"Language Revitalization, Cultural Reclamation, and Global Indigeneity"
Américo Mendoza-Mori
Lecturer and Faculty Director for the Latinx Studies Working Group, Harvard University 

In recent decades, revitalization and reclamation programs for Indigenous languages have emerged at universities, both promoting the language and fostering community empowerment, particularly among youth. We will explore strategies to incorporate Indigenous cultures and languages of the Americas within the Humanities and Social Sciences as relevant and complex curricular components.

For this presentation, we will discuss opportunities for building up academic and cultural programming to challenge and expand traditional notions of Indigeneity as a "thing of the past" into relevant and pressing issues, and to reflect on how colleges and language departments can support more diverse spaces for the representation and visibility of Indigenous cultures, scholarship, and voices, in connection with curricular goals. We will specifically explore the case of Quechua-language initiatives in the global advance of the language. Quechua is the most spoken Indigenous language family of the Americas, with 8-10 million speakers in South America.

Bio: Américo Mendoza-Mori teaches and researches on Indigenous and Latinx Studies at Harvard University where he is a Lecturer and Faculty Director for the Latinx Studies Working Group. Dr. Mendoza-Mori is involved with different research and community-oriented projects to raise awareness of the relevance of Quechua languages and literatures, Latinx and Latin American cultures, and Indigenous systems of knowledge. His work has appeared in a variety of academic publications, a TEDx Talk, and he has been featured at major institutions such as the United Nations and in international media (The New York Times, BBC, NPR, The Guardian). 

This event will be held in person in G25 Stimson and will also be streamed live over Zoom (registration required). Join us at the LRC or on Zoom. 

The event is free and open to the public. Campus visitors and members of the public must adhere to Cornell's public health requirements for events.

Co-sponsored by the Language Resource Center and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program through its Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language (UISFL) grant from the U.S. Department of Education.