Bilingualism & Heritage Language Maintenance: A Community Class with Dr. Jeanne Heil

The Franco-American Collection at the University of Southern Maine is proud to announce a free community class taught by USM professor Dr. Jeanne Heil. There is no fee for our programs, which are made possible by the Québec Delegation in Boston, Schooner Estates and the Hilton Garden Inn Auburn Riverwatch.

This community class discusses the challenges and opportunities of the maintenance of minority/heritage languages. Particular attention will be paid to minority/heritage languages in Maine, including but not limited to French. A minority language is any language used by a subset of a population in a region, and both monolingual and actively bilingual regions can have minority languages. Minority languages that reflect a family or community identity–such as those used by children of immigrants–are often referred to as heritage languages. The four sessions of the class will present and layer various perspectives on heritage languages:  cognitive perspectives, social perspectives, and educational perspectives.  The result is a shared knowledge base that highlights both what’s at stake for bilingual families and what’s necessary for language maintenance.

Jeanne Heil is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Southern Maine.  Originally from Ohio, she studied Hispanic Linguistics and Bilingualism at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she worked for nearly a decade in their bilingualism and code-switching laboratory.  She has been a faculty member at USM since 2017, teaching courses on introductory linguistics, second language acquisition, syntax, research methods, and Spanish.  In 2021, she received both USM’s Faculty Senate Honors for Excellence in Teaching and the President’s Award for Achievement, and she has mentored four Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program students between 2018 and 2024.  Jeanne’s research examines cognitive and linguistic perspectives on bilingualism, including second language acquisition and heritage language acquisition.

To register for this class, follow this link, or email Anna at anna.faherty@maine.edu: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScKGOdMtmybE5apVNwJzXbsyQxLxbHXLF_6TCkqlUO1wDiCSg/viewform?usp=publish-editor

For more information, or if you have questions about disability access or need to request disability accommodations, please contact the FAC archivist, Anna Faherty, at anna.faherty@maine.edu or by phone (207) 753-6545.  Requests should be made as soon as possible to allow sufficient time for the accommodation process.