Caroline Bailey, a Ph.D. candidate in English, received a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship from the Center for Latin American Studies to study Kichwa, a Quechuan language spoken by Ecuadorians living in the Amazon. Read more about her experience as a FLAS fellow below.
What can you tell us about your background and academic interests?
I'm interested in multilingualism in literatures of the Americas, and this academic pursuit led me to enroll in Quechua courses here at Stanford. I wanted to familiarize myself with a non-European language that was important on the American continents, and I was excited to learn that Quechua was taught here on campus.
Why did you apply for the FLAS fellowship?
I wanted to increase my knowledge of the different dialects of Quechua. The language offered here at Stanford by the wonderful Marisol Necochea is called Quechua Chanka, spoken in Andean Peru. I found a FLAS-sponsored program that taught what is sometimes called Amazonian or Napo Quechua (alternatively spelled Kichwa). It is a very different dialect and represents a different culture, since speakers live in the Ecuadorian Amazon as opposed to the mountains.
What did you do for your FLAS fellowship?
My fellowship consisted of classes in the morning and evening every weekday to learn as much Kichwa as possible. We also took excursions to sites in the community, including a day trip to a co-op of midwifes doing amazing work, and a multi-day trip deeper into the Amazon.
What have you learned from this experience?
My fellowship increased my appreciation for the difficulties and nuances of fieldwork, a discipline I wasn't intimately familiar with as a humanist. I gained a lot of respect for people working on the ground, both native Kichwa speakers and activists, and the linguists and anthropologists who study their lives and their communities.