Alan Kaye

Alan Kaye Travels to Columbia to Explore Indigenous Language

Alan Kaye, professor of English, comparative literature and linguistics, is spending the holiday break and intersession 'south of the border' -- more specifically, near Cartagena, Colombia.

It is here that the linguist is studying Spanish dialects and the indigenous language Palenquero.

"Visiting Palenque in early January -- about two hours on pavement and dirt roads from Cartagena, it reminded me of my fieldwork in Chad, the Sudan and Cameroon many years before," said Kaye of his current travels and research. "The Palenquero people were Africans who were slaves brought to Colombia. They founded Palenque in 1603."

In 2004, Kaye was named to a committee to choose Fulbright scholars for participation in programs centered in the Middle East and North Africa. A former Fulbright scholar in Egypt in the 1960s and Sri Lanka in the 1970s, Kaye has traveled throughout the Middle East and speaks Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Persian and Urdu.

In 2000, he spent seven months in Saudi Arabia where he taught at King Saud University in Riyadh and conducted research on the Bedouin dialects. It was the second time he had traveled to Saudi Arabia: in 1997, he went to the Middle East as a Joseph J. Malone Fellow. The program was sponsored by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations.

In addition to his extensive travels, Kaye is a prolific book reviewer and author of numerous articles related to linguistics. He has been a member of the campus teaching community since 1971.