Dr. Strand publishes book, awarded grant
Dr. Strand’s book “A Winning Dialect: Reinventing Linguistic Tradition in Rural Norway” (UToronto Press) will be published in May. Dr. Strand has also been awarded a Wenner-Gren grant for upcoming ethnographic research. Dr. Strand, together with her anthropologist spouse and co-PI, Dr. Michael Wroblewski (GVSU), will study the effects of changing heritage farming practices and warming climate in rural Valdres, Norway, home to the largest intact transhumant farming zone in Europe. The aim is to understand the transformative roles of language and discourse in shaping interspecies relationships and ecologies in the Anthropocene. Using a combination of participant observation, interviews, and audio, photo, and video documentation of life and language in the rural stølsvidda (the mountainous summer-farming ecological zone), the project will investigate how a transforming environment, subsistence practices, interspecies relationships, and language mutually shape each other.