[lg policy] First North American Conference on the Kurdish Language and Culture

[Harold Schiffman]

First North American Conference on the Kurdish Language and Culture

The Kurdish American Education Society (KAES), a non-profit cultural
organization in Los Angeles, will be hosting the First North American
Conference on the Kurdish Language and Culture on 05 November 2010.
The event is co-sponsored by UCLA’s G.E. von Grunebaum Center for Near
Eastern Studies (CNES).  The conference will bring to Los Angeles
Kurdish and non-Kurdish linguists, students, and scholars from
different parts of the United States, Canada, and Europe to address a
wide spectrum of topics and research on Kurdish studies.

The primary goal of the conference is to stress the need for reviewing
the existing trends, current challenges, and new linguistic,
socio-linguistic and historical studies, recognize the achievements
that scholars and practitioners have made in their respective fields
of research, and open new possibilities for raising consciousness
about and change the state of the language and its community of
speakers.

Conference participants and presenters are from a wide spectrum of
disciplines, including but not limited to applied linguistics,
dialectology, lexicography, sociolinguistics, anthropology, art and
language, educational linguistics, Kurdish as a heritage language,
discourse analysis, media studies, and historical linguistics.

The conference will take place in the Collins Conference room at the
UCLA James West Alumni Center on Friday, 05 November from 9am to 6pm.
Some of the emerging conference topics include: The Influence of
Kurdish on the Neo-Aramaic Language, Kurdish language policy and
planning, language and identity, challenges of developing educational
materials in Kurdish, music and cultural rights.

For additional information on the conference and registration, please
refer to the KAES website:  www.kaes.us (to be launched soon) or click
here.

Confirmed presenters include:

♦Yonar Sabar, scholar, specializing in Neo-Aramaic studies, professor
in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, University
of California Los Angeles.

♦Jaffer Sheyholislami, Assistant Professor at the School of
Linguistics and Language Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
Areas of research: language and identity; language of/in media;
language policy and planning; language and power/ideology; genre
studies.

♦Christian Sinclair, Assistant Director, Center for Middle Eastern
Studies, The University of Arizona; PhD candidate in Kurdish Studies
at the University of Exeter, specialized in media, language policy,
and identity.

♦Shayee Khanaka, librarian for Linguistics & Middle Eastern Studies,
at UC Berkeley, has an MA in Folklore and a thesis on Kurdish Humor.

♦Rashid Karadaghi, Author of the Azadi English-Kurdish Dictionary and
writer on Kurdish affairs.

♦Ali Ashuri, author, poet, and critic, specialized in philology and
Kurdish literature; he has taught at San Diego State University.

♦Muhamad Tawfiq Ali, Applied linguist, translator, critic, member of
Chartered Institute of Linguistics ( MCIL).

♦Gregory Scarborough, field researcher on Kurdish music and cultural
rights, focusing on Kurdish areas in Turkey, director of Cultural
Cornerstones.

♦Alexandra Jaffe, incoming editor of Linguistic Anthropology and
formerly the editor of Language and Education, specialized in
linguistic anthropology, language ideology, bilingualism and the
status of minority languages, professor at California State
University, Long Beach.

♦Susan Barwari, PhD student, UCLA Department of Linguistics, educator
specializing in assessment and educational material development in
Kurmanji.

♦Hashem Ahmadzadeh, Kurdish scholar, a lecturer in the Centre for
Kurdish Studies at the University of Exeter, specialized in language
in Kurdish novels.

♦Opengin Ergin, 2nd year PhD student at L’Université de Paris
-Sorbonne Nouvelle, specializing in Kurdish sociolinguistics.

♦Amir Hasssanpour (via Skype), scholar of Kurdish sociolinguistics and
history, professor at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern
Civilizations, University of Toronto.

♦Michael Chyet (via Skype), Library of Congress, author of Kurdish
Dictionary: Kurmanji-English, scholar and researcher, author of “And a
thornbush sprang between them, Studies on Mem û Zîn: A Kurdish
Romance.”

♦Amir Sharifi, applied linguist, translator, specializing in literacy
socialization, lecturer, Department of Linguistics, California State
University, Long Beach.

http://kurdistancommentary.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/first-north-american-conference-on-the-kurdish-language-and-culture/
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