Aaron Huey Sonnenschein

Office: E&T A 614
Phone: 3-4161
E-mail: asonnen@exchange.calstatela.edu

INTRODUCTION

I began teaching at California State University, Los Angeles in the summer quarter of 2005 as a part-time faculty member. In the fall of 2008, I proudly accepted a position as a tenure-track faculty member. I have had the great pleasure of teaching a variety of linguistics courses in the Department of English, incorporating service learning into two of my courses. Michelle Hawley and I have made a strong partnership with the East Los Angeles Community Youth Center. (See http://www.calstatela.edu/univ/ppa/spotlight/archive/2009/ELACYC-CSULA.php for more information.) CSULA has also provided a perfect place to continue my work on the indigenous languages of Mexico.

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TEACHING INTERESTS

I have benefited from teaching a very diverse range of students in a range of environments and have taught Freshman Composition, Grammar, Linguistics, and ESL to a wide range of students. Some of these students were Zapotec school children in a rural primary school in Oaxaca (at the community’s request), Zapotec immigrants in Los Angeles, Vatican priests and teenage mothers in an ESL school in downtown Los Angeles, and a wide range of college students at the University of Southern California, California State University Northridge, California State University Los Angeles, and UCLA. The linguistics courses I have taught range from introductory survey courses to an upper-division course in typology to a graduate seminar on language and literacy. One thing which I greatly look forward to in the future is teaching more upper-division and graduate level linguistics courses and directing the research of both undergraduate students and graduate students. One of my greatest joys is to see students take charge of their education, and see that they are the primary actors in a classroom. I like to promote the idea that indeed through their efforts, they can make the class into something special. It is also incredibly gratifying to see students comprehend subjects which they might not have had the opportunity to learn in the past or in which they might not have been interested. Recently I have incorporated service learning into my introductory linguistics classes with great success. Service learning not only connects students with the community and hopefully creates a life-long commitment to public service, but also has the ability to contextualize the often abstract material found in linguistics. Through this experience, I hope to encourage students to not only be actors in the classroom but also in the community!

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RESEARCH

I completed my dissertation, A Descriptive Grammar of San Bartolomé Zoogocho Zapotec at the University of Southern California in 2004. While dedicated to my primary passion, the documentation and revitalization of endangered languages (especially the languages of Oaxaca), I have also conducted original research on the search for linguistic universals and the underlying reasons for such universals and into comparative Otomanguean and Mesoamerican linguistics. I also work with an interdisciplinary research group of historians and linguists at UCLA who translate Colonial Valley Zapotec texts into English. This research broadens our knowledge of both the history of colonial Oaxaca and the Zapotec language as it was spoken during this era. Recently I have incorporated service learning into my undergraduate linguistics teaching. I am increasingly interested in the pedagogical effects and advantages service learning can have on linguistics and literacy courses.

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PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS

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EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

Ph.D. Linguistics 2004

• University of Southern California
  Los Angeles, California

M.A. Linguistics 1996

• University of Southern California
  Los Angeles, California

B.A. Linguistics 1994

• U.C. Berkeley
  Berkeley, California

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