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Susan Penfield (born January 19, 1946--) is an American linguistic anthropologist, educator and researcher of American Indian Languages, whose work centers on endangered languages and community-based language revitalization. Contents [hide] 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 College Life 1.3 Family Life 2 Career as Linguistic Anthropologist 2.1 Citations 2.2 Publications [edit]Biography

[edit]Early life

Susan was born in Los Angeles, California (January 19, 1946) and was raised in Camarillo, California on an avocado ranch. Her parents were Charles Seth Penfield (b. 1895 in Meadville, Penn) and Nellie Lucile Avis Penfield (b. 1907 in Vancouver, Canada). Her parents met when her father, drilling superintendent for Shell Oil Co., went to work in Calgary, Alberta where her mother was employed by the Canadian Pacific Railroad hotels. Susan's life was divided by living in Camarillo during the school year and spending summers in Montana in a remote area near the Bob Marshall wilderness where her family rented a cabin with no electricity. This meant that summers were spent fly-fishing and wrangling horses, with frequent trips to Calgary to visit her mother's family. She still maintains a home in Montana and looks forward to retiring there. [edit]College Life

Her interest in anthropology developed early but was not realized until she began her studies at the University of Arizona where she earned three degrees: BA in Anthropology; MA in Archaeology and Ph.D. in Linguistics. Her first field experience resulted from a grant to the Doris Duke Foundation in 1969 and resulted in a summer spent with the Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) in Parker, AZ. She is still involved with research and community collaborations with this tribe and also with Ft. Mojave Indian Reservation in Needles, California. She had mentors during her college years, Professor Patricia Van Metre of University of Arizona Speech Department, was the chair of her dissertation. She was strongly influenced under Keith Basso who studied the Western Apache culture, Dr. Susan Phillips of the Anthropology Department. She also had a long list of many supportive community members in the indigenous community. One in particular, Amelia Flores of the Colorado River Indian Tribes who Susan had worked together for over 30 years and become a closest colleague. The [[University of Arizona}} Anthropology Department was one of the hosts of an interdepartmental program in Linguistic that support her doctoral study. She had worked many hours in archaeology and served as crew member at the Neanderthal site of Tabun Cave in Mount Carmel, Israel in 1971. [edit]Family Life

In 1977, Susan married Steven Patrick Jasper in California and became the mother of three children: Kathryn Lee Jasper (Benevento), Molly Elizabeth Jasper (Gross), and Zachary Penfield Jasper. Susan taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara during the 1980's in the MA program for English language teaching. In 1989, Susan returned to the University of Arizona and became the course director for the ESL classes in the English Composition Program. [edit]Career as Linguistic Anthropologist

She received her Ph.D. in Linguistic Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1980. After teaching briefly for the English Language Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, she returned to join the English department at the University of Arizona in 1991. To maintain her interest in research with indigenous languages, Susan began writing grants in 1995 to support her work with Mohave. She has devoted most of her career to the field of Indigenous Languages as her primary interest as a linguistic anthropologist. For over thirty years, Penfield has been actively involved in research on language documentation, language revitalization, Indigenous languages and technology and community-based language/linguistic training. She began her fieldwork with Mohave on the Colorado River Indian Reservation in 1969 and has continued to be involved with this community ever since as a linguist and educator. Her own research in language documentation has been with Mohave and Chemehuevi, This work has been fully supported by both the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and is a collaborative project which engages and trains community members in all aspects of the documentation process, from data collection to database construction. Penfield has worked with members of many other tribes who are actively involved in language documentation including the NSF-supported fellows from the Coushatta tribe of Louisiana, the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, the Tohono O’odham, Akimel O’odham, Southern Ute, Northern Cheyenne, Yakama, Okanagan people, Ho-Chunk, Blackfeet (Blackfoot Confederacy), and Laguna Pueblo who attended AILDI in 2006. In 2000, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supported Penfield’s project to train tribal members to work on their own languages using technology. This project resulted in a publication, Technology-enhanced Language Revitalization (2005) with Philip Cash Cash and a listserv titled“Indigenous Languages and Technology (ILAT)" which now has nearly 300 members worldwide. Other recent publications include, “Community Collaborations: Best practices for North American Indigenous language documentation.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, (2008); “Grant Writing for Indigenous Languages” (Arizona Board of Regents, 2008); and “Preservation strategies: A Translation Paradigm” in One Voice, Many Voices: Recreating Indigenous Language Communities (Arizona State University Center for Indian Education, 2006).

In 2005, she helped to establish the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy where she served as Associate Director in 2006-7. Since the 1990s, she has also taught for the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI). From 2008-2011, she directed the Documenting Endangered Languages Program at the National Science Foundation, drawing on her many years of research experience working with Indigenous languages. From 2007-2012 she served as a panelist for the Endangered Languages Documentation Program at the University of London, School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS). In the summers of 2011 and 2012, she taught language policy and planning at the Canadian Indigenous Language and Literacy Development Institute. In 2011, she was appointed as one of twelve members of the Advisory Committee for Google's newly founded initiative on endangered languages (Alliance for Linguistic Diversity) and has been appointed as a Research Associate for a three-year term (2012-2015) for the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. At present, Dr. Penfield is serving as a research coordinator for two separate Centers at the University of Arizona, a Title VI Language Resource Center (the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy) and the Confluence Center for Creative Inquiry.

[edit]Citations

1. The Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project. 2009. (http://www.hrelp.com/aboutus/staff/panel/susanpenfield.html) 2. Dr. Susan Penfield, Personal Communication, September-October, 2012.

[edit]Publications

1. "Towards a theory of language activism.”Florey, Margaret, Penfield, Susan, & Tucker, Benjamin. March 03, 2009, (http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/5014) 2. "Community Collaborations: Best Practices for North America Indigenous Language Documentation (University of Arizona, Colorado River Indian Tribes)." Penfield, Susan D., Serratos, Angelina, Tucker, Benjamin V., Flores, Amelia, Harper, Gilford, Hill, Johnny Jr., & Vasquez, Nora. (May 2008). International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Volume 2008, Issue 191, Pages 187–202, ISSN (Online) 1613-3668, ISSN (Print) 0165-2516, DOI: 10.1515/IJSL.2008.029. (http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ijsl.2008.2008.issue-191/ijsl.2008.029/ijsl.2008.029.xml)

3. "Technology Enhanced Language Revitalization (PDF)." Penfield, S. et. al. (2006). Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona. (http://www.u.arizona.edu/~cashcash/aildi_2007/draftpt1_TELR2006.pdf) 4. In Spolsky, B. "Language Activism and Language Policy." Combs, Mary Carol, & Penfield, Susan. The Cambridge Handbook of Language Policy. 2012. 5. “‘Applied linguist needed’: cross-disciplinary networking for revitalization and education in endangered languages.”Cope, Linda & Penfield Susan D. Language and Education. Volume 25, Issue 4, 2011. 2011. (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09.577217)