Explorations in Global Language Justice

Delineated Digital Space

By Greta Schatz This post was developed as part of the Columbia University course “Multilingual Technologies and Language Diversity” taught by Smaranda Muresan, PhD and Isabelle Zaugg, PhD. This cross-disciplinary course offering was a joint effort between the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and the Department of Computer Science, developed through the generous support of the Collaboratory@Columbia….

Why We Should Interrogate the Agenda of Indifference Surrounding Language Loss

By Pallavi Krishnamurthy This post was developed as part of the Columbia University course “Multilingual Technologies and Language Diversity” taught by Smaranda Muresan, PhD and Isabelle Zaugg, PhD. This cross-disciplinary course offering was a joint effort between the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and the Department of Computer Science, developed through the generous support of the Collaboratory@Columbia….

Viewing Digital Language as Intertwined with Spoken Language

By Sophie Lanier This post was developed as part of the Columbia University course “Multilingual Technologies and Language Diversity” taught by Smaranda Muresan, PhD and Isabelle Zaugg, PhD. This cross-disciplinary course offering was a joint effort between the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and the Department of Computer Science, developed through the generous support of the Collaboratory@Columbia….

Multilingual Reimagination: Diversifying the Digital Sphere Community

By Kyra Ann Dawkins This post was developed as part of the Columbia University course “Multilingual Technologies and Language Diversity” taught by Smaranda Muresan, PhD and Isabelle Zaugg, PhD. This cross-disciplinary course offering was a joint effort between the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and the Department of Computer Science, developed through the generous support of…

How should we talk about language endangerment?

On February 14, 2019, Mary Louise Pratt gave a fascinating and well-attended Sawyer Seminar lecture entitled “Toward A Geolinguistic Imagination.” Pratt, a renowned scholar of Latin American cultural studies whose theoretical concepts, such as “contact zones,” have contributed contributions to a variety of fields, has recently turned her attention to questions of language justice and the relationship…

Global Language Justice in the Digital Sphere

One of the keystones of the Global Language Justice Sawyer-Seminar was Dr. Isabelle Zaugg’s course, Global Language Justice in the Digital Sphere, offered in spring of 2018, 2019, and 2022. The students’ final projects were particularly rich and in-depth explorations of the topic of GLJ, which highlight the multi-faceted nature of this field. The students’…

Reflections on “The Tower of Babel: Human Rights and the Paradox of Language |Global Language Justice Sawyer Seminar with Moria Paz”

There is a trope, in architecture history and theory, that relates the centralizing of state power to the technique of rendering an image in linear perspective. Lines of projection extend forward from a single dot placed somewhere at infinity, creating a grid upon which an object can be moved around at random: whatever warps must…

Global Language Justice Sawyer Seminar Lecture featured on Bwog

Levi Cohen wrote about Moria Paz’s stimulating October 4th lecture on language rights and human rights law for the student blog Bwog.

Global Justice for Indigenous Languages (III of IV)

During the final hour of our Global Justice for Indigenous Languages Symposium, I was keeping track of the attendees who had raised their hand to ask a question or make a comment and making sure that they had the microphone—after all, one of the issues that kept coming up that day was the unethical practices…

Ethics of the Untranslatable: Role of Public Policies in Creating Justice for Indigenous Languages (II of IV)

Part II of our UN Forum series on Global Justice for Indigenous Languages In his impassioned speech during the first session of our symposium, Chief Wilton Littlechild described the trauma of his upbringing in at the Ermineskin Indian Residential School in Maskwacis, Alberta. These schools, which Chief Littlechild described as a “legislative form of assimilation,” were…