My dissertation, titled The social life and sound patterns of Nanti ways of speaking, is available here. I graduated from the Linguistic Anthropology Program at the University of Texas at Austin in May 2010.
This page focuses on my dissertation research. For information about my work with Cabeceras Aid Project, please visit the Fieldworkers page at Cabeceras' website.
My dissertation, titled The social life and sound patterns of Nanti ways of speaking, is available here. I graduated from the Linguistic Anthropology Program at the University of Texas at Austin in May 2010.
Below, I have made available a variety documents related to the steps involved in completing my PhD because I see learning as a continuous, collaborative, and social process. You'll notice that my dissertation project transformed substantially over the course of my work, largely due to the humbling effects that extensie fieldwork and data analysis had on my ambitions and imagination.
I consider some of the content of these documents to be insightful, interesting and original; other content I consider naive, over-ambitious and/or under-developed. But no matter; the important thing is that I continue learning and improving my understandings. I think I am doing much better work now, but I know I'm still far from finished. Knowing this lets me feel more comfortable with sharing some of the stuff below; it is mine, but not me, and it is all a valuable part of the process of learning. Academia cultivates a sense of individuality and ownership in scholarship that I think is illusory.
Please use these materials ethically, not copying, citing, or using anything here in any way that you would be uncomfortable with, were this your own work. Here's a helpful link relating to copyright and fair use of materials in general.
My doctoral dissertation research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation's Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant Program (NSF DDRI in Linguistics), Proposal # 0318146.
Here is a brief summary of the research project as proposed to NSF DDRI:
The proposed dissertation research on Nanti karintaa performances emerges from the applicant's ongoing linguistic anthropological research in the Nanti communities of Montetoni and Marankehari in southeastern Peruvian Amazonia. Karintaa is extemporaneous poetry performed by Nantis exclusively within the context of group chanting during community feasting. This project will describe the defining characteristics of karintaa as a form of verbal art and examine specific karintaa performances situated in their sociocultural and spatio-temporal contexts. This research will examine the role these performances play in shaping relationships among individuals and in shaping Nanti society as an enduring network of relationships. Informed by the discourse-centered approach to culture, Beier will describe and analyze the linguistic, sociocultural, and spatio-temporal features that distinguish karintaa from other forms of Nanti communicative behavior; and will offer a preliminary theory of the relationships between karintaa and other Nanti speaking practices that together constitute a dynamic communicative system, or discursive ecology. The project's intellectual merit includes documenting and analyzing previously undescribed Nanti communicative practices, including formal linguistic description of their minimally-documented language. Its broader impacts include producing data and resources that directly support the Nanti communities' selfdetermined political interests, including land and language rights, and promote their long-term social well-being.
The following PDF documents are available as PDFs: the summary above; the full-length research proposal; the References cited in the proposal; and the budget justifications for the proposal.
My dissertation project was also funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation under Grant # 7090. My funded grant proposal is available as a PDF.
A number of steps were involved, of course, in the process of advancing to doctoral candidacy in the linguistic anthropology program at the University of Texas at Austin.
The following documents are available as PDFs:
My Master's thesis, titled Creating Community : Feasting among the Nantis of Peruvian Amazonia, is available here.
Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for research involving "Human Subjects"
The research activities involved in the project described above have been approved by the IRB of the University of Texas at Austin. The project's protocol number is 2001-04-0034. Click here for more information on the IRB at UT-Austin.
last updated: 23 february 2011
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