| I came to the study of Thai and linguistics via the
U.S. Peace Corps. President Kennedy delivered his speech establishing the Peace Corps
while I was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. In the spring semester of my
senior year, I took a course taught by the then "Dean of Women," who had done
volunteer work in an Eskimo village in Alaska. As the semester came to a close, one day
she paused to tell my class, "You all should reflect on the point that as you are
about to graduate, you are only half educated." She went on to say that we were
educated only in Western culture and thought and that there was
another half of the world that had something to teach: The East. Because I had been
reading about the American physician Dr. Tom Dooley and the clinics that he set up for
several minority groups in Laos, I began to be interested in neighboring Thailand as well.
I soon applied to the Peace Corps. Not long afterwards, Kennedy was assassinated, a day
that is seared in my memory. After finishing my assignment as a volunteer in Central
Thailand, I worked briefly as an interpreter-escort for the US State Department before
enrolling as a graduate student in the then newly established linguistics department at
the University of Michigan, studying with one of the great giants of
comparative-historical Tai linguistics, William J. Gedney. I travel often to Thailand and
other areas in Southeast Asia and China to conduct fieldwork in Tai language communities.Recent publications: "A Linguistic Geography and History of Tai Meuang-Fai [Ditch-Dike] Techno-Culture."Journal of Language and Linguistics 16:2 (1998) 68-100; "When Bargaining Was in Bloom: Changing Language and Social Relationships in Thai Food Markets." Southeast Asian Linguistic Studies in Honour of Professor Vichin Panupong. Arthur S. Abramson, ed. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press, 1997, 97-114. Current projects and interests: Teaching Responsibilities: Links: |