Monica Heller (born June 1955) is a Canadian linguistic
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
and Professor at the
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...
. She was the president of the
American Anthropological Association
The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, ...
(AAA) from 2013 to 2015.
[Prof. Dr. Monica Heller](_blank)
— Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies. Retrieved 2015-09-18.
Biography
Heller was born in 1955, in
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
,
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
. Her father was a neurologist and her mother a medical sociologist. The political meanings of the uses of French and English in Quebec in the 1960s led to her interest in language and its influence on society.
She attended
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...
in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Anthropology (minor in Linguistics) with honors in 1976.
She earned her Ph.D. in Linguistics at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
in 1982.
Academic career
Currently she is Full Professor at the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) in the department of Humanities, Social Sciences & Social Justice Education with a joint appointment to the Department of Anthropology. Her research has focused on the role of language in the construction of social difference and social inequality, especially francophone Canada, and comparative work in Western Europe. Using a political economy approach, she has tracked shifts in ideologies of language, nation and State, and examined processes of linguistic
commodification
Within a capitalist economic system, commodification is the transformation of things such as goods, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals into objects of trade or commodities.For animals"United Nations Commodity Trad ...
in the globalized economy, along with the emergence of post-national ideologies of language and identity.
She has been a visiting professor at universities in Brazil, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain and Finland, and a fellow of Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg in Germany . She also has a nominal appointment in the Département d’études françaises of the
Université de Moncton
The Université de Moncton is a Canadian francophone university in New Brunswick. It includes campuses in Edmundston, Moncton, and Shippagan.
The university was founded in 1963 following the recommendations of the royal commission on higher ed ...
. From 2007 to 2012, she served as Associate Editor for the ''Journal of Sociolinguistics''.
American Anthropological Association
Heller was Executive Program Chair for the 2010 annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association in New Orleans. She served as Vice President of the Association for 2011–2013. In November 2013, she became President. She is one of the few scholars at a non-U.S. institution to lead the AAA in the organization's history.
[The Good Problem of Inclusion: An Interview with Monica Heller." ''Anthropology News.'' October, 2007]
Honors and awards
* 1998 Connaught Research Fellowship, University of Toronto
* 2001 Konrad Adenauer Research Award,
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (german: Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung) is a foundation established by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany and funded by the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry of Education and Resea ...
(Germany)
* 2001 Member, official delegation, State Visit of the Governor-General of Canada to Germany
* 2005–present Member,
Royal Society of Canada
The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Société royale du Canada, SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bil ...
* 2011 President’s Award, American Anthropological Association
Books
* 1988 (ed.)'' Codeswitching: Anthropological and Sociolinguistic Perspectives,'' Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
* 1994 ''Crosswords: Language, Ethnicity and Education in French Ontario.'' Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
* 2001 ''Voices of Authority: Education and Linguistic Difference.'' Westport CT: Ablex. Monica Heller and Marilyn Martin-Jones
* 2002 ''Éléments d’une sociolinguistique critique.'' Paris: Didier.
* 2003 ''Discours et identités : la francité canadienne entre modernité et mondialisation'' (with Normand Labrie) Cortil-Wodon
elgique: Editions modulaires européennes : InterCommunications.
* 2006 ''Linguistic Minorities and Modernity: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography''(2nd edition). London: Continuum According to WorldCat, the book is held in 710 libraries (First edition 1999, London: Longman. )
* 2007 (ed.) ''Bilingualism: A Social Approach.'' London: Palgrave Macmillan.
* 2007 ''Discourses of Endangerment: Ideology and Interest in the Defense of Languages.'' (with Alexandre Duchêne) London: Continuum. According to WorldCat, the book is held in 688 libraries
* 2011 ''Paths to Postnationalism: A Critical Ethnography of Language and Identity.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press. Monica Heller, with Mark Campbell, Phyllis Dalley, and Donna Patrick
* 2012 (ed.) ''Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit.'' (with Alexandre Duchêne) London: Routledge.
References
External links
Faculty profile, University of Toronto
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heller, Monica
Living people
1955 births
Linguists from Canada
Academics from Montreal
University of Toronto faculty
Swarthmore College alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada
Women linguists
20th-century linguists
21st-century linguists