas: till now, that's constituted our college experience. To be able to step into the classroom again and interact with each other, even while masked (when indoors), has been priceless and I do enjoy the simple task of waking up in the morning and walking to class. Between classes, I get to say hi to my friends en route to a lecture or between linguistics and French, and it's just that day-to-day vibe of college life that was so sorely missed.
When I'm not in class, my friends and I find ways to time-travel aside from that pandemic portal I mentioned. Just the other day, we made a short drive into Vermont to go on a simple hike, where fall is just beginning to overtake the trees. It is such a beautiful sight and is brimming with nostalgia for those of us that haven't seen fall since our literal freshman year. To be honest, it's been so exciting that I've forgotten to take pictures, so you'll have to hear the story about a little hike my friends and I made to achieve that picture of this post next time. I'll remember to take more pictures, I promise.
I'm so excited to engage with all of the different experiences now offered by our return to a familiar normalcy so sorely missed. In the meantime, stay healthy and stay tuned for mine and my wonderful fellow bloggers' journeys this fall term!
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!
