Penn partnership preserves and expands endangered Indigenous languages
The Penn Current recently featured Penn Language Center's new initiative to increase the diversity of language education and preserve endangered languages in Native American communities:
Educational Partnerships with Indigenous Communities, a new initiative at the Penn Language Center, seeks to increase the diversity of language education at the University and preserve endangered languages in Native American communities.
A new initiative at the Penn Language Center (PLC) has an acronym that is apropos for the size of its mission. Educational Partnerships with Indigenous Communities, or EPIC, seeks to increase the diversity of language education at Penn by expanding the number of Indigenous languages offered at the University. EPIC also aims to preserve endangered languages in Native American communities and the valuable cultural knowledge they encode.
“EPIC and the PLC will be a place to gather teachers from Native American communities, curriculum developers, and scholars from across the humanities,” says PLC Academic Director Christina Frei, a leader in bringing Indigenous language instruction to Penn, most notably the Quechua language classes taught by Américo Mendoza-Mori.
Timothy Powell, a senior lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies in the School of Arts & Sciences (SAS), will direct EPIC. He plans to build on his current research, working in close partnership with community-based language teachers and elders in Indigenous communities.
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