Hugo J. Mueller
Linguistics Lecture Series
The Mueller Linguistic Lecture Series was established in the 1970s in honor of Dr. Hugo J. Mueller, who founded the Department of World Languages and Cultures in 1959.
The revival of this AU tradition brings leading scholars on language as part of society to campus annually in line with American University’s goals of advancing intellectual knowledge and engaged scholarship that considers the world critically in order to solve pressing social questions.
Fall 2025: Cultivating Peace Through Educational Linguistics
Francis M. Hult
Thursday, October 23, 4:30 p.m.
SIS Founders Room
Lecture followed by reception
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The world faces crises ranging from poverty, misinformation, and intolerance to disease, climate change, and geopolitical conflict. Francis M. Hult argues that symbiosis between educational linguistics and peace studies is necessary for peace: not simply the absence of violence and war, but the positive presence of equitable social structures fostering universal human rights. Hult integrates the multidimensional Oxford Language of Peace Approach, which includes inner, interpersonal, intergroup, intercultural, international, and ecological peace, with the socially situated nature of language and education. By building on ecology of language and nexus analysis, he shows how language policy and practice can foster peace and how educators and stakeholders can act as agents of peace. In turbulent times, we can begin by looking to our classrooms.
Francis M. Hult, professor at UMBC, researches multilingualism in policy and practice at the intersection of linguistics, ideology, discourse analysis, and education.
The 2025 Hugo J. Mueller Linguistics Lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of Peace, Human Rights & Cultural Relations, School of Education, Department of Anthropology, Department of Environmental Science, Department of Sociology, and Center for Latin American & Latino Studies.
2024: Dr. Kirby Conrad
Fall 2024: Dr. Kirby Conrad
"Pronoun Euphoria"
Creativity and playfulness in linguistic expression can be sites of resistance, identity-formation, and solidarity-building among marginalized groups. English neopronouns like xe, fae, and ze are one such site of creativity, and provide insight into the diverse ways of languaging that exist on the margins. I show that these extremely low-frequency forms are nonetheless true components of the English grammar, and that users' own perceptions of them give valuable insight into the origins of language change and variation.
Watch the 2024 Mueller Lecture
Dr. Kirby Conrod is a rising scholar at Swarthmore College who specializes in trans and nonbinary linguistics from both a social and grammatical perspective. Dr. Conrod is an in-demand and engaging public speaker as well as a cutting-edge researcher. (Listen to their Lingthusiasm podcast here!)
2023: Dr. Nelson Flores
Fall 2023: Dr. Nelson Flores"A Raciolinguistic Genealogy of the Self"
In this presentation, I conduct a raciolinguistic genealogy of myself as a point of entry for theorizing the role of race in the postcolonial world. I begin by situating my family history within colonial relationships that led to my parent’s displacement from Latin America to the US where they found themselves racialized because of their use of Spanish and the impact of this on my raciolinguistic socialization. I then situate my professional trajectory into bilingual education within the legacy of the Bilingual Education Act (BEA) passed in the US in 1968. I connect the BEA to broader global reconfiguration of race that recruited a cadre of postcolonial elites into reliance on deficit ideologies as part of their advocacy for their communities. I position myself as an inheritor of this legacy and examine the ways that I have navigated it as an ESL teacher in US public schools as well as a bilingual education researcher at an elite US university.
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Hugo J. Mueller Linguistics Lecture Fund
The Fund was established by Dr. Mueller through his generous bequest. Although these funds help to offset the costs of producing the lecture series, they do not fully support its needs.
If you are interested in making a gift in support of the Hugo J. Mueller Linguistic Lecture Series, please contact the Office of Development and Alumni Relations at 202-885-5900, or make your gift online.