Learning about Quechua Languages, a Historical Perspective

This event is a special collaboration of the New York state Spanish BETAC at NYU Steinhardt's Metro Center and the Center for Latin-American and Caribbean Studies of the NYU Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This is one of many events during NYU CLACS "Quechua Week".

Date: Wednesday, December 15th, 2010, 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Location: Auditorium of King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (KJCC), 53 Washington Square South, New York University, New York, NY 10012

The keynote will be provided by guest lecturer Dr. Gustavo Solís Fonseca on "El Quechua y las Lenguas del Perú: Una Perspectiva Histórica"

Dr. Gustavo Solis Fonseca is Distinguished Professor at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Centro de Investigación de Lingüística Aplicada (CILA UNMSM). Dr. Solis holds both a Doctorate and Master of Arts in Linguistics, specializing in Amerindian languages. Dr. Solis has been the director of CILA, the Center for Research in Applied Linguistics, at the UNMSM for several years. He has also been the recipient on two occasions of the Medal to the
Scientific Merit that is offered by the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.

Dr. Solis is one of the leading scholars and researchers in the area of Amazonian & Andean languages. His research is of an interdisciplinary nature, drawing on fields as diverse as general and theoretical linguistics, macro- and micro-sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology, education, ethnography of communication, language contact phenomena, working with extinct languages, language policy & planning, language revitalization, politics and history. He began his work in the Amazon region while
working as a researcher of two Amazonian languages: the Machiguenga and the Arawak in the MANU National Park, where he lived among the Machiguenga learning their language. Some of his books include: Lenguas en la Amazonía Peruana (2003), Lenguas Vivas Introducción a la Morfología (2004) , Cuestiones de lingüística general, hispánica y aplicada (2004), Introducción en la Toponimia (1989), and Todas las lenguas del Perú (forthcoming). Recently, Dr. Solis was named one of the 30 world specialists who participated in the Report of UNESCO on the state of the languages of the World (2008); additionally he is an author of the section corresponding to the Peruvian Amazon languages that appears in the Sociolinguistic Atlas of Latin America (2009), important publication of Latin-America promoted by UNICEF.

For more information or to register please write to nyssbetac@gmail.com with "Dec 15 Event", on the subject line.