Language Center pannel presents professors’ language-learning journeys
By Gregoire Winston ’26, Editor-In-Chief
On April 17, 2024, students, faculty and members of the community came together in welcoming Mackenzie Cooley, Assistant Professor of History and Director of Latin American Studies at Hamilton College and Rebecca Gruskin, Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Hamilton College. The panel, titled : “Hamilton’s Multilingual Faculty: The Professional and Personal Values of Learning Languages,” allowed both professors to display their respective journeys learning languages. For Cooley, learning Nahuatl crossed paths with Native American history and Spanish colonialism, her areas of interest. Conversely, Gruskin learned Arabic in an effort to better comprehend North African and Middle Eastern history. The event was possible with the help of Director of the Language Center Mary Beth Helderle, Professor of French and Francophone Studies Joseph Mwantuali and the Assistant Professor of Arabic Studies Rama Alhabian. Helderle highlighted the panel as critical in “highlighting the importance of language study experiences on and off campus.”
Cooley began her talk by reflecting on what language means for her. As the daughter of two Spanish teachers, Cooley acknowledges that learning languages has always been a personal matter. Nonetheless, when it came to learning Nahuatl, she describes her experience as the “story of a budding scholar humbled by an Indigenous American language.” Following her graduation from Stanford in 2018, Gruskin attended the University of Utah’s College of Humanities to learn Nahuatl. When traveling to Warsaw, she discovered that Poland’s capital was a better place to learn that language than Spain, the place of the colonizer. Despite the passion she had for learning the language, Cooley highlights how difficulties at learning were also welcome. “It is never too late to learn a new language and it is also never too late to be humbled. Being bad at it is extremely embarrassing. It is good to be humbled regardless of the language you are learning,” Cooley stated.
Cooley’s research was based around the Spanish Empire and animal breeding patterns during the 16, 17, and 18th centuries. Cooley discovered that “surprisingly, the Spanish imperial world relied heavily on knowledge from Italian and American archives.” When understanding animal husbandry, Cooley focused her project on domesticated and artificial breeding processes for dogs, camels, horses and tukeys. Traveling abroad to Spain, Cooley continued exploring the former spanish empire looking at records preserved in the national library of Madrid. During this year-long Fullbright opportunity, she continued learning about artificial breeding. She states that “Animals were central to the ways in which Europeans understood the world around them. A number of domesticated species, from bees to iguanas, were bred by the Spanish empire.”
Midway through her language learning journey, Cooley was confronted with various obstacles of learning Nahuatl. For one, Cooley acknowledges the thousands of unread documents available throughout Mexico written in Nahuatl that are yet to be deciphered. In her words, “we have only touched the tip of the iceberg and there is still so much to explore. That being said, I was less comfortable. In order to learn the language, you need to have a sense of play. So, I played.” As she progressed through her project, Cooley then came to realize the importance of corn as a pathway to domestication. When diving deeper into her passion, she got the chance to visit the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, where she got to interact with Nahuatl tira, a traditional pictographic novel depicting daily activities. In the end, Cooley is grateful for her Nahuatl language learning journey. She states: “I would not be here where I am today without the languages I am learning.”
During the second part of the panel, Gruskin decided to begin her Arabic-learning journey because “learning about North Africa without knowing Arabic is like learning computer science without knowing python,” she stated. Moreover, her study abroad experiences in France during high school were foundational. During her education, Gruskin perceived Arabic as a stepping stone towards opening future doors, since it “promised infinite employment opportunities, since powerful people knew Arabic and it was incredibly seductive at the young age that I was.” When learning Arabic, Gruskin quickly realized the intimate link between the language and colonialism; thus, she began reading anticolonial literature in Arabic. For her, “even if you learn the language, you still have to do the work to make the world a better place.”
When reflecting on her experiences, Gruskin highlights how listening to others was critical. “Hearing stories in Arabic demands a much more radical listening than what I experienced in France. In order to listen, I had to undo the assumptions I had made in the world, especially when dealing with human stories.” She added “Listening both linguistically and in a human way are inseparable in our language learning journeys.” In concluding her talk, Gruskin inspired audience members to take action and learn languages, despite potential fear or embarrassment. “A language never stops learning, a fear of not knowing enough should never stop u. Learning a language is real, listening is real. You get to do the joyful, difficult work of cultivating humanity and healing a broken world.”
