University of Texas at Austin psychology professor James Pennebaker can read minds; but he’s not a psychic, he’s a scientist who researchers what our words say about us. “It’s easy to control what we talk about, but not how we talk about it,” says Pennebaker, the Regents Centennial Professor of Psychology. His cross-disciplinary research on language will be the focus of one of the first public lectures hosted by the Linguistics Society of America from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on January 8 at the J.W. Marriott in Austin. Developed first in the 1990’s by Pennebaker, the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program is a computerized text analysis with the potential to reveal a person’s underlying emotions, thinking styles and social concerns based on the way he or she speaks and writes. The most important words, Pennebaker says, are function words — small words, such as pronouns or prepositions — which make up nearly two thirds of what people say, hear, read and write. “These and other dimensions of language have really provided some intriguing insights into the way people think,” Pennebaker says. “But these methods are also really powerful for analyzing yourself to get a better sense of: Who are you? How do you come across? How do you think? To what degree does your language reflect certain aspects of who you are?” Tickets for the LSA public lectures are available on the Eventbrite website. Other presentations include: “How babies and young children learn language: Why you should talk to your kids,” by Eve V. Clark, the Richard W. Lyman Professor of Humanities and Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University. “Traveling among the new words: lexical adventures in the digital age,” by Ben Zimmer, a linguist, lexicographer and language columnist for the Wall Street Journal. “Words on the move: Why English won’t – and can’t – stand still (like, literally),” by John McWhorter, an English and comparative literature associate professor at Columbia University.
Adit Bior is like a whirlwind. When she’s not in class, she’s planning social media campaigns, meeting with college deans or building up a campus-wide Black Lives Matter Initiative. During her “downtime” she’s cheering the Longhorns at sporting events with her fellow Texas Sweethearts. Although her jam-packed days can be exhausting, the work is well worth the effort, she says, because it all leads to one important goal: making the world a better place. Not just for herself, but for her mother who sacrificed so much to bring her family to safety. “My parents were both refugees,” says Bior, a philosophy and government senior. “We came here from South Sudan when I was two months old. My mom has gone through unimaginable hardship, yet she has had such a positive outlook on life. When she assumed her new role as administrative director in Student Government last May, she focused her efforts on making the university a more welcoming, inclusiveplace for all students. This involves a lot of boots-on-the-ground meetings with deans, student groups and various units and offices across campus. She also meets with students on the Campus Climate Advisory Board to share updates on campus-wide diversity and inclusion measures, and to explore areas that could use improvement. “The best way to make things happen is to meet with people and learn about how they’re diversifying the campus, then see how we can help,” she says. “This is a great learning opportunity because a lot of students don’t know the amount of work that’s being done in departments across the campus.” One area that could use some work, she notes, is diverse student recruitment. Though several programs within the DDCE, such as UT Outreach, are making advancements in campus diversity, she says the university could bring in more students of color by providing better scholarships. “Black students tend to get a lot of offers from HBCUs with generous scholarships,”she says. “UT needs to work on providing minority students with more resources and also help them while they’re in high school.” Her best piece of advice for future Longhorns: Get in involved in campus life and make the university your own. “My two big pieces of advice: Don’t be afraid to ask for help,” Bior adds. “The sooner you ask, the sooner you’ll fix the problem. And don’t be afraid to fail. What separates Longhorns from the rest is that we know how to fail well. We know how to get back up and persevere.” A version of this story, authored by Jessica Sinn, first appeared on the University's Division of Diversity and Community Engagement website. To read more about other students who are changing campus culture and the world, click here.
Latin America’s 19th Century: Reflections on Modernity, Memory, and Identity is an exhibition conceived and curated by students in Lina del Castillo’s Latin America in the 19th Century class. Del Castillo is assistant professor at the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) and the Department of History at The University of Texas at Austin. Designed for viewers of high school age and above, the exhibition gathers materials from the Benson Latin American Collection’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection that depict Latin American nineteenth-century struggles for modernity. From wars of Independence and the abolition of slavery to the establishment of international relations as new sovereign nations and growth of industry and technology, Latin America in the nineteenth century witnessed myriad transformations in many sectors of society. Topics explored by the student curators of this exhibition are Independence, the U.S.-Mexican War and Forgotten Actors, Shifting Mexican Identity, the Mexican Revolution, and Modernization and Global Connections. The exhibition will be viewable online via Omeka.net, a web-publishing format for exhibitions, at http://latinamericanviews.omeka.net/. Latin America’s 19th Century runs in the Benson Collection first-floor corridor from December 5, 2016, through March 15, 2017. Free and open to the public during library hours.
The Modern Language Association of America awarded its second MLA Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures and Languages to University of Texas at Austin English professor James H. Cox and University of British Columbia Indigenous studies professor Daniel Heath Justice for their book “The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literatures.” The MLA Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures or Languages is one of seventeen awards to be presented on January 7, 2017 during the association’s annual convention in Philadelphia. The prize is awarded for an outstanding scholarly study of Native American literature, culture or languages written by a member of the association. The committee’s citation for the winning book reads: "The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature” showcases the combined efforts of a truly extraordinary array of scholars—established and emerging, Indigenous and non-Indigenous—working across Native North American, Central American, South American and Oceanic literatures in all historical periods. James H. Cox and Daniel Heath Justice’s edition, divided into sections covering histories, genres, methods and geographies, represents both the culmination of the field to date and a defining blueprint for its future work. Since its publication in 2014, the Oxford Handbook has quickly become the standard reference text for the study of Indigenous American literatures. Cox is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Mexican American Studies and of the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, and the cofounder of Native American and Indigenous Studies at UT Austin. He is the author of “Muting White Noise: Native American and European American Novel Traditions” and “The Red Land to the South: American Indian Writers and Indigenous Mexico,” as well as the former coeditor of “Studies in American Indian Literatures” and the current coeditor of “Texas Studies in Literature and Language.” Justice is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture and a professor of First Nation Indigenous studies and English at the University of British Columbia. A Colorado-born Canadian citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Justice is the author of “Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History,” “Badger,” and the forthcoming “Why Indigenous Literatures Matter.” He is coeditor of a number of critical and creative anthologies and journals, including “Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature.” The Modern Language Association of America and its 25,000 members in 100 countries work to strengthen the study and teaching of languages and literature. Founded in 1883, the MLA provides opportunities for its members to share their scholarly findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends in the academy. The MLA Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures and Languages was established in 2014 and is awarded under the auspices of the Committee on Honors and Awards.