Marybeth Nevins
Associate Professor of Anthropology
- Office
- Munroe Hall 110
- Tel
- (802) 443-5019
- mnevins@middlebury.edu
- Office Hours
- Fall 2025: On academic leave.
M. Eleanor Nevins (PhD U of Virginia 2005; Associate Professor)
Linguistic Anthropology; Native American languages (esp. Apachean languages of the southwest, Maiduan languages of northern California and Algonquian languages of the northeast); Indigenous Language Documentation and Reclamation; Collaborative Ethnography; Communities and Archives; Storytelling; Song; Translation; Political Voice; Misunderstanding; Decolonization; History of Anthropology and Linguistics. Rethinking globalization with speakers of indigenous and less commonly taught languages in focus.
Courses Taught
ANTH 0109
Language, Culture, Society
Course Description
Language, Culture and Society
In this course students will be introduced to the comparative, ethnographic study of language in relation to socio-cultural context. Our readings will be drawn from diverse global settings and will focus upon language as the means by which people shape and are shaped by the social worlds in which they live. We will examine contrasts in ways of speaking across different communities, personal identities, and institutions. We will explore the consequences of communicative difference across a range of contact situations, including everyday conversation among peers, service encounters, political elections, and global connections or disconnections made possible through new media. (formerly SOAN 0109) 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ANTH 0125
Language Structure & Function
Course Description
Language Structure and Function
In this course we will discuss the major issues and findings in the study of human language within theories of modern linguistics, which shares a history with mid-century American anthropology. The main topics include the nature of human language in comparison with other communication systems; sound patterns (phonology); word-formation (morphology); sentence structure (syntax); meaning (semantics); use (pragmatics); language acquisition and socialization. We will also consider language variation and the historical development of languages. Instruction is in English but examples will be drawn from less commonly studied languages around the world. (not open to students who have taken LNGT 0101) 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ANTH 0225
Native North America
Course Description
Indigeneity and Colonialism in Native North America
In this course we will approach Native North America and the American political mainstream as dynamically intertwined. Through ethnography, ethno-history, oral literature, and indigenous film we will examine the history of colonial encounters between the Indigenous and the 'Western'. We will examine how indigenous cultural difference and moral claims to land have challenged dominant political cultures across the history of the North American settler states. Our analysis will extend to ongoing questions concerning cultural knowledge, sustainability, and imagined futures. 3 hrs. sem.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ANTH 0321
Upcoming
Renewing Endangered Languages
Course Description
Language Endangerment and Renewal
Out of the world’s roughly 7000 languages, 3000 are under-resourced and under-recognized, and threatened with discrimination and limited use in their communities of origin. Most threatened languages are indigenous, their speakers having responded to colonial dispossession by shifting to politically and economically dominant languages. While all languages change, the global shift away from indigenous languages represents an unprecedented loss of global linguistic heritage and diversity. Some communities have responded with programs designed to reclaim and renew heritage languages for future generations. We will apply linguistic, anthropological, decolonizing, and data science methods to the project of indigenous language reclamation. 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ANTH 0396
Linguistic Anthropology Method
Course Description
Linguistic Anthropology Methods
In this course we will work with a method and theory known as the “ethnography of communication” to examine language use in socio-cultural context. Students will learn to form research questions and collect different kinds of data, including everyday spoken interactions, archival print sources, and social media. Students will learn how to document, annotate, and analyze their samples as speech events linked to broader discursive contexts and social relations. Students will also turn ethnography of communication upon social science research itself, examining interviews and surveys as communicative interactions. The course provides an empirical pathway to questions of cultural difference and social inequality. (formerly SOAN 0396) 3 hrs. sem.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ANTH 0500
Upcoming
Advanced Individual Study
Course Description
Prior to registering for ANTH 0500, a student must enlist the support of a faculty advisor from the Department of Anthropology. (Open to Majors only) (Approval Required)
Terms Taught
ANTH 0700
Upcoming
One-Semester Senior Project
Course Description
One-Semester Senior Project
Under the guidance of a faculty member, a student will carry out an independent, one-semester research project, often based on original data. The student must also participate in a senior seminar that begins the first week of fall semester and meets as necessary during the rest of the year. The final product must be presented in a written report of 25-40 pages, due the last day of classes.
Terms Taught
ANTH 0710
Upcoming
Multi-Semester Senior Project
Course Description
Multi-Semester Senior Project
Under the guidance of a faculty member, a senior will carry out an independent multi-semester research project, often based on original data. The student must also participate in a senior seminar that begins the first week of fall semester and meets as necessary during the rest of the year. The final product must be presented in a written report of 60-100 pages, due either at the end of the Winter Term or the Friday after spring break.
Terms Taught
ANTH 1230
Upcoming
DataScience Across Disciplines
Course Description
Data Science Across Disciplines
In this course, we will gain exposure to the entire data science pipeline—obtaining and cleaning large and messy data sets, exploring these data and creating engaging visualizations, and communicating insights from the data in a meaningful manner. During morning sessions, we will learn the tools and techniques required to explore new and exciting data sets. During afternoon sessions, students will work in small groups with one of several faculty members on domain-specific research projects in Anthropology, Biology, Classics, Political Science, and Statistics. This course will use the R programming language. No prior experience with programming is necessary.
ANTH/LNGT: In this section we will explore indigenous political voice in unexpected places. The data we will analyze will consist of bilingual Apache-English and Maidu-English stories, songs and speeches originally recorded by anthropological linguists in the early twentieth century as examples of traditional culture. Students will use R to search this corpora for how indigenous contributors were also making claims on the future in their address to the researcher and to wider anticipated audiences. This course includes a community engagement component.
BIOL/ECSC 1230: In this section we will work with data collected by elephant seals equipped with oceanographic instruments in the Southern Ocean. Depending on your interests, you can approach the project from different angles: students focusing on biology will explore where the seals travel and what drives their movements, while those interested in earth science will investigate the temperature and salinity profiles gathered during their dives. Working in teams, you’ll combine these perspectives to build a fuller picture of both seal ecology and the oceanographic processes that shape their environment. Along the way, you’ll practice manipulating and visualizing different types of data including maps of seal tracks, temperature and salinity profiles, and cross-sections of ocean properties. We will also bring in satellite and autonomous float data to place seal activity and the data they collect in a broader context. By the end, you’ll have a sense of how these different data sources fit together and what unique insights we gain from using seals as oceanographers.
CLAS 1230: In this section students will gain hands-on experience with a variety of natural language processing and text mining techniques by exploring the writings of the ancient historian Plutarch, who lived during the first and second centuries AD. We will focus on the biographies of "great men" in Plutarch’s Lives, which chronicles the history, morals, and virtues of major figures who played parallel roles in ancient Greek and Roman society. The public domain English translation from Project Gutenberg will serve as our main corpus; however, students with a background or interest in Ancient Greek can work with the text in the original language. Using the R programming language, students will transform unstructured text into quantitative data for statistical analysis and morphosyntactic parsing. We will also apply machine learning models to our data to reveal underlying patterns in large amounts of text. No prior experience with R is necessary.
PSCI 1230: Who votes in elections? Who attends protests? Why? In this section we will use the tools of data science to explore these and other questions about political participation in the Americas. We will examine engagement in different forms of participation and the demographic, economic, social, and other factors that shape participation. The class will introduce students to the basics of survey research and the study of political participation. Students will complete a final group project showcasing the concepts and tools learned in class.
STAT 1230: In this section students will dive into the world of data science by focusing on invasive species monitoring data. Early detection is crucial to controlling many invasive species; however, there is a knowledge gap regarding the sampling effort needed to detect the invader early. In this course, we will work with decades of invasive species monitoring data collected across the United States to better understand how environmental variables play a role in the sampling effort required to detect invasive species. Students will gain experience in the entire data science pipeline, but the primary focus will be on data scraping, data visualization, and communication of data-based results to scientists and policymakers.
Terms Taught
Requirements
FYSE 1528
Upcoming
Invention of Nature
Course Description
Invention of Nature: Global and Local
In this class we take a deep dive into the nineteenth century archive where students will discover how Middlebury’s first professor, Frederick T. Hall, institutionalized the scientific study of nature here at a time when most colleges emphasized seminary studies. We will compare the careers of two of his students: Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and Edwin James, both of whom became explorers of the western territories and experts in Native American languages. We will look at their expeditionary writings and examine how these were taken up and used by a diverse audience that included scientists, industrialists, legislators, poets, clergy, and adventure-seekers. We will explore how these writings and their subsequent use help to invent a natural history for the new nation. We will also examine the ambivalent implication of James and Schoolcraft’s writings for the status of the Native Americans with whom they worked. 3 hrs. sem.
Terms Taught
Requirements
LNGT 0109
Language, Culture, Society
Course Description
Language, Culture and Society
In this course students will be introduced to the comparative, ethnographic study of language in relation to socio-cultural context. Our readings will be drawn from diverse global settings and will focus upon language as the means by which people shape and are shaped by the social worlds in which they live. We will examine contrasts in ways of speaking across different communities, personal identities, and institutions. We will explore the consequences of communicative difference across a range of contact situations, including everyday conversation among peers, service encounters, political elections, and global connections or disconnections made possible through new media. 3 hrs. lect./disc. (Anthropology)
Terms Taught
Requirements
LNGT 0396
Linguistic Anthropology Method
Course Description
Linguistic Anthropology Methods
In this course we will work with a method and theory known as the “ethnography of communication” to examine language use in socio-cultural context. Students will learn to form research questions and collect different kinds of data, including everyday spoken interactions, archival print sources, and social media. Students will learn how to document, annotate, and analyze their samples as speech events linked to broader discursive contexts and social relations. Students will also turn ethnography of communication upon social science research itself, examining interviews and surveys as communicative interactions. The course provides an empirical pathway to questions of cultural difference and social inequality. 3 hrs. sem.
Terms Taught
Requirements