Anna Whitney

School: The University of Chicago

Major: Linguistics

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-an1p-db33

Anna Whitney is currently finishing her third year at the University of Chicago as an undergraduate in the linguistics department. Her work generally seeks to understand language as it builds identity in communities, with special attention to communities that have been historically marginalized. More specifically, Anna works at the intersection of linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics to aid language revitalization and documentation. At the moment, Anna is writing her bachelor’s thesis on Ojibwe language signage as it appears in and around Cass Lake, Minnesota, and the ways in which it appeals to both language revitalization projects as well as (predominantly white) tourism. In her free time, Anna likes to listen to local radio and send postcards to her friends.

Language, Identity, and Summer Camp: A Comparative Study

Abstract

In August of 2016, the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University published a survey of North American Jewish summer camps entitled Connection, Not Proficiency.1 Groundbreaking in its area of study, the report explains the religio-cultural as well as linguistic setting of Jewish summer camps, eventually concluding that the camps tend to focus on identity-reaffirmation rather than perfectionism. As narrow as the field is when it comes to studying Jewish summer camps, my research concerns an even narrower field: indigenous language revitalization summer camps. Many indigenous programs of revitalization are younger than that of Modern Hebrew (which began in earnest in the late nineteenth century). To what extent can the relatively expansive knowledge of Hebrew revitalization work as a pattern for indigenous language revitalization? To what extent do Jewish summer camps and indigenous language revitalization summer camps resemble one another? In an attempt to answer some of these questions, my research utilizes my own personal experiences at Bemidji State University’s Ojibwemowin Niibinishi Gabeshi (Ojibwe Language Summer Camp) and contrasts it with both with the contents of Connection, Not Proficiency and the lived experiences of an attendee at Camp Teko (a Jewish summer camp located in Long Lake, Minnesota). We find that the goals and methods of Ojibwemowin Niibinishi Gabeshi overlap in several meaningful ways with the existing canon of Jewish summer camps. While this connection seems rather unlikely, it could reveal a surprising new hope in language revitalization work: the existence of multiple models for successfully creating new generations of speakers.