Michel DeGraff has organized the following series with funding from MindHandHeart and the Women & Gender Studies program:
Seminar for MIT Community on Language & Linguistics in Decolonization & Liberation Struggles in Haiti, Palestine & Israel
Fall 2024, Wednesdays noon–2pm, Room E51-095
This seminar is an invitation to sociolinguistics & postcolonial linguistics with case studies from Haiti Palestine & Israel. We will examine the exclusion vs. inclusion of certain languages & their speakers in avenues where knowledge & power are created & transmitted. Additionally, we will explore the use of language & linguistics in propaganda in the context of conflicts where words, definitions, phrases, syntactic patterns, etc., are enlisted to political ends to the detriment of academic freedom, freedom of speech, mutual understanding, empathy, peace, community building, social justice, etc.
Objectives:
- Analyze the use of language & linguistics as tools for either hegemony and conflictual propaganda vs. mutual understanding, justice and a #BetterWorld.
- Explore linguistic analyses & education policies as potential contributions to the foundations for peace, community-building & universal respect of human rights worldwide.
Current list of guest speakers:
Jean Casimir (Université d’État d’Haïti)
Sally McConnell-Ginet (Cornell University)
David Beaver (University of Texas, Austin)
Camelia Suleiman (Michigan State University)
Joseph Levine (UMass Amherst)
Samira Alayan (The Seymour Fox School of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Nurit Peled-Elhanan (formerly at Hebrew University)
Holly M. Jackson (University of California, Berkeley)
Yonatan Mendel (Ben Gurion University of the Negev)
Chana Morgenstern (University of Cambridge)
Vivien Sansour (Palestine Heirloom Seed Library)
For more information and scheduling details, please contact Michel DeGraff at degraff@MIT.EDU