Latin American Indigenous Language Learning Program

Overview

At the heart of the program is the conviction that contemporary Latin America cannot be understood without attention to the indigenous past and present of the region—and that language is a powerful tool for understanding the reality of a particular time and place.

While other languages may be added in the future, for the present LAILL offerings focus on Quechua, the most widespread indigenous language in Latin America.  The official language of the Incan Empire, it is spoken today by 10 million people across Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

Housed at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the LAILL Program is a joint effort of the Kellogg Institute, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and the College of Arts and Letters.

Program Offerings

Quechua language and culture classes at Notre Dame

Each year, Quechua native-speakers from the Andes offer beginning and intermediate Quechua language classes on campus in addition to an intermediate-level Spanish class on Quechua culture.  For more information, contact the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

Quechua Summer Language Fellowships

Offered through the Kellogg Institute, summer fellowships give undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to pursue beginning, intermediate, or advanced study of Quechua at the Centro Tinku in Cusco, Peru. For more information, see Summer Fellowships.

Program History

The Latin American Indigenous Language Learning Program is the brainchild of Kellogg Faculty Fellow and Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC, Professor of Arts and Letters Sabine MacCormack, who initiated the idea of offering Quechua language instruction at Notre Dame soon after joining the faculty in 2003.

Thanks to her advocacy, the University began offering classes in Quechua in 2004–05, utilizing the skills of a rotating team of visiting instructors from Peru who are able to offer instruction in Quechua culture as well as language. Two of the four instructors were trained in a program in Cusco founded by Kellogg Faculty Fellow Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, OP.

The program garnered national attention in spring 2008 when Notre Dame student Justin Perez ’10 was awarded the prestigious Boren Undergraduate Scholarship to further his study of Quechua in Peru. Perez was Notre Dame’s only Boren winner and one of only seven students nationwide to receive Boren funding to study in Latin America.

In fall 2008, MacCormack institutionalized the study of Quechua at Notre Dame through her $500,000 endowment of the Latin American Indigenous Language Learning Program. Funding for the endowment originated in the Mellon Foundation’s Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities, which MacCormack received in 2001 and brought with her to Notre Dame.