Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway

(she/her/hers)

  • Professor of Anthropology

Areas of Study

Education

  • BA, Oakland University, 2000
  • MA, University of Michigan, 2003
  • PhD, University Michigan, 2008

Biography

Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway's research addresses the flexible multi-modal nature of communicative practices as well as the social factors that facilitate or limit that flexibility. She explore these dynamics through ethnographic work with deaf signers in Nepal, Malta, Germany, and the US, as well as by experimenting the modalities and genres through which anthropological research can be produced and shared.

Publications include:

  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika and Anne Pfister (2024). Language Access and Deaf Activism in Mexico and Nepal. In, Riley, Kathleen, Bernard C. Perley, and Inmaculada M. García Sánchez (Eds.) Language and Social Justice: A Global Perspective. Bloomsbury Publishers.
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika and Kristen Snoddon (2023). Sign Languages. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology.
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika and Annabelle Xerri (2022). #Deafmum: A Deaf Maltese Activist’s Strategies for Addressing Hearing Parents of Deaf Children. Practicing Anthropology.
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2021). Shadows and Mirrors: Spatial and Ideological Perspectives on Sign Language Competency. The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 31(3): 320-334.
  • Das, Sonia N., Christina P. Davis, and Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway (2021). Judith T. Irvine and the Social Life of Scholarship. The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 31(3): 316-319
  • Das, Sonia N., Christina P. Davis, and Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway (Eds.) (2021). Special Issue: Essays in Honor of Judith T. Irvine. The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 31(3).
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2021). Media of Medium: Language Boundaries and Multimodal Semiotic Ecologies in Nepali Schools for Deaf Students. In Davis, Christina and Chaise LaDousa (eds.) Language Medium and Difference: Schools and Society in South Asia, 71-92. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway (2021). Images of Language and Imagistic Language in Nepal's Older and Vulnerable Deaf Person's Project. Semiotic Review
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2020). Writing What we Feel: Written Sign Language Literacy and Intersomaticity in a German Classroom. In Kusters, Green, Harrelson, and Snodden (Eds.), Sign Language Ideologies in Practice, 197-218. Mouton De Gruyter.
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2020). Figure (of Personhood) Drawing: Scaffolding Signing and Signers in Nepal. Signs in Society 8(1): 35-61.
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2018). Linguistic Anthropology in 2017: It Could be Otherwise. American Anthropologist 120 (2): 278-290.
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2018). Feeling your Own (or Someone Else’s) Face: Writing Signs from the Expressive Viewpoint. Language and Communication 61: 88-101.
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2016). Signing and Belonging in Nepal. Gallaudet University Press.
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2013). (Don’t) Write My Lips: Interpretations of the Relationship between German Sign Language and German across Scales of SignWriting Practice. Signs and Society 1(2): 243-272.
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2011). Ordering Burgers, Reordering Relations: Gestural interactions between hearing and d/Deaf Nepalis. Pragmatics 21(3): 373-391.
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2011). Writing the Smile: Language ideologies in, and through, sign language scripts. Language and Communication 31(4): 435-355.
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2011). Lending a Hand: Competence Through Cooperation in Nepal’s Deaf Associations. Language in Society 40(3): 385-306.
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2010). Many Names for Mother: The Ethno-linguistic Politics of Deafness in Nepal. South Asia: The Journal of South Asian Studies 33(3): 421-441.
  • Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika (2008). Metasemiotic Regimentation in the Standardization of Nepali Sign Language. The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 18(2): 192-213

I received a Fulbright Scholar Grant to conduct research in Nepal in 2022-2023.

My book, Signing and Belonging in Nepal (Gallaudet University Press, 2016), was awarded an honorable mention for the 2017 Society for Linguistic Anthropology Edward Sapir Book Prize.

The Sapir Book Prize was established in 2001 and is awarded to a book that makes the most significant contribution to our understanding of language in society, or the ways in which language mediates historical or contemporary sociocultural processes.

Fall 2024

Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology — ANTH 204
Graphic Anthropology — ANTH 357
Practicum in Anthropology - Full — ANTH 391F
Practicum in Anthropology - Half — ANTH 391H
Internships in Teaching - Full — ANTH 415F
Internships in Teaching - Half — ANTH 415H
Advanced Topics in Linguistic Anthropology — ANTH 427

Spring 2025

Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology — ANTH 204
Language, Disability, and Sensory Ecologies — ANTH 322
Practicum in Anthropology - Full — ANTH 391F
Practicum in Anthropology - Half — ANTH 391H
Internships in Teaching - Full — ANTH 415F
Internships in Teaching - Half — ANTH 415H

Notes

Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway Gives Invited Lecture

February 17, 2020

Associate Professor of Anthropology Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway gave an invited lecture titled "Figure (of Personhood) Drawing: Pictorial Representations of Signing and Signers in Nepal" on February 15, 2019 at The University of Michigan.

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