Professor
DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS AND DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY
ASSOCIATE CHAIR OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES, DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS 

Affiliated Faculty Positions
COLLEGE OF MEDIA, COMMUNICATION, AND INFORMATION (CMCI)
DEPARTMENT OF WOMEN AND GENDER STUDIES (WGST)

Directorships
DIRECTOR, PROGRAM IN CULTURE, LANGUAGE, AND SOCIAL PRACTICE
DIRECTOR, THE LITERACY PRACTICUM

Kira Hall received her Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1995 from the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado Boulder, with a joint position in the Department of Anthropology. Her work is situated at the intersection of linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics, two closely related fields focused on the relationship between language and society. Her interdisciplinary commitment to both of these fields is reflected in the academic positions she has held since earning her PhD, which include an Assistant Professor position in the Department of Anthropology at Yale and a Visiting Assistant Professor position in the Department of Linguistics at Stanford. She is now serving as President-Elect of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, the flagship organization within the American Anthropological Association for the study of language and social life. Her awards at CU Boulder include the College Scholar Award in 2014, the Provost Faculty Achievement Award in 2010, the Boulder Faculty Assembly Teaching Excellence Award in 2009, and the Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award in 2004.

Dr. Hall’s research examines issues of language and social identity in India and United States, particularly as they materialize within hierarchies of gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic class and shift under processes of globalization. Her publications include the volumes Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self (with Mary Bucholtz, Routledge 1995) and Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality (with Anna Livia, Oxford 1997), along with two volumes recognizing the life and work of Hindi poet, linguist, and folklorist Ved Prakash Vatuk: Studies in Inequality and Social Justice (2009) and Essays in Indian Folk Traditions (2007). Her journal articles and book chapters address topics ranging from the language practices of Hindi-speaking hijras and kotis in northern India to Donald Trump’s use of derisive humor in the 2016 Republican Party primaries. With Rusty Barrett, she is currently editing the forthcoming Oxford Handbook in Language and Sexuality, scheduled for publication in 2018.