WHAT'S HAPPENING AT SANTA CRUZ
A weekly digest of linguistics news and events from the University of California, Santa Cruz
Scott will be joining the Linguistics Department at the University of Rochester as a Visiting Assistant Professor next year. As Scott notes, “among other great linguists, I’ll be joining fellow UCSC alums Christine Gunlogson (PhD, 2001) and Jeff Runner (BA, 1989).” Congratulations, Scott!
Next Fall Lauren Negrete (BA with Honors, Language Studies, 2011) will be entering Georgetown University’s Master of Arts in Teaching program (Applied Linguistics). Congratulations and good luck, Lauren!
Anya Lunden (Ph.D., 2006) has accepted a tenure-track job at The College of William and Mary. William and Mary (located in Williamsburg, Virginia) is a small, selective, public, liberal arts college, and the second-oldest college in the U.S. Anya worked there for several years before taking a job at the University of Georgia, where she now resides. She returns to W&M this fall.
In the final week of Winter Quarter, Jim McCloskey travelled to UC Davis for a talk jointly sponsored by the Departments of Linguistics and English on the cultural politics of language attrition and their expression in Irish literature. While in Davis, Jim re-connected with alumna Ariel Loring. Ariel is a fourth year student in the PhD program in linguistics at Davis and advanced to candidacy at the beginning of this year. She graduated from UCSC in 2008, with a B.A. in linguistics, and in her last quarter she took Ling 80C (Language, Society, and Culture) to satisfy a general education requirement. She was sufficiently taken with the material of that course to decide that she wanted to be an applied sociolinguist and that is why she entered the program at Davis. Her first qualifying paper was on monolingual English-only ideologies in the U.S. and its effect on bilingual education policies, a topic she was first introduced to in 80C. Ariel’s dissertation research is centered on a set of issues around citizenship and language policy and she expects to defend her thesis at the end of the 2012-13 academic year. She hopes to go on to work in applied sociolinguistics either in an academic or public policy setting.
On Saturday, the linguistics department hosted its annual graduate student research conference, LASC. The second- and third-year graduate students (and a visitor!) presenting work were Nate Arnett, Kendra Buchanan, Nick Deschenes, Yasuhiro Iida, Katia Kravtchenko, Oliver Northrup, Bern Samko, and Allan Schwade. These presentations spanned the subfields of linguistics and dealt with aspects of a variety of languages, including English, Hindi, Japanese, Maltese, Russian, and Turkish. (Find the program here, and some photos below.) Chris Barker gave the Distinguished Alumnus Lecture, “How to Sprout”, which engaged with the long tradition of UCSC work on sluicing and sprouting. After the conference, the discussion continued over dinner at a party at the home of Pranav Anand (who deserves thanks and congratulations for organizing Saturday’s events).
As usual, LASC coincided with the department’s Open House weekend for visiting prospective PhD students. A total of seven admitted students were here this week (five of them on Friday and Saturday), attending classes and reading group meetings, meeting with faculty, and being treated to the beauty of campus. Friday’s events culminated in a delicious pizza party hosted by Mark Norris.
The department’s annual Linguistics at Santa Cruz (LASC) conference will take place this Saturday, March 10th, 8:15-4:30, in Humanities One, room 202. The program for the conference is available here. Our guest alum speaker this year is Chris Barker of New York University. As in previous years, LASC overlaps with our Prospective Graduate Student Open House. Please welcome any and all visiting prospectives!
Elliott Callahan, a recent graduate of UCSC’s Linguistics program, writes this about his experiences since graduating:
For the past 2 1/2 years I’ve been focused on fulfilling my prerequisites for medical school at UC Berkeley Extension, as part of their post-baccalaureate health professions program. The courses have been challenging and interesting, and I’m excited to finally apply to med schools in June.
After quitting my job at a large San Francisco law firm in Fall of 2010, I dedicated myself full time to studying and volunteering. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to volunteer in the immunology department at UCSF, studying the biochemistry of asthma and lung fibrosis. I’ve also been fortunate to volunteer and shadow in emergency departments at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, and Kaiser in San Diego.
As always, I’m thankful for the time I spent with UCSC Lingustics, for what I learned, and the connections I made. I’m looking forward to the coming years.