Beale-Rivaya named NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor in Humanities for 2021-2024

Yasmine Beale-Rivaya, a professor in the Department of World Languages and Literature at Texas State University, has been named Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities for 2021-2024, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

During her three-year appointment, Beale-Rivaya will implement a project, “Minority Languages and Communities in Contact,” which focuses on minority languages and communities that coexist with another language that is preferred by the majority. Activities will include guest speakers, student mentoring events, a symposium and the production of teaching modules based on the presentations that will be published in an open-access platform for repeated use both on campus and at large.

Beale-Rivaya joined the Texas State faculty in 2006. She earned her Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles. 

Her research centers on language contact, change and borrowing among medieval Iberian (Spanish) borderland and minority communities. Her main area of focus is the use of Romance and Semitic languages, such as Andalusí Arabic, by Mozarabic (Arabized-Christians), Mudejar (Muslims living in Christian territories) and Morisco (recent converts to Christianity from Islam) from the ninth to the early 14th centuries. She maintains a parallel line of research looking at language contact and maintenance in bilingual Spanish-English speaking communities.