CALL for SSILA EDITOR

The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) is seeking an Editor. SSILA works to keep their membership informed and connected through the SSILA website, and minimally through Facebook. The Editor is responsible for content on these platforms and works in close collaboration with the SSILA Secretary-Treasurer to keep the website updated. The editorship has a term of three years. It requires minimally requires 5-8 hours of work per month but may take more depending on the vision and commitment of the editor to develop content. The Editor receives a $500.00 stipend at the end of each calendar year, but compensation may be adjusted to reflect added vision and time.

Responsibilities 

•  Check Editor email (editor@ssila.org) regularly and respond.

• Post relevant content to the website and Facebook that is sent to the editor by members.

• Post any official SSILA content requested by the EC and the in Memoriam Editor, and email it to membership.

• Ensure consistency of style, formatting, and accessibility throughout the website.

• Put some amount of effort into monitoring news for items of interest (using a weekly news search result or some such), as well as posting items they happen to come across in their own social networks.

• Update and maintain Facebook page, in accordance with guidelines and with other members delegated to post on Facebook.

• Create a yearly report of website activities and attend the Executive Committee meetings (in person or by video) each year at the SSILA Winter meeting in early January, attend quarterly video meetings as needed, and report to and advise the Executive Committee on website and technical matters as needed.

Preferred Skills

Familiarity with the following services:

• SquareSpace (the website platform)

• MailChimp

If interested please contact the current SSILA Secretary/Treasurer at secretary@ssila.org. Please provide a letter of interest that includes links to a website or websites contributed to, or highlighting other editing or content development roles and the name, and the name and contact information for one reference.

SSILA Archiving Award - CALL EXTENDED

This award highlights the importance of creating long-term archived materials that are accessible to all communities concerned, including heritage and source communities as well as scholarly communities. It is meant to encourage others in academia to value such work as more comparable to analytic research. 

Deadline: October 15, 2020 

The award is presented to one or more researchers (from any community) who have created an accessible documentary collection of materials relating to an Indigenous language of the Americas. Taking each collection’s context and ethical protocols into account, each collection so honored will be assessed on the following characteristics: 

• It should be linguistically and/or ethnographically rich. 

• It should include primary materials, including (but not limited to) field notes, audio or video recordings, and other items created in language documentation. It may also include secondary materials, including (but not limited to) educational materials, analysis of the language, or related media. 

• It should be diverse in content, including some annotated or transcribed material.  

• It should be well described through collection-level metadata, item-level metadata, and a finding aid or descriptive overview which includes how the language community’s priorities have been met. 

• Its content should be potentially impactful for language learners, language maintenance, language teaching, and scholarly research. 

• The collection, or a back-up of the collection, should be archived in an established and trusted repository, one that is created and maintained by an institution with a demonstrated commitment to permanence and the long-term preservation of archived resources with suitable rights management practices to allow access to as much of the collections as possible. 

• Its content should be open and accessible to heritage and source communities as well as scholarly communities. Accessibility may include a dedicated website that repurposes primary archived material with added value, but a website cannot be nominated. 

This award may be shared by multiple creators of a single collection (including, for example, academic and non-academic researchers, primary language consultants, and collection curators).  The award is given to the creators of the collection, not the repository or archive. Nominations must be made by a member of SSILA. Self-nominations are permitted.  

The nominating package should include: 

• a letter of nomination identifying the nominee(s) (with curriculum vitae as appropriate), describing the background of their work on the language in question, and the archival collection (with links to online content and metadata, and a finding aid or descriptive overview), and explaining its quality and significance, and  

• one supporting letter also explaining the quality and significance of the archival collection. 

If you have questions about the award, please direct them to Mary Linn (secretary@ssila.org). To submit a nomination for the SSILA Archiving Award, send the nomination and letter of recommendation in PDF format by email to the SSILA Secretary. Please verify that it has in fact been received. 

Nominations should be submitted to Mary Linn (secretary@ssila.org) by October 15, 2020. 

Call for Papers - 23rd Workshop on American Indigenous Languages

Call Deadline: Friday, February 7th at 6:00 pm (Pacific Standard Time)

The Linguistics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara announces its 23rd Annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL), May 22, 2020 - May 23, 2020. WAIL provides a forum for the discussion of theoretical, descriptive, and practical studies of the Indigenous languages of the Americas.

Keynote Speaker: Roberto Zariquiey (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru)

Call for Papers

Linguistic Field (s): Any topic relevant to the study of indigenous languages of the Americas

Anonymous abstracts are invited for talks on any topic relevant to the study of Indigenous languages of the Americas. Talks will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Abstracts should be 500 words or less (excluding examples and / or references).

Individuals may submit abstracts for one single-authored and one co-authored paper. Please indicate your source (s) and type (s) of data in the abstract (e.g. recordings, texts, conversational, elicited, narrative, etc...). For co-authored papers, please indicate who plans to present the paper as well as who will be in attendance.

Abstracts should be submitted in .pdf format to wail.ucsb@gmail.com. Please submit two abstracts, one with the identifying information of the person or persons giving the presentation along with affiliations and contact information, the other with no indication of the author (s).

Hard copy submissions will be accepted from those who do not have Internet access. For this, please send four copies of your abstract, along with a 3x5 card with the following information: (1) your name; (2) affiliation; (3) mailing address; (4) phone number; (5) email address; and (6) title of your paper. Send hard copy submissions to:

Workshop on American Indigenous Languages
Attn: Jordan AG Douglas
Department of Linguistics
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106

Deadline for receipt of abstracts is Friday, February 7th at 6:00 pm (Pacific Standard Time). Notification of acceptance will arrive by email no later than: Monday, March 2nd.

Contact Persons: Alonso Vásquez Aguilar, Jordan AG Douglas, and James Yee

For further information, please contact the conference coordinators, at wail.ucsb@gmail.com