Friday, May 9, 2025 – 12pm – 5pm, Foster 107
Dr. Norman H. Zide (1928-2023) was Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and South Asian Studies and former Department Chair. For three and a half decades he created a center for the study of the Munda language family of India at University of Chicago. In the 1960s-1970s he directed the Munda Languages Project that involved Ph.D students from not only University of Chicago such as Dr. Arlene R. K. Zide and Dr. David Stampe, but also other institutions such as University of Wisconsin and Georgetown University. Several of these students went on to positions at institutions such as University of Hawaii and University of Texas (Austin) where they helped shape new generations of scholars.
Certainly not standard practice at the time, Prof. Zide also involved and collaborated with numerous students and scholars from India, such as Prof. Kageshwar Mahapatra and Prof. Bijoy Mahapatra and Prof. D. P. Pattanayak, as well as Prof. Ram Dayal Munda who became the first ethnic Mundari scholar to receive a Ph.D in linguistics, and who later became a key figure in the politics of tribal communities in India following and supplementing his academic career. While many of these students and colleagues have themselves passed on or are now retired, his legacy endures to this day in the form of increased energy in North American, East Asian, South Asian and European academic circles towards the investigation of these languages which play an instrumental role in the linguistic history of South Asia and Southeast Asia.
This celebration of his academic legacy involves brief reports from some of his remaining students and colleagues, as well as a newer generation of scholars, some of them members of various Munda-speaking ethnic groups, who never worked directly with Prof. Zide, but who nevertheless have been impacted by his groundbreaking work on Munda languages through their continued and expanded interest in this important language family of India and adjacent parts of neighboring countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh.
Keynotes: Greg D.S. Anderson, President, Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages; Shobhana Chelliah, Professor, Department of Linguistics, Indiana University
