The publication of an open-access edited volume has been one of the cornerstones to the project to ensure these critical conversations are shared broadly. Through creative, analytical, and exploratory essays and multidisciplinary media, this volume will examine diverse but related topics on how language is used to define and order our world, from personal names and issues of self-definition, gender and race, to Indigenous place names, new frontiers in taxonomic theory, as well as language rights and activism, including how people are using language and naming to redefine or reassert their identities.
This volume is also the outcome of the European Union funded CoLing project—a five-year multi-national multi-institutional research program on endangered language revitalization. Its international and culturally diverse origins, however, lie in a partnership with Recovering Voices, a similar program at the Smithsonian Institution, and the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network at Bard College. Convening these internationally collaborative groups enabled us to draw on and work with an expansive global network of scholars from under-represented Indigenous and minority communities who are working on language and identity formation via the intersection of culturally diverse knowledge and political systems.
The editorial team consists of:
Dr. Gwyneira Isaac is a research anthropologist and curator of North American Ethnology in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Her passion for museums and working with Native American communities began when training as a museum photographer, and she encountered a vast array of glass plate negatives, photographs and archives that documented the lives of Native Americans from the 19th century onwards. She realized that, up until that point, she had been deprived of access to this history as it had been largely absent from her text books. Since then, she has devoted herself to finding out anything she could about Native American culture—a journey that took her to graduate school at Oxford University, the Southwest region of the US to conduct fieldwork and, ultimately, to the National Museum of Natural History
Her main research focus is on how Native American communities tell their own histories, as described in her book Mediating Knowledges (2007), which tells the origin story of a tribal museum in Zuni, New Mexico. She is also interested in how different media, such as photography, exhibit models and now 3D printing, help us to understand how technology has shaped the depiction of humans and humanity over time. At the Smithsonian, she directs the Recovering Voices program that supports communities in accessing collections as part of their efforts to revitalize endangered languages and knowledge. Her current research projects include understanding Native American concepts of health and wellbeing, especially through cultural revitalization practices.
(University of Warsaw) CoLing Coordinator
Stanisław Kordasiewicz graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Warsaw (2005) and obtained a PhD (2010). His current research interests include the protection of language, minority and indigenous rights. He worked (2016-2018) as an event coordinator in the Engaged Humanities project and is passionate about bridging the gap between universities, local communities and the general public. He organized the “In our own words” film festival, that was focussed on indigenous cultures and languages and recognized as an official event of the UNESCO International Year of Indigenous Languages 2019.
(Language Policy & Minority Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland)
(George Washington University) Project Liaison for Recovering Voices
Kyunney Takasaeva (Kunnej Takaahaj in the Sakha language) is the coordinator of the Polish-Siberian research group at the Faculty of "Artes Liberales'' at the University of Warsaw. Her primary interest is the study of cultural anthropology – Including the societies and cultures of Siberia, Central Asia, and the Arctic. She is also interested in the identity of indigenous peoples and multiculturalism in Siberia and the United States in the context of modern neo-colonialism, post-colonialism, and decolonial studies. Her work also includes research regarding foreigners in the Siberian territories up to the 20th century.
Our editorial assistants are:
(Smithsonian Institution) Project Liaison for Recovering Voices
(University of Warsaw)
Our editorial committee (2020-2022) includes:
(Modern European Literature, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Marta Ostajewska (º1980, Poland) performer and visual artist, PhD researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and at the University of Warsaw (Artes Liberales). Her M.A. in Multimedia Design was received from School of Arts in Ghent. She graduated also at the University of Lodz (Theory of literature). Her artistic activities were presented in several galleries and at the international theater’s stages: Croxhapox Gallery, Campo Victoria, Nieuwpoorttheater, NTGENT in Ghent, Rozentheater in Amsterdam, The Manhattan Gallery, Prexer, Factory of Art, Gallery Kobro, Posiadło Ksiezy Mlyn, Free Space Gallery in Lodz, Articule Gallery in Montreal, Industra Gallery in Brno. She has participated in many international projects, among others, in the artistic residency Human Hotel: Copenhagen in Denmark and in the international festivals (BIO50 in Ljubljana, RIAP2014 in Quebec City, Canada, PAB2015 in Bergen, Norway). She is co-chief editor of the artistic magazine Woof Woof Arf Arf. She publishes her artistic works and theoretical texts related to the modern art scene, site-specific art and performance art on the international stage.
(Anthropology, Bishop University, Canada)
(Ñuu Savi/Mixtec) (Archaeology and Post-Colonial Digital Humanities, National School of Anthropology and History, Mexico)
Information about Edited Volume contributors coming soon..