CLIC Speaker Abstracts

Heidi Swank (Anthropology and Ethnic Studies, University of Nevada, Las Vegas): "Rewriting Shangri-la: Tibetan exile youth and literacy in the everyday" October 3, 2007, 5pm. Place: Haines Hall 332.

In this paper, I examine everyday literacy practices among Tibetan youth in the exile community of McLeod Ganj, India. In particular, I explore the relationship between educational literacy and everyday writing. I suggest that, despite changes to the education system and community focus on Tibetan language literacy, Tibetan exile youth have effected a shift in writing from Tibetan to English that has resulted in the constitution of an age-based linguistic market. Most importantly, though, is that this linguistic market is not spoken but only written. Thus, this research contributes not only to recent work contesting the dominance of education in the constitution of symbolic markets but also to the burgeoning field of the anthropology of literacy.